I was at Home Depot today and had to check myself out. I paid with a credit card and had to know that pressing cancel would allow me to use my credit card and not cancel the entire transaction. How did I know this? Well it seems every stupid credit/debit card slider does pretty much the same thing. Debit card is obviously the card of choice most everywhere. But why should I know this? Why does Home Depot assume I know to push cancel without any details or warnings? Why isn’t there just a single credit card button and no combining of debit and credit. Am I not smart enough to know which card I own?
Speaking of easy. It’s debatable which is easier, checking yourself out or someone doing it for you. We know which is cheaper for the companies: One person waiting on up to 4 (or more) self-checkout aisles. So what is next: flipping my own hamburgers? Making my own sub at Subway? How about slipping under my car and changing my own oil at Jiffy Lube?
The irony is that at Subway we have to make our own sandwiches in a way. We have to guess what will taste good (read my rant about that here) and at Jiffy Lube we have to know which oil to use or if we need our air filter changed or transmission drained. Of course you have to question everything because everyone wants to milk you for every cent they can.
Here is my vision of a service company: Easy Service Inc. Whatever you need we do it with great customer service. We don’t lie about what you need, we only give you what you need. We are transparent with everything we do. We even tell you how much we made and we’ll discount you if you come back. More if you send a friend. Send five friends and one service is free. And, we won’t ask you what you need. We’ll have the smartest people possible to assist you in the decision and we’ll use outsider information to help you in your decision, not our own internal information that always seems to benefit us.
Sound to good to be true? Seems that it is because I haven’t found a company like this yet. Have you?
