Pop Goes The Weasel

One of the greatest losses under techno feudalism is customer service.

Customer servicet is dead.

Today there is a complete lack of accountability when comes to the needs of the customer.

Whenever I have to deal with a customer service issue on any platform from Amazon to Instacart, I’m confronted first by the Artificial Intelligence guard at the proverbial gate.

There is no ease of use when trying to find a phone number to call an actual human.

There is no ease of use as one scours over the “help” section of these websites.

It’s all prompt, prompt, prompt and more prompts.

Round and round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel…

I use Instacart for my grocery needs. Having to share a car makes my ability to actually get out and shop difficult.

A couple of months ago I ordered beer from a company named Total Wine using the Instacart app.

Jeff likes his IPAs so we ordered Oskar Blues Dale’s Pale Ale.

The price for the 6 pack is 13 dollars and 49 cents.

On the Total Wine page there are no other options. No way to order a 12 pack, just the image of a can with the 6 pack pricing.

There is also no way to report the product being mislabeled or having wrong pricing. But we’ll get to that soon enough.

When my order arrived, the shopper gave me one single can of beer.

There must be a mistake. A glitch perhaps. I ordered a 6 pack and paid for a 6 pack, why only one can?

She showed me what the app looks like on her phone.

One can.

Thanking her, I went to my computer to report an issue with my order.

Round and round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel…

Instacart solution number one: toss money at the issue and maybe it will go away.

I take the refund and a couple of weeks later, I try to order the same beer from the same store, using Instacart.

This time the shopper is savvy. He gets that there is a problem with the app. He sends me a text asking if I wanted a 6 pack or a single can. I get the 6 pack I expected and figure the issue has been resolved.

Silly me.

Feeling confident I ordered again.I paid for a 6 pack and only got one can of beer.

Once again, I asked the shopper what happened. And once again, there’s that glitch in the app that tells the shopper to charge me 6 pack pricing for a single can.

Round and round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel…

Back to the Instacart help page. I send an email explaining what is happening.

It should be pointed out that Instacart probably outsources their customer service.

You never get the same service representative regardless of email or phone call.

I can’t tell you how many of these customer service replies were obtuse or completely ignored, misrepresented or deflected from my initial concerns.

I suspect A.I. is also involved.

Come to think of it, there’s probably a script they all use to approach problem solving. First refund. Second, toss the porcupine to someone else. Third, make an empty promise to escalate the concern up the food chain. Fourth, do nothing.

Round and round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel…

I managed to find and call a live person on the phone to address this issue. He walks through my order process with me where he discovers what is happening. And then promptly tells me there’s nothing he can do because it’s a Total Wine issue and they have control over the information and pricing of their products.

But he promises to escalate the issue and thank you for calling Instacart.
Have a nice day.

Round and round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel…

At this point I no longer trust Instacart. They manage to get my groceries right, but I’m trigger shy about ordering beer from Total Wine.

Yeah, I could order beer from BevMo, but they don’t carry Dale’s Pale Ale.

And sometimes a person wants what they want. Nothing wrong with that.

In a final attempt to fix the glitch, I go to the Instacart help page and sort through topics upon topics of information that does not apply or that the app won’t let me execute.

For instance, the A.I. chat bot says I can report a product mispriced. I follow the directions and learn that there is no way for me, the customer, to report mispriced products.

Then I get the bright idea to reach out to Total Wine. The Instacart guy told me it was a problem on the Total Wine end, right?

So, I take myself to the Total Wine website. I read through their help section and see nothing applicable.

Then I open the chat and hopefully explain the situation to an actual human.

Initially number 3 in the queue, then bumped back to number 4, then back to number 3 and hour later I make contact with a human.

He reviews the issue and then tells me that it’s not a Total Wine problem. It’s an Instacart problem and I should go talk to them.

I tell him that Instacart says it’s a Total Wine problem. I say, this affects your brand and you will lose customers over this.

He says, “Sorry, not sorry,” and ends the chat.

Round and round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel…