I’ve no way of knowing the crossover of readership between Service Dealer – and the Daily Mail.
What I do know is that whilst I am studiously switching between The Times and the Guardian in order to balance my political neutrality, on the other side of the room the Daily Mail is being deeply devoured with its recipe of social injustices, celebrity fall-outs, trenchant opinions and stories to infuriate.
And it was in that very newspaper this week (which I picked up to read for research purposes you’ll understand) that I came across a lengthy feature by columnist Dominic Lawson, son of the former Tory Chancellor.
He apparently had the need to replace a 20 year old Bosch dishwasher, decided on a Zanussi which didn’t do the job, moved onto an AEG because of its German engineering, discovered that AEG wasn’t German after all but was probably made in the same factory as the Zanussi, had to wait days for parts when it went wrong almost immediately and . . . oh look, it’s a long tale which you can read from the link below if you are so minded.
However, in the midst of his travails he called on the services of a local shop to save him from irritating phone calls and multiple dial options when trying to deal with Customer Services.
He says, “This, perhaps, is the moral of the tale. The independent store has a relationship with its local customers which guarantees proper personal attention and a face-to-face relationship between buyer and seller”.
Glory be, someone has got the message.
What is not clear is why Mr Lawson, having apparently bought the machine from a local electrical retailer rather than from a big box store or on-line, then had to take it upon himself to jump through the manufacturer’s Customer Service hoops, rather than let the shop sort out his ‘issues’?
Still never let such detail get in the way if it (a) sells papers or (b) provides a financially beneficial word-count by filling a whole page of a mass circulation national newspaper.
However, if the millions of Daily Mail readers did appreciate the point Dominic Lawson was making, then at least he might have persuaded some consumers to try the 'relationship route'
Read more here
