I Hate Argos

purplegirluk1

Aghghghgh I could scream!!!!

Why is Argos such a waste of time? I spent and entire hour in their today just to pick up an Argos Extra item for my Dad, this was an item that he had already been in to order and he had waited 20 minutes to do that. In total we have wasted one our and twenty minutes of our lives in that stupid shop just to buy one item!

I waited half an hour to pay in a massive line whilst two girls served and se didn't even say sorry for the wait, how rude.

I then had to wait another half an hour to get the thing I had already paid for, the ticket said I should have to wait aboit five minutes, no such luck. Anyway the two people serving at the pick up points seemed to have the mental capacity of a single celled organism and managed to !!!! up every single persons order! The poor lady nexty to me wanted a Furby, they had a big pile of them on the store floor so because of the different colours to pick from. The boy at the counter went off and returned with a pink one, the customer said that it was for a boy so he went off and came back with a beige on but it had pink hair, the customer said that she didn't want one with any pink on as it was for a boy! The boy at the till then had to ask another member of staff what to do as the only two with the catalogue number on were pink. She then said that they were the only ones she could pick from. I looked over and saw that there were four colours not two and told the customer this. She then aksed why she couldn't have one of the other colours and was told that they must be a different item! What a load of rubbish. They then had to go through a fiasco of refunding one item and selling it with a different catalogue number. I have never seen anything so stupid as they are exactly the same toy, they just come in different colours!!!

Whilst all this was happening some items from the belt had been put on the shelves behind the desk and were being given out. The lady doing these items was then called away. Mine was left of the shelves behind them and I was ignored whilst the boy carried on up the numbers, he got to about ten ahead of mine when I suddenly realised that my item had been sat behind him whilst he took items from the belt insteadof the shelf. I pointed this out to the half wit behind the counter and he blankly looked at me and then to the box and said oh then put it in a bag and handed it to me. Again no one said sorry, the store was extremly busy and they had very little staff actually working but there seemed to be a lot of staff walking around looking as if they were busy (i.e. doing !!!!!! all).

They make it seem like shopping at Argos is soooooo easy but its sooooooo not! I can't see how easy it is to wait in two lines for an hour to get one item, Agros need to sort out their system cos in my opinion it sucks!

Anyway end of rant, I am just so amazed at the total lack of customer service in this store. They actually advertise themselves as a store that makes shopping easier and I couldn't dissagree more. I think Mr Argos will be getting a stronly worded letter about this experience!

tigermatt

I agree with you, I find my Argos very busy, and some of the staff quite rude, although they usually have plenty of staff working when it is busy so there isn't usually a long wait. What annoys me is the fact that half of the stuff Argos sell is absolute rubbish, and you have to take it back for a refund within 16 days (why not the usual 28 or 32? :mad:) and queue up in some long line (of other people annoyed with the rubbish they bought) to eventually get to the front and be told you "have to have the refund in Argos Gift Vouchers" for some silly reason or another, even though I have provided a receipt to have the refund in Cash. (I don't really want Argos Gift Vouchers - What am I going to buy with them? More rubbish?)

I can't understand why they have put all the Extra items in the normal catalogue anyway - it makes them so much heavier to carry around, and it gets really annoying when most of the so-called "decent" stuff is Argos :mad: Extra and you have to wait 5 days for it to be delivered :rolleyes: :mad:.

Personally, I wouldn't bother using their website either as that is slow half the time.

Argos' prices are also extortionate - I expect most of the items in the catalogue can be purchased from the Internet much cheaper than Argos can provide them for. You may be able to get a better item for less from the Internet...

Argos :mad:

tigermatt or rather

sparkymark_3

They are useless at recruitment as well !!
I know someone who went for a senior job, advertised in August, had 2 interviews, was promised they would reply within a week after each interview which they did not so he had to keep phoning an 0870 number !! Finally turned down in December !! (over qualified ) He said they seem to employ !!!!!!/16 year old losers on the whole !! and the recruitment process was a farce because too many Managers took redundancy (could not get out quick enough) rather than down grade like company hoped (obviously penny pinchers) and HR dept. had meltdown in effect.
What a good way to ruin a companies reputation. By the way vacancy in Customer Service !!!! something obviously sorely lacking BUT if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

trisontana

When you stand at the counter of our Argos you can see the staff notice board. On there is posted a list of "targets" the store is supposed to meet. This includes extended warranties, the Argos store card with the very high APR, and other extras they are supposed to push to get more money out of the general public. Last time I looked I was pleased to see that this store had failed miserably and had not met any of these targets for several weeks.

Becles

Not many people seem to like the self service terminals. They are really easy to use, and have easy to follow instructions. It's a touch screen to enter your order details, then a normal chip & PIN machine connected to take payment from your card.

From experience, even when there is a big queue, there is usually a terminal free.

tigermatt

Becles wrote:

Not many people seem to like the self service terminals. They are really easy to use, and have easy to follow instructions. It's a touch screen to enter your order details, then a normal chip & PIN machine connected to take payment from your card.

From experience, even when there is a big queue, there is usually a terminal free.

I think the Self Service terminals are great. It is a shame you can't "self service refund" though. They could commision one just for me!

Argos :mad:

Thanks, tigermatt - for Argos!

Bossyboots

Christmas a couple of years ago we went into town on a Sunday before Argos opened. There was a huge queue waiting outside one set of doors so we waited outside the others.

When they opened the door, we went straight to the self service kiosk, typed in the reservation number that we had from reserving on line, paid and collected our goods in six minutes. No-one from the original queue had yet even had their order finished on the till, never mind brought up to the store. We got some strange looks when we walked out with our goods through the queue snaking out of the door.

My only criticism of the self serve kiosk is that you cannot put in more than one reservation number so you either have to do them separately or queue up. As they are doing the voucher offer at the moment, we had to queue up last week as I wanted six reserved items.

freddie_2

purplegirluk1 wrote:

Aghghghgh I could scream!!!!



I waited half an hour to pay in a massive line whilst two girls served and se didn't even say sorry for the wait, how rude.

Why should they say sorry if they are going as fast as they can. Most of the time waiting I'll bet was spent because the customers in front of you didnt have the money ready and so when told the amount then had to start fishing through bags etc for purse/money.
It may not be their fault, why not speak to the manager but he also will have a wage budget to stick to and may not be allowed to hire more staff or he will go overbudget. Therfore why not phone H/O and speak to them.

Personally I would rather someone said sorry when they mean it rather then as a matter of course.
Staff as well are allowed a bad day, some customers can be very rude and to keep smiling can be very hard.

P.S Its Christmas of course it will be busy, shopping early can solve this problem.

moggins

Don't remind me!!! I used to work there for 3 years, it was a complete nightmare and the temporary staff they used to hire for christmas were worse than useless. My normal christmas phrase was stick a broom up my a**e and I will sweep the floor at the same time!! Customer service was a complete nightmare as every time you stuck to company policy the manager would come along and override you so you looked a complete prat.

The trouble is that you come in and do a diferent job every day so no one gets stuck with a cushy job and everybody has to take a turn at order picking. When you realise how badly organised the stockroom is, that the shelves reach the ceiling and they always stack the heaviest and largest goods on the top shelf then you know why stuff takes so long to get to the customer.

I finally quit after getting a written warning from the management for overriding a credit card decline? Huh?? I wasn't even aware that you could do this?

So please don't blame the monkey's. Blame the management who are usually the ones you see wandering about the backroom doing nothing and paying peanuts.

bunking_off

Seems to me that of the 1hr 20 mins, you can only really complain about 25 minutes of it.

Your dad waited 20 minutes to order. Well, clearly you have an internet connection (you're on this site!), so why didn't you reserve on-line?

You had to queue to pay. As others have said, why not use the self-service terminals - I've never had to wait for these.

So, the only delay was the difference between the predicted time and the item actually appearing, much of which appears to be down to the guy behind the counter. I don't count Argos as one of my favorite shopping experiences, but fundamentally they are one of the cheapest on the high st (yes, internet is cheaper, but how many internet stores will give you a no quibble 16 day exchange?). To be cheap, they've got to cut costs somewhere, and I'd be surprised if that didn't equate to be a low wage employer. Hardly likely to enthuse their staff.

In life, you generally have to make a trade-off between cost and service. I'll put up with the Argoses, Lidls etc of this world if it'll save me a few quid.

tigermatt

bunking_off wrote:

a no quibble 16 day exchange?

My local Argos store aren't very good at this so called "no quibble". They wouldn't take back some light bulbs because the packet was opened but it needed to be opened to see if they fitted or not. :mad:

tigermatt