number help: Two things: - Help.com

original AKS
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An Unknown Location

Two things:

One, I have noticed, in the course of my work, that people do not seem to understand the concept of a time frame for a delivery to your home or a service call to your home.

For instance, the cable installer tells you they will be there between 12 and 4, or Sears calls to tell you that the new washer and dryer will be delivered between 2 and 6, this is what it does and does not mean

1. It does not mean that the driver or tech is leaving the local store at 2 to start his whole day, and he has all his deliveries between 2 and 6.

2. It does not mean that the cable guys only work either 9-12 or 12-4

3. It does not mean this is negotiable, or that by asking, you can get them to come in the earlier part of the time frame

4 It does not mean that, if it is 2-6, then you should go to the store, and be back by 2:30, assuming that you can catch the tech before he leaves, nor does this mean he will wait for 6 until he leaves and goes on to the next job

IT DOES MEAN
1 That your area is serviced at a certain time that day, based on number of stops and geographical area

2. That the earlier part of the time frame is the ideal, both for you and for the tech. IF all things go well, all day, they will be there at 2 if they say 2-6

3 In real life, since nothing goes perfectly, you can generally expect them to be there in the first half of the window say sometime between 2 and 4

4. If things go against them, such as traffic, complicated deliveries, and especially customers who waste their time by not being home or not being prepared for the delivery or service call, then they might be closer to that end time, 6.

5. If things go off the wall all day, they might even be later…just remember, when this happens, it means that sll their prevous customers were jerks, so dont add to it, and make it worse for the next customer

6. Understand that 2-6. even if it sounds late to you, is not the latest time frame offered by most delivery or services. I often schedule the last frame of the day at 5:30 to 8:30 (We give 3 hour windows)

7. On this same route, the first time frame could be as early as 8:30 to 11:30

8. The biggest misunderstanding is customers assuming that somehow, the times are just arbitrary.
lets look at an average day

stop 1 9-12 west
stop 2 930-1230 west heading south
stop 3 10-1
4 1030-130
5 11-2
6 113–230 south
7 12-3 south
8 1230-330 south east
9 130-430 east
10 2-5
11 230-530
12 3-6 far east
13 330-630
14 430-730 north and a larger than average stop
15 5-8 northeast

yet, number 12 will complain that we cannot (A) narrow it down and (B) make it earlier.
by the way, pizza and other food delivery people, as well as taxis, usually have multible things going on to, maybe not 14 or 15 stops, but pizza del guy usually has 2-4 pies at the same time, and taxis are always running behind, or they are NOT MAKING ANY MONEY.

anyway, that is that, the second things does not seem so important now, after all.

This open post was written 11 months, 2 weeks ago | V/U/S: 126, 14, 5 | Edit Post | Leave a reply | Report Post


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Good ole boy offline Verified User (2 years, 8 months) Long Term User Shouts: 17 #
An Undisclosed Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (25 minutes after post)

I don’t believe I’ve ever had issues with delivery inconvenience. None that I can perfectly recall. I always try to consider the obscure disturbances of anybodies profession before I assert my negative opinions. I would like to think I’m a very patient and understanding person. After all, patience is a very important trait which everyone should possess or at least try to have adherence for.

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~~EdieAnne~~ offline Verified User (1 year, 4 months) Long Term User Shouts: 6 #
An Undisclosed Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (30 minutes after post)

I am with you 100%, 布赖恩. When it comes to working with deliveries, I usually just take the entire day off of work so that I can be sure to BE there when the delivery guys arrive. It must be soooo frustrating to get to a stop a little early or a bit later than scheduled to find noone at home! Or to be facing a nasty attitude for not being precisely on time for heaven sake.
I can usually detect when a delivery person is having a particularily bad day. I like to offer them a two minute sit and chat just to try to lighten them up with a little humor or maybe a cold soda. That’s usually all the time they have after all!
My dad was a delivery man.
He would come home with some horror stories of his own.
And then sometimes, he would tell about someone who would just take a second to just chat him up and give him his second wind.
THAT is who I want to always be.
Take it easy, ok?? Love your rants!!!! Edie

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original AKS offline Verified User (2 years, 7 months) Long Term User Shouts: 2 #
An Unknown Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (47 minutes after post)

I am not surprised that you 2 actually took the time to read this. Most people claim headache about 2 sentences in, haha

I have an average of 40 calls I have to make every morning to customers, and the comments and whatnot are so frustrating. And when i was on the road, it was bad from that end too.

I have 3 trucks here at this location, and around florida, about 40 other trucks that do home deliveries. And it is amazing how little understanding people have.

