Today we are celebrating my niece's birthday. Since she's seventeen the gift she appreciates more than anything is of course money so...I went trotting down to my local Kroger's to buy her one of those pre-paid Visa cards that she can use anywhere. When I went to ring up at the cashier the $25 card rang up as $28.95. I asked the cashier what happened, assuming she rang it up wrong and she told me "oh, there's a $3.95 service fee". She was also quick to make sure I understood the fee wasn't from Krogers but was instead from Visa. I quickly responded with "take it off, I'll just give her cash" so problem solved but here's what I find myself wondering...service for what?? I'm the one who drove to the store, picked up the card and will wrap it up for my niece, exactly what service have they provided?
I had a similar experience a few months ago at a local theatre. My daughter was in a production at Playhouse 1960 so I went online to purchase tickets (coincidentally the ONLY way to buy tickets as they don't have a staffed box office). I then PRINTED the tickets on my printer, using my ink (which costs more than the most expensive perfume!)and they charged me a "service" fee. Where exactly was the service involved? They didn't even provide a living person to talk to me and I'm the one who paid to print the tickets.
Has anyone else been charged a fee for imaginary service? Does anyone even understand what the word service means anymore? I'd love to hear your stories.
1 comment:
Lorri, I can give you a recent example of good service...no, make that astounding service beyond expectations. Unfortunately it was not in the U.S.
Just last week I was in India traveling from Udaipur to Bangalore via Delhi to catch a flight back to Singapore. I had 1 hour 40 minutes to make the connection in Delhi from one airline to another, if the Udaipur flight was on time, which of course is where things went wrong. The flight was called and we boarded on time. Shortly before we were supposed to depart the pilot came over the intercom with an announcement that we would be delayed due to air traffic congestion around Delhi. He would make another announcement in 10 minutes to tell us for how long. Well it turns out the delay was for 50 minutes. And of course in Delhi we landed on the runway that was farthest from the domestic terminal and then proceeded to taxi for another 10 minutes, followed by deplaning and getting on a shuttle bus to take us to the terminal. By this time, it was 30 minutes before my next flight was scheduled to leave, and I still had to collect my bag from the first flight. While I was waiting for the bag to come out, I decided to go to the Jet Airways (the carrier for the second leg of the adventure) counter to tell them of my situation. They briefly looked at alternate flights that would get me to Bangalore in time to make my flight to Singapore (there were none), then finally told me to go get my bag and come back. When I got back to the counter, they had a person ready to escort me to the check-in counter (in another building) to collect my boarding pass. But my escort didn't stop there. He also took me through airport security (which was of course slow because the people in front of me had decided that it was okay to bring two one-liter bottles of water on the plane), to the gate, onto the shuttle bus (where I was the only passenger) and out to the plane. (I failed to mention that he was carrying my bag all of this time.) He only left me at the foot of the stairs to get on the plane. He got a good tip, and I got to Bangalore on-time to catch my flight home. One can't ask for more.
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