Navy voice : Please divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision.
Civilian voice : Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision. Navy voice : This is the captain of a US navy ship. I say again, divert your course. Civilian voice : No. I say again, divert your course. Navy voice : This is the aircraft carrier Enterprise. We are a large warship of the US navy. Divert your course now! Civilian voice : This is a lighthouse. Your call. "Tung tu tu tu.... Tung tu tu tu" I was having dinner when my mobile rang as my cousin's name appeared on the screen. What could it be? I thought to myself as I walked to a part of my house where the mobile reception is better (Yes, it's that bad). It's rare that he called me at this hour unless he had something urgent or important to check with me. Otherwise, we communicate mostly through whatsapp. "Do you know of .....?" he asked. "What did you say?" I replied. Then he had an incoming call and asked me to hold on. Two minutes passed before I decided to hang up and wait for him to call back. He called back and told me he was locked out of his house. His mom and brother were inside and couldn't open the door too. By the time he called me back, he had already went down to a hardware shop to seek help and bought a new lock at the same time. Total damage $180. Now if you've ever been locked out of the house during the most unfortunate time, like 8pm, you can be sure that getting a locksmith down to solve your problem isn't going to be cheap. Firstly, he has to come down within a reasonably short period of time, say half an hour, if not immediately. There's also the time of the day - calling a locksmith at 11pm is going to be way more expensive than 2pm. And depending on how complicated your problem is, charges may vary. I may be wrong but that's what most of us perceive it to be. Perhaps for this reason, there is no standard charges or market rates that consumers can refer to. And there's no average market rate that we can use as gauge to determine if it's reasonable or expensive. Furthermore, when such thing happens, your main concern is to solve the problem unless you can afford the luxury of calling 10 to 20 locksmiths to check out the charges. And this give locksmiths the perfect opportunity to charge whatever they want for exactly the same service. They are like the wolves ever waiting for the opportunity to pounce on the little lamb cornered at the edge of a cliff. And this is because of this reason my cousin did not contact the locksmith who had his contact detail plastered on each house in the block. A few months back, I experienced the same situation. My sister and mom were locked in the house and couldn't opened the door. Instead of calling a locksmith, she went ahead and removed the lock. But the hook was still stuck in the latch. She then used a screwdriver to force the hook out with the help of an Indian foreign worker on the outside successfully. Since the person the hardware shop owner was supposed to send wasn't there yet, I asked my cousin to try to remove the lock and see if the door could be opened. His brother removed the lock cover to expose the inside which has a piece of metal structure. Then I asked him to find a pincer to try and unhook the hook from the latch. However, he wasn't able to do so. I offered to go down and take a look but my cousin said the locksmith has arrived. The man whom my cousin assumed to be the locksmith came at 9:07pm. When he arrived, the first comment he made was they shouldn't have removed the lock. He promptly went to work trying to open the door. Below is the account of his messages to me by Whatsapp. 9:07pm - "he's here" - "trying to" - "cos the whole pc of metal broke" - "he say should not unscrew just now" 9:08pm - "now the whole bolt is stuck in the wood" 9:12pm - "now worse!" 9:13pm - "hiz... just hope he can remove. If not gotta bring down the whole door" - "he went to seek help from the hardware shop" 9:17pm - "he took some more tools" - "he's back" Oh dear, did I make a grave mistake by asking them to try removing the lock? I sent a message at 9:22pm, "Manage to remove?" Then it was all silence. My first thought was the problem has been resolved. 10:26pm - "still can't open. the whole piece of metal jammed inside. they ask another guy to come." 10:32pm - "10-15 minutes" - "now also disturb all the neighbors" - "downstair just now already came up to see what happened, why so noisy" - "hope they don't complain" In my mind, I was thinking what the hell was the first man doing to open the door? Was it so serious that the problem was still not resolved after more than one and a half hour? And why all the loud noise? Was he using force to open the door? Did he know what he is doing? there 10:47pm - "opened" - "my door gone case" Oh my god! Finally it's resolved. And it took the second guy less than 3 minutes to do it. After the door was opened, the second guy went in to take a look at the inside and made a remark, "Who asked the person who do not know how to open lock to do it?" And what did the second guy did? He used a drill and drilled on the inside of the hole, placed a lever on the bottom of the door to lift it up and push a bit. That's all he did. My cousin sent me condition of the damaged door and I was appalled. Firstly, we had an exactly similar situation but managed to open the door without damaging the door. And we were amateurs. How could a person who is supposed to have the experience and skill did such a thing? Well, you might argue that the locks were different. But even if that's the case, there's no reason for him to damage the door in the process and yet still failed to open the door. What's more, the second guy solved the problem in less than 3 minutes. What does it say about the skill of the first guy? But what if? What if the first guy could open the door easily if I had not advised my cousin to remove the lock, like what he said? By now, there were many questions in all our minds - my cousins, my aunt and me. The next day, I went down to take a look and to find out exactly what had