February 23, 2008 - Another Saturday goes by with a lot of activity. I started out in the morning thinking I would have band practice at 10 AM, wondering if I would make it on time since I had to take my car to the dealer to be looked at for the broken window. Instead, practice got canceled, leaving me with time to stop for Dunkin Donuts before going to the dealer. My window is not technically "broken", but it is not in its track, and needs to be repositioned or reglued or something. While my car was there, Ellie and I went to Circuit City to look at car stereos for her car. Her 1991 Volvo has a tape deck only. Neither of us have tapes, we have CD's. Plus, there have been some other major audio breakthroughs since the tape deck, such as iPods, satellite radio and HD radio. I found a radio for her that can handle all of that. We got a call from the dealer on my car. It is going to need a new window, and they are going to have the other dealership up in Palm Harbor take care of it, rather than at their shop, so I picked up my car, we dropped Ellie's back at Circuit City for the radio installation, and then went to Countryside Mall to kill time while waiting for the radio to be installed. It poured down rain while we were there. Instead of being done in 2 hours like Circuit City said, they hadn't done anything other than remove the old radio and realize that it was going to cost extra for this install for some reason or another. So Ellie and I went home and I spent the afternoon cleaning the house. Casey and Jamie came over for sweet and sour chicken and then Ellie and I went to pick up her radio. They never bothered to call us and tell us that it was done, so Ellie called them to find out that it was. We then went to Dunedin Brewery to hear Tribal Style play. Casey and Jamie met us there. I had to get my sax and sneak all of them in as my guests because the event was apparently sold out and they weren't letting anyone without a ticket in. We got home after midnite. Reflecting on todays radio purchase, I have become quite cynical in my expectations from a customer service standpoint. Alright, the place is staffed by mostly high school and college aged kids, but Circuit City is a huge corporation. Surely they have a great management training program that would ensure that the store managers and assistant managers train their floor workers to give the best customer service, right? Wrong. Here's the play by play. I go in around 10:05 AM, 5 minutes after the store is open. There aren't many people in the store yet, but the music from the car stereo part of the store is so loud that the saleslady had to turn it down to talk to me. She was actually pretty good at doing her job. She made sure I got what I needed, and didn't try to upsell me anything that I wasn't looking for. She also did a pretty good job of explaining that I was going to need some additional parts besides the radio, and told me that the installation might not go smoothly since I am going from a factory radio to an aftermarket radio. So we buy the radio, and I ask where we should bring the car to have the radio installed. We pull the car around back, and it is nicely labeled "installation", and two big car bay doors are open, so we pull up near there. This is the end of the good customer experience, and on to phase two, or what I like to call "dealing with untrained chimps". It's 10:45 at this point, and the bays are all empty. I didn't notice the small door that was open next to the HUGE car doors, so I walk in the car door towards the guy at the desk. "Walk on the other side of the chain" was how I was greeted. So I talk to the guy. He's apparently waiting on someone else to come in, and has a "full day" of installations, but he'll try to fit me in. Great. I pry it out of him that he will probably be done in 2 hours. Over 2 hours later I have not gotten a call declaring it done, so I show up again, this time walking on the correct side of the chain. I stand there...and stand there. Finally the same install recognizes that I exist and shows me why it is going to cost another $65 for the install. Ok, I'll take his word, he's the expert. But I am having slight issues with the "free installation" that I came to Circuit City for, now that it is costing me $65 for installation. So he says this will probably take him all day to install, which at least makes me feel like I'm getting my $65 worth, so we head home. At 8:30 PM we call back, which is about 6 hours later. Surely that was enough time to do the install, but wouldn't they have called by now? So the car has apparently been done for quite a while and they wondered why we hadn't come back to pick up the car yet. We drive up there, and two guys are working on a jet ski. Two guys in Circuit City uniforms. And I stand there....and stand there. Finally one of the guys says "we're off duty" and goes to find the guy who was supposed to be working back there. This guy comes up, doesn't say anything to me, and walks over grabs some keys and paperwork, then walks back to another car, and pulls it out into the parking lot. Ok, at this point I've realized he's with another customer, but was it hard to say "hi, I'll be with you just as soon as I'm done here, sorry about the wait"? Apparently so. The guy comes back, checks over our paperwork, and then starts walking away. That was our cue to follow him. No "follow me to the customer service desk so we can finish up the payment and get you on your way." No "let's go take a look at the radio and make sure it was done satisfactorily." No "sorry about the wait". Am I expecting too much? So we follow the guy to the customer service desk where there is a young lady who apparently 1. is not happy to be there working and 2. doesn't know how to do her job well. After getting some assistance from our guy, we finally get the new bill, which I sign for and we head outta there. I'll probably not go back unless they have some ridiculous priced deal that I can't find anywhere else. Will the executives at Circuit City ever know? Probably not.