Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Cherry Foodarama's woeful customer service policies


I didn’t know having a pen and paper would get you into so much trouble in Cherry Foodarama, Mandaluyong. My wife and I were at this supermarket at around 8 pm, last night (March 24), to survey the cheapest diaper brand in the market, it’s no joke buying costly disposable stuff.

While doing our survey, we were accosted by a plain-clothes security personnel. Apparently, Cherry do not want you to list things in a piece of paper. It can be misconstrued as spying. But are we spying in the context of the word, "spying"?

We got into a heated argument. Finally, with my wife’s prodding, I cooperated and went with him to see the operations manager. In full view of the shoppers that evening, I wasted no time telling them that it is the consumer’s right to know how they can save. I questioned their policies and line of questioning that seemed to point that we’re there to do their store harm. I belabored that point that price spying is the least of retailers’ problems in the today’s society. To win customers, it’s customer service – for crying out loud.

In all of this, I was already furious, tight-lipped, and was red in anger. The man apologized and I advised them to do something more to protect their customers. This is no ‘Marcosian’ world we live in now where people are made to be afraid of doing freely what will protect them in this gloomy economy.

Here are more thoughts for Cherry Foodarama: Did you train your security personnel (agency) to see what was written in the paper I was writing on? Did you tell your security agency and advised them to ask questions first and find out what we were doing? What warrants your security personnel’s actions to order us follow him – like Cherry owns us or something? That was rude. If indeed we were doing something wrong (and obviously not) then the best your security personnel should’ve done is to warn or to advise us for guidance.

How embarrassing, Cherry Foodarama. Your customer service policies are a shame. It's Drakonian and out-of-touch.

1 comment:

  1. same thing happened to us. SM supermarket naman. bawal raw talaga maglista ng mga prices sa papel. don't know where did that rule come from... :(

    pero nung cellphone naman ginamit ko, hindi ako nasita. maybe because hindi ganun ka-obvious pag cellphone ang gamit.

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