Motel 6/Fry's Food Stores

Tackle Motel 6 first.
I have been using their facilities for years and years - and years. I don't recall ever having a big enough complaint to actually call their corporate and complain, but this recent fishing expedition and the first night at that hotel was definitely not something I was prepared for.

I have never had such a terrible night in a hotel. I cannot remember anything that rivals it, well, there is one experience but that was while on the mission field and that was a hotel that was only being used for showers, not sleeping in. Besides turning out to be a whore hotel, the REALLY disgusting thing were GIANT cockroaches EVERYWHERE. I went into the room at that place to take a shower. The visual and olfactory assault was unbelievable. Between the hundreds of cockroaches EVERYWHERE, even on the bed, the stains all over the bed sheets, walls and carpeting and the GROSS condition of the bathroom, I REFUSED to even SHOWER in that place!

That is another entry in itself and it is an experience I had totally forgotten about until now. But, the situation with this Motel 6 was not with cockroaches and uncleanliness, it was the sheer noise levels going on ALL night long. I basically did not sleep and I paid for it on the boat the next day. I tried as much as possible to make the best of it, but I had to keep taking naps and I was very tired the entire day.

Motel 6 San Diego - Hotel Circle - Mission Valley #14
2424 Hotel Circle North
I-8 at Hotel Circle North/Taylor Street
San Diego, CA, 92108
Phone: (619) 296-1612

I was not going to let this go, I have been a customer for WAY too long and to have to put up with this kind of nonsense was - outrageous, really. I received a "nothing" answer from them 2 days ago, I finally had an opportunity to call Accor - the parent company - today during their business hours. The lady that answered said that she would have to review what happened - I wrote a lengthy accounting of what happened on that first night as is my custom to be completely thorough on my descriptions of things when it is needed (and usually when it is not, lol). She got back on several minutes later and flatly asked me if what I was looking for was compensation.

Mind you, my letter said nothing about compensation, it was about my miserable experience, the money spent on that trip and what that stay, that night, at their hotel, did TO that trip. I flatly replied: Yes, I want compensation! Her offer? A voucher for one free night's stay and to get my money back from the property that I stayed at. I wanted 2 night's free stay and that would have done it for me, but when she said one night free stay AND my money back, well, how can I argue with that?

For my friend that was asking me if the time spent is worth it on such endeavors when the service is not right or the experience is hellish: in this case, definitely. In MOST cases, definitely, actually.

IF all of this happens, then I will be very happy with corporate, at least. If I found myself needing lodging in that area again, I might consider the Motel 6 - but only if I could get the same floor and room that I was in on the second night.

Fry's Food & Drug Stores, location at 48th Street & Baseline road in Tempe, Arizona.

Put this one in the negative column experience, which, at that particular store, has FAR more listings than positive. As of recently, I have tried to ignore some of the stuff that goes on in there with employees - I just want to buy food and get out of there - and so I have.

But today? Crossed my line. I had pulled a "Manager's Special" out of the area where they put meats that are going to expire within the next several days - this was a large package of cube steak. It was marked down to $6 and change, from $11 original price.

I got everything, went to self-checkout, paid for everything, put it all in my cart and moved out of the way for the next person to use the self-checkout and then, as usual/always, I started looking over the receipt. My cube steak had run up at $9.20. Quite odd, since the original prices was $2 more than that and the sale price was $3 less, nowhere on the package was anything about $9.

So, I headed to customer service. The dude working the self-checkout is not able to issue a refund and I didn't even ask. When I get to customer service, there is a Mexican woman with a cart in front of me and an old white lady at the counter, arguing with the employee. When I say old, I mean OLD. Then a black dude walks up (I am not racist, I am just describing what happened). But this isn't about the black dude or the old white lady, this about the woman behind the counter. Well, it IS about the old white lady, too.

The argument was about a sale price. Why are you charging me this price for something that says it's another price on sale? Because, it's a buy-10 event. You HAVE to buy 10 of that item or a combination of listed items to get the sale price, which takes $5.00 off. The old lady didn't get it. This is going on for several minutes. Finally, the lady behind the counter says: you only got 8 of the items you need for the sale price, you needed to get 10.

