Abusive behaviour from salesperson
I joined my colleague who wanted to pick up her repaired laptop from this store, myself intending to use the opportunity to ask for a quote for my phone’s cracked screen. I didn’t get the chance to do so due to the following bizarre series of events:
The technician/owner at the till seemed to immediately recognise my colleague and immediately - and repeatedly - pointed out that he called her two days earlier on Saturday to warn her not to come on Saturday on their pre-agreed upon time because the store would be by then closed as it was *Sint-Maarten*. It looked like he was trying to preempt an imaginary complaint of hers - that he failed to provide the laptop on the agreed upon date & time. My colleague clarified that she did not mind. He then brought the laptop and my colleague checked the serial number to verify it was indeed hers, as it was a macbook and they all look the same, so could easily be mixed up. I think this might have offended the technician because he complained that she does not trust him, and that their store policy is to not provide services to distrusting customers, but they would make an exception. Or maybe it was because of their previous encounter when she first brought the laptop, I was not there, but he complained that she asked “too many questions” at the time, which “is not normal in the Netherlands”.
Apparently they had agreed to place the new batteries at pick-up time, instead of having it done earlier so that the laptop would be ready to go at pick-up time. He stressed he had not opened the laptop at all, and it could potentially take some time to remove the old batteries, depending on whether or not they are glued to the chassis. He stated he would not provide complimentary services, as he would normally do, like removing dust & lint and replacing the dried off thermