Filed under: Awards, Venting | Tags: Customer Service, Jackass, Planet Beach
Our Jackass award of the week goes to Amber of the South Tampa Planet Beach. My friend Sheila Calistri has graciously provided us with her experience. So I hope you enjoy, and this just goes to show that people really are stupid and are jackasses. Enjoy!
If “customer service” means treating the customer like a pariah and making them feel like they are doing something wrong then Planet Beach in South Tampa delivers. I decided on a whim to check out Planet Beach because a couple of my friends told me how much they like it. My friends, however, do not go to the South Tampa location but I decided to go to this location because it is only 4 miles from my home. I found that I would have been saved a lot of headache had I just driven a little farther to the Brandon location. The main reason for my visit was to try out the Mystic spray tan. Amber, the attendant, was very nice (because I was a paying customer at this time) and showed me how to use the machine. She asked me how dark I wanted to go and I said I wasn’t sure because I had never done it before, but that I wanted to see some color. She said she would set it on the lowest setting and remarked that if I wanted to go darker, I could come back. With that comment, I felt comfortable about dishing out the $30 it cost for a spray tan that is only supposed to last for maybe seven days. I agreed to the lowest setting and went about getting a tan. I left Planet Beach thinking the setting was too low because I really couldn’t see a difference, but I was told it would take approximately 4 hours for it to set in so I went about my busy day. Later that night, my husband and a couple of other family members remarked that they couldn’t tell a difference so I decided I would stop in the next day to darken it up a bit. The next day comes along, Saturday, and I was in a great mood and on my way to a pool party. My husband dropped me off at the South Tampa Planet Beach before he went across the street to run an errand. Amber was at the front desk again so I explained that I wasn’t happy with the color and that I would like to go darker. Amber said sure, and that will be another $30. I was flabbergasted that she wanted me to pay another $30 to go a little darker when I had never been in the store before and she clearly stated the day before that I could come back and go darker if I wasn’t happy with the lowest setting. When I remided Amber of what she told me, she just looked at me and said she did not mean I could come back for free. To me, there was no other way to interpret what she had told me the day before and it never occured to me that she would try to charge me another $30. Amber,who was no where near as nice as she was the previous day, needs to put herself in my shoes, the customer. Would Amber want to pay $60 for a spray tan that lasts seven days? I would think not. I asked for her manager, who wasn’t there so Amber called her and explained that my skin is very light so she did the right thing by starting me out on the lowest setting. Of course, she didn’t mention that she said I could come back and go darker if I wasn’t satisfied and she never gave me the opportunity to speak to the manager myself. Initially, it appeard the manager (who turned out to actually only be the assistant manager) said there was nothing she could do and if I wanted to go darker, I would have to cough up the $30. A little later in the conversation, the asst. manager said the best she could do was half off. This was when Amber hung up and never looked at me again and I walked out. My day went from great to terrible. I felt like I had been taken advantage of and defeated. My husband picked me up and noticed my demeanor had completely changed from when he dropped me off 10 minutes prior. When he heard what happened, he called Amber for the owner’s contact information (I normally don’t ask my husband to fight my battles, but at this point I was defeated). Amber explained that she could not give that out so my husband asked her for the manager’s phone number. After speaking to the asst. manager and figuring out she wasn’t the manager, we finally obtained Meagan, the manager’s, phone number. He called and explained what happened and the manager agreed to credit $30 to my account and invited me to come back in. My husband explained that I would not be coming back and had Amber done the right thing (or at least spoke to the manager and not the asst. manager) in the first place, I would have been a happy customer who would return again and again. Geez, it wasn’t like I was asking for much. I mean, that spray tan might cost them what .50?
Long story short, I will never go to the South Tampa Planet Beach again and I will tell all of my friends and family not to go either. A friend of mine who goes to the Brandon location was nice enough to explain what happened to the manager at the Brandon location. The manager explained that their Planet Beach is owned by the same owner as the South Tampa location so she actually picked up the phone and called me to invite me to her location to try everything out for free. She said they would never treat me as terrible as the South Tampa location and was appalled at how petty they were. I am now a happy camper with Planet Beach, but will still tell all of my friends to skip the South Tampa location and drive to Brandon where they actually understand what customer service really means.
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Jackass of the Week 