Oh, the old lady says, well, then I'll just go get the stuff and I'll be right back. ??? I KNEW where this was going and I was having none of it. The lady behind the counter is going to WAIT for this old lady to go traipsing about the store to find her 2 items while now, there is fully 5 people in line!! NO WAY!!! No one said anything, I do not hold my peace in such situations: "Excuse me, do you mean to tell us that we are all just supposed to wait for however long it is going to take for this woman to find what she wants and that you aren't going to help ANYONE else until she comes back?!!!" At the rate of speed that old woman was going, I figured at least 5 minutes before her return.

The lady behind the counter - a person of whom I have had run-ins with in the past - shrugged me off and didn't even respond. I said fine, then, I will go speak with management. She then muttered something - and then called for someone to come to the counter.

I wasn't waiting around, don't care, really. If she is going to act like that, then my complaint will expand. I went back to the self-checkout - Trish had walked up - she is a manager of some sort - and I asked her for the store's manager. She replied the store manager wasn't there but her second was. Okay.

Meanwhile, that old woman had finally returned. The customer service desk is - 75 feet away I am guessing, but quite visible from the self-checkout. She was - well it still looked like she was arguing with the lady behind the counter, who knows. I waited another 5 minutes for this second-in-line manager to show up. That old woman was STILL there. This is at least 15 minutes that woman has tied up customer service!

The second shows up. Not impressed, at all. This is a new set of management trainees Fry's Food Stores has brought into that store. They bring them in to that particular store to train them and then they promote them out of that store to green pastures. This woman has the personality of a rock. She talked to me in those tones, so I gave it right back to her. First I complained about the lady behind the counter and all that situation already described and then pointed over there to show her that that old lady was STILL tying up customer service and there was no-one else there, on the second register, to help the rest of the people waiting endlessly.

I then demanded - I would have asked nicely but this woman wasn't being nice to me - my money back on the cube steak PLUS the $5 gift card for scanning errors. Trish and this manager went to a checkout aisle that was not being used and they were there for quite a while. The manager came back and gave me the entire $9.20 that was charged to me on the ticket. So, I got $9.20 plus all that cube steak for free. $15.20 worth in total. I thanked her, yes I did, but it became obvious that she wasn't going to do anything or much of anything about the situation with the old woman and the cashier tying up the line that long without ANY remedy at all.

She SHOULD have called for another associate to help out at customer service. I also believe she should have cancelled that old woman's ticket and then gotten back to it when she returned, meanwhile helping other customers.

This is just one more example in a parade of examples of Fry's Food Stores at this particular location doling out unbelievably sub-standard service. I called corporate a few minutes ago. I am not asking for anything further than what I have already received as far as compensation, just going to get corporate's take on this situation and what, exactly, they are going to do about it. Further, I have never confronted them on the issue of this particular store being used as a training grounds for general managers and their right-hand person and the revolving door they have made that place - and Guinea Pigs that the customers are that frequent that place in having such a situation exist.

I was on a roll, was going to call Direct TV and ask for free ShowTime again. But, I decided against it. That can take a lot of phone calls and yes, it's worth it as I usually get 6 months of it for free, but, enough was enough. And no, I don't get nasty with them, I just politely ask for more free movie channels : )

Thursday 8/25/2011

Thursday

So, the DOT Medical exam is done - I got lucky yesterday, called Concentra and found they had a very small wait time. Well, to THEM it's a short wait time, to me it's ridiculous. The exam itself takes about 15 minutes. The rest of everything else? About an hour and a half.

The rest of the equation is in actually getting the state of Arizona to RECORD that information. 4 years ago, I actually went in there and handed the form to them. It did not, I later found out, get recorded, even going IN there and giving it to them in person available nothing.

I found it out because I had stopped at the DMV for another reason and was informed by the person at the counter that my license had been suspended and was about to be revoked. I got pretty mad at that point. How can you people be so unbelievably INCOMPETENT as to not input a person's information into your system that is HANDED TO YOU BY THE PERSON WHOSE INFORMATION IT IS TO BE INPUT?

But, that is the way the State of Arizona operates. Just like coming home from vacation last week and finding out the old car's plates had been suspended. The state claimed that they had not received the proof of insurance that they had demanded from me. I had called my insurance company who had sent the information out THE SAME DAY as I requested it of them, a MONTH before the state of Arizona suspended the plates on the car.

Freaking morons.

Whatever the case, work day almost here and plenty to do in the system.

G'day.

ben