happened. It so happened that the guy also came down to fix the lock. After confirming with my cousin that he was the first guy who couldn't opened the door and the one who damaged the door, I asked him, "How come you can damage the door to such a condition?" He replied, "Don't worry, I can help to repair the damage. After that you just need to paint it and it will look the same." I said, "Are you going to paint it for me?" He retorted, "How can you say such thing?" I rebutted, "But you're the one who damaged the door. You tried to open the door for more than one hour without success but the second guy solved it in less than 3 minutes." He then went defensive and said, "Actually I do not want to come down yesterday but I still come down. The hardware shop owner tried to call the second guy but he said he wasn't free. This guy is problematic. You cannot say that he's more skillful than me. He could opened the door so easily because I've been knocking it for so long. So when he came, he didn't have to do all the hardwork." He went on to ask us go buy a tin of paint from the hardware shop to paint the door. My cousin stopped me from arguing with him and let him finished his work. We also found out that this man is the elder brother of the shop owner. What a wonderful liar this man was. My cousin told me he was using a screwdriver and hammering at the hook at a tilted angle hoping to break the metal and dislodge the hook from the latch for one and a half hour. But the second guy came and used a different method. Had the second guy continue to hammer away, then I would probably give the first guy some credit for the one and a half hour of laywork he had done. And if he has the skill and experience, why didn't he use a drill and the lever at the later part? Why did he bother to call the second guy? We deduced that the shop owner asked his own brother to come fix the problem so that they get to earn all the money. And when the brother came and couldn't solve the problem, they had no choice but to finally get the REAL locksmith down. Anyway, to prove that our hunch was correct, we contacted the second guy and asked when was he asked to come down? Did the hardware shop owner called him earlier and he wasn't free? He said he was contacted only once at 10:30pm. So who's lying? Who do you trust? We had wanted to ask for partial refund or compensation for the damaged door and contacted the Consumer Association of Singaore (CASE) for advice. The former CASE could help us but for the latter, we will have to go to Small Claims Court. In the end, we feel that there's no point in wasting our time and effort over the issue. A further check with the Housing and Development Board (HDB) and CASE confirmed that locksmiths are not regulated and do not require any license or certification to be one. What can you learn from this for your business? 1. Never take advantage of your customers, especially when they are in an undesirable situation When customers are in a difficult or undesirable situation, that's the best time to exploit them right. After all, they do not have the bargaining power and will do your bidding. Taking advantage of them during such times can earn you a sale, but make you lose a customer for life. 2. Short term gains or long term loss Many business owners have the mindset that this customer will probably not use my service for a long long time. And so when they have an opportunity to make a fast killing, they just do it. Money in the pocket feels good. That's fine if you intend to go on running your business attracting one time customer. The $180 the shop owner earned sure adds to the bottom line. But he doesn't just sell lock. He has all kinds of hardware. And he can be sure my cousin will never ever patronize his shop. 3. The loss may be greater than you think You may think you just lose one customer. Is it really the case? In fact, you are losing not just one customer, but all the friends and neighbors that this customer could be referring to you. 4. Don't be greedy The shop owner thought that he could make more money by giving the job to his own brother. But he has to know how competent is his brother. His brother probably could only fix new lock and have very little skills and experience in solving simple lock problems. But he definitely does not have the expertise in resolving lock problems. Don't bite off more than what you can chew. 5. Admit your mistake If damaging the door is the solution, why would I need to pay so much to engage a locksmith? And when something is damaged, it's damaged. It doesn't matter what you do to restore it. By the way, this is how good a job the guy did in restoring the door to its original condition. 6. Use brain
If you know that your method is not working, use your brain to think of another solution. Don't keep banging your head on the wall. 7. Don't bother to save your face The first guy was probably too embarrassed that he could not solve the problem and so waited so long before finally calling the second guy. But isn't admitting your weakness and finding a better and faster solution for your customer a better option? P.S. Perhaps he was still hoping he didn't need to call the second guy and keep all the earning to himself. 8. Customers that don't complain I'm sure the shop owner knows that we were very unhappy with the damaged door. Yet he chose to feign ignorance. Or did he fool himself thinking he has done a good job seeing that we did not make a scene? What's your worst experience you had with service provider? P.S. In case you are curious, this is the name card of the shop owner. P.P.S. Incidentally, this is the same shop my aunt bought a lock a few years back. The shop owner had taught her how to use it but she forgot about it and ended up locking herself in the house. She called the shop owner for advice and was told to pay him $10 for him to walk to the next block (his shop is just next block) and teach her how to unlock it. "Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own." A man was driving and a light appeared on one of the indicator on the car dashboard.
It's the first time he's seeing this and did not know what it meant. He called the service center and was told to send his car down for an inspection as there could be a few possibilities. Two days later, he received a call from the staff that the car is ready for collection and promptly went down to collect his car. Unfortunately, the next day the light came on again. He called the center again and was asked to bring the car down a second time to find out what went wrong. Once again, he had to leave his car in the workshop as they have a procedure they need to go through. It turned out the technician had forgotten to reset the system after changing the spare part, which resulted in the light coming on again. While the staff were friendly and helpful, could more be done? After all, the man was inconvenienced for their oversight. What about sending an apology card for the inconvenience caused? What about sending a thank you card for using their service? What about including a $10 voucher? And so Lau Pa Sat is finally reopened after a series of delays in its renovation schedule. This famous hawker center, housed in a conserved building structure in the Central Business District (CBD), is also known as Telok Ayer Market. When the famous Satay Club at Queen Elizabeth Walk was closed to make way for the Esplanade Theatre, many satay stalls were relocated to Lau Pa Sat. One lane of the street is closed every night so it could be converted to seating areas for diners. The move was probably to add more night life and activities as well as dining option to the CBD area, which was pretty quiet after office hours in the past. Being one of the few remaining places in the central area where you can find local food at night, this place has become a popular spot to settle a meal before heading to one of the pubs lining the Singapore River for a night of chilling. Where else can you find hawker food in the CBD area after 9pm? With its unique structure and the history associated with it, Lau Pa Sat is also a popular place for tourists to indulge themselves into local food at a convenient location, which is close to Singapore River and the Marina Bay area. And this is one of the two hawker centers that you can really sit on the street for a meal, the other at Chinatown. And this place is also heavily promoted by the Singapore Tourism Board. So it has become one of the "must visit" place on many travelers' itinerary. I was at Lau Pa Sat for dinner last Friday. Perhaps it was the first weekend after it reopened, the place was extremely crowded. Many people came out of curiosity. Tourists were back. And maybe due to the Muslim fasting month, there were quite a number of Malay families breaking fast for their dinner there. There were queue at almost every stall. And some stalls ran out of items on their menu. While queuing up to buy noodle, I overheard a guy speaking on the phone that he chose this stall as it's the only one without any queue. After finishing my noodle, I decided to grab some satay. So off I went to check out the stalls by the side of the lane that was closed to traffic. Every stall looked the same and you can't tell which is the best or better one. Perhaps they are all the same as they might have taken their stocks from the same supplier. And I couldn't remember which stall I had tried before that was bad. When you are faced with this situation, the next best thing to do is to find the stall with the longest queue. There's one and I joined in. I was given a slip of paper with my order ticked and asked to come back 15 minutes later. Wow, that's fast considering the queue and quantities people are ordering. Went back sightly after 10 minutes and was told to queue cos I was early. While queuing, I noticed the staff who was barbequing the satay holding a bunch of satay that were quite badly burnt on the upper portion. He then put them into a styrofoam box. I wondered if they are going to sell that? I turned and looked at the fire which was really big. Anyone who has barbeque before will know that if you barbeque something over a big fire, you will end up with the outside burnt and the inside uncooked. Sure enough, most of my satay were burnt and the meat were cooked unevenly. One was even raw. With the heavy seasoning and spices, some may not even realized that the meat were not properly cooked. And what about those seating on the street where lighting is poor? Can they see the meat were not cooked? I almost wanted to bring the uncooked satay to show to the stall owner. In the end, I chose to be like a typical consumer - just walk away and never patronize the stall again. I don't think they are inexperienced to know how to barbeque satay correctly. The worst thing is that I had a bad sore throat after that and a whole night fearing if I would get food poisoning. I'm not sure if this happens to other stalls as well. Did the stall owner compromise on his quality in order to get more customers? After all, some customers will be turned off if the wait is too long. Did he speed up so that customers do not have to wait too long? If he is having problem coping with the demand, why didn't he inform customers that the waiting time is 30 minutes? Was he afraid of losing customers by turning them away and not making the extra few bucks? Recently, there was a TV program about hawker as well. There is a 81-year old lady selling satay bee hoon (thin white noodle with meat, cuttlefish and vegetable top with satay sauce). She said that she's old and cannot work fast. For customers who cannot afford to wait, she will not be able to serve them. There's another elderly man, also selling satay bee hoon, at a hawker center in the eastern side of Singapore. Every day by 5pm, there will be a long queue of at least 10 persons. He isn't worried of customers walking away from the queue. Those who can and willing to wait, wait patiently. And you're guaranteed a plate of perfectly cooked satay bee hoon. In business, many owners compromised on quality for quantity. To them, making the sale is more important that winning a customer. They may have win the sale, but they lost the customer. And if you're planning to go Lau Pa Sat to eat satay, be careful and check that the meat are cooked. P.S. I've written to The Straits Times forum through their Facebook but no one replied if it would be published. So I've decided to share it on my blog. Do share it if it's going to be helpful to your friends. |
AuthorOutrageous Marketing Archives
May 2020
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