The ‘stupid’ appears endemic

In my previous post, I detailed a very poor experience I had at the local Canadian Tire.

I tweeted a link to the post, and since I included the title in the tweet, I thought that I might hear from them. After I reflected for a moment, I couldn’t imagine the company would be quite so social media savvy, so I sent them the post directly. I received a reply this morning:

Dear Rick Pali,

Thank you for contacting our office.

Please accept our sincerest apology that our store environment did not meet your expectations. We take great pride in offering all of our customers a very positive shopping experience and are very disappointed that we did not succeed in your case.

Please trust that your concern will be shared with the Store Management at the Niagara Falls McLeod store so that we can prevent a recurrence of this service level in the future.

Should you require any further assistance or have additional concerns, simply respond to this email or contact us at the toll-free number provided below. Our office hours are Monday to Friday 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. (EST) and Saturday and Sunday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (EST).

We sincerely thank you for taking the time to contact us.

Corporate Customer Relations
Canadian Tire Corporation Limited
1 – 800-387‑8803

My first reaction was, “What? What just happened?” I read it again and it seems to say that the store manager is responsible. Of course that’s absolute crap, so I told them so:

I don’t believe that the store management was the issue. Unless of course, that the local store printed up the coupons, purchased the touch screens, and developed this whole project on their own. In most cases, store management is a lot closer to the customers and with the exception of the exceptionally clueless, they’d never get in the way of their shoppers shopping.

No, this kind of thing is typical of corporate-level decisions made by people very far away from the customers. You’d be doing me, and all of the customers you still have, a great service by making sure the corporate-level people who designed this project see my message. If Canadian Tire is like any of the retail stores in which I’ve worked, the store manager felt much the same as I do about this.

I probably shouldn’t have bothered. Clearly, communicating with Canadian Tire’s Corporate Customer Relations is entirely meaningless. Their ads want to convince you that they’re your best pal, but the people in charge are at least as clueless as those any other corporation.

Disappointing.