A Follow-up Idea To An Earlier Post! A Test Of The Power Of Numbers! Please Reply & Share With Your Connections - To Do The Same.

As I have been posting about recently, "American business overall ain't what it used to be, and we are supporting them resting on their laurels." We need to stop that. I cannot think of an American business today that would have survived very long a generation of more ago, because we demanded pride and professionalism in what they made or sold, and/or in the service they provided.

Some changes for the worse over recent generations are obvious... Nonsensical automated business-phone answering and messaging systems. Get back to having a human, in the U.S., answer your phones - even if they have to say, "I'm just finishing up with another customer. I will be right with you, Please Hold." If being able to communicate at that level is beyond the ability of the customer service people you hired, then you screwed-up when you hired them. It is not their fault that they are unable to communicate - but that is another serious problem in the U.S., for another time, perhaps.

But, I am running into more and more companies that falsely advertise - and use bait-and-switch tactics. Both of which are illegal, but no one calls them on it anymore. And more and more companies will tell you that they will not provide the warrantee work needed when something you just bought breaks down. I ran into this with 惠而浦 lately. And Whirlpool used to be a great company when I was growing up - my parents had lots of Whirlpool products, that worked for decades. I just purchased a Whirlpool Washing Machine in February. It died a week ago. I called Whirlpool to report it, and they told me that they were not going to honor the warrantee, "because we do not have any local service people in your area. If you can find someone that will do the warrantee work, and have them call us, we will authorize the repair." I gasped and said, "So first and most importantly you sell your products, with warrantees that you use as part of the sales pitch, locally, but you do not provide that warrantee service? And secondly, you want me to do YOUR job for you and find someone to do the warrantee repairs?" Utter nonsense. Go into your system an find the nearest service company you have, and pay them to repair my washing machine, SINCE YOU HAVE CHOSEN NOT TO HAVE WARRANTEE SERVICE PEOPLE IN THE AREA. That is your fault, not mine, and you have to pay for YOUR mistakes, as I pay for mine." She went silent for a moment, and then said that she would find the nearest service company that they work with, and schedule the repair. She came back on 20-minutes later and said that she had scheduled and authorized the repair, and that they would be here on Monday. I said, "Fine. Have a good day." The very nice and very professional repairman called ahead of time, and showed up early - with bad news. He told me that Whirlpool had cancelled the authorization because they did not wan to pay our hourly rate - and that I would have to pay the $530 fee, parts and labor, if I wanted my brand new washing machine fixed. So he and I spent another two-hours on the phone with Whirlpool, and a "Supervisor" finally authorized it.

This thing has been a problem since just about day-one. I bought the washing machine from (my local) 家得宝 because they said they had it "In Stock" in the store and online. They delivered it SEVEN WEEKS LATER - from less than five miles away. When I asked them why an "In Stock" item took seven weeks to deliver, they told me that, "In-stock does not mean that WE have it in-stock. It just means that it is in-stock somewhere in the system that we use."

And the sad thing about all this, is that these companies do not seem to care what their failing business practices are doing to their businesses. If I was a stockholder, I sure would. And as a related aside, when I was in the financial service business, I had several Home Depot salespeople clients... Before you say, "Big Deal!", they each had mid to high seven-figure accounts with me - from the Home Depot stock-options they owned. 60-Minutes did a full hour on this phenomenon at the time. Back then, you went into a Home Depot and a salesperson was within a few feet to help you when needed. Today, you cannot find a salesperson there, and managers are nowhere to be found either.

Business owners and managers, shape-up or we will no longer buy American products, and that will signal the end of this wonderful and prosperous country as well. It's tumble on the world list based on Quality of Life proves that.

So, to all of my connections, and connections to connections, reply to this post with similar problems to what I have posted about here - and that is just the tip of the recent Iceberg of similar problems that I have run into, that you have run into yourselves. List the companies by @...., and lets see if the power of numbers, and people can have any positive effect. If not, the future is very grim here...