The worst, by far, is when people complain about us being so “late”, and not even considering the fact that the delivery guys will still have a min of an hour drive back to the warehouse, then a drive home. So if they get to the last customer at 8pm, and the delivery takes 30 minutes, then the guys wont get home till 10:30.

and there days start about 7AM. poor customer, having to take five minutes out of their life, haha.

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~~EdieAnne~~ offline Verified User (1 year, 4 months) Long Term User Shouts: 6 #
An Undisclosed Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (53 minutes after post)

Yeah, really. My dad used to have a plaque over his desk that said “The customer is ALWAYS right”. I also remember the day that we found that plaque tucked away in the garbage can on trash day.LOL. Kind of gave it a whole new perspective. haha Edie

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Good ole boy offline Verified User (2 years, 8 months) Long Term User Shouts: 17 #
An Undisclosed Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (1 hour, 14 minutes after post)

I remember when I use to work in retain, the customers attitudes were sometimes revolting. They were always dissatisfied with something or demanded we check our inventory again for a certain product after we just confirmed the same vacant item for another customer. “Well sir, if it gives you some sort of personal enlightenment, I will check our stock of the same vacant item for the 23rd time today.” I new the exact delivery days and time frames of every shipment which never seemed to appease the customers. They were insatiable and sometimes appeared hesitant to leave or discontinue their rants. Luckily those unfortunate days have came to an end.

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Good ole boy offline Verified User (2 years, 8 months) Long Term User Shouts: 17 #
An Undisclosed Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (1 hour, 14 minutes after post)

retail*

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original AKS offline Verified User (2 years, 7 months) Long Term User Shouts: 2 #
An Unknown Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (1 hour, 28 minutes after post)

HATE TO SAY IT, But almost without exception, those businesses that had “Customer is always right” as a motto, and stuck to it, are mostly out of business these days.

Hate to say it, but thats a good motto for the front door, but in the break room, the motto needs to be “Daddy knows best, so sit down and shut up” haah

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~~EdieAnne~~ offline Verified User (1 year, 4 months) Long Term User Shouts: 6 #
An Undisclosed Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (1 hour, 32 minutes after post)

ahhhh Hahahahaha! Yeah that is true about the out of business people.
But, well, there is yet another quote from Brian to be put on my profile.The break room quote, that is.
Aw, now I laughed so hard that I have the hiccups. ****! LOL! Edie

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Good ole boy offline Verified User (2 years, 8 months) Long Term User Shouts: 17 #
An Undisclosed Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (1 hour, 41 minutes after post)

I’ve adopted a mutual respect for all customer service employees over my duration spent in the field. Everytime I walk into a hardware store or fastfood, the retrospect of my long disgruntled retail hours dawns on me and I become “the customer” they’ve probably been expecting all day long.

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mumstheword offline Verified User (1 year, 5 months) Long Term User Shouts: 72 #
An Undisclosed Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (1 hour, 51 minutes after post)

I am impressed.

Here, time frames (if given at all, which they frequently aren’t) are all too often “sometime between 8am and 6pm”. The helpful companies are the ones who give you a call the day before to check you’re going to be in… some don’t bother which must frustrate their drivers more than the customers.

I’ve lost count of the days I’ve waited in for a boiler engineer or an expected delivery… only to be told “we couldn’t make it in the time frame so will come sometime next week/sometime in the next couple of days…”

Then there are the guys who arrive a day early and end up having to repeat the trip because someone in the office didn’t bother to tell them that you can’t take a delivery at all on Mondays, even though you took the trouble to highlight it when you made the order!

Respect to your 3 and 4 hour schedules!

(Mums makes designs on moving abroad to benefit from sensible timeframes ….)

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Richard Cor de Lyon offline Verified User (2 years, 6 months) Long Term User Shouts: 20 #
An Undisclosed Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (2 hours, 38 minutes after post)

sounds logical to me :)

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MortallyWounded offline Verified User (1 year, 2 months) Long Term User Shouts: 41 #
An Unknown Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (5 hours, 15 minutes after post)

Ahhhh! The joys of relating to the public! I do it every day, too.

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Jade offline Verified User (2 years, 5 months) Long Term User Shouts: 8 #
An Undisclosed Location | 11 months, 2 weeks ago (12 hours, 15 minutes after post)

As I read this I laughed….I remember getting educated on this at the beginning of the year. Route scheduling, customer problems, store issues, the list goes on and on.

Funny I read this today - I have a service call on Wednesday for my home phone (service is out again) window is 12 to 4 and at first my reaction was a 4 hour window?! and then a wise AKS voice repeated… remember they are people on tight schedules with irate (sometimes very dumb) customers.

LOL…thanks for this one Brian….give the man some cheese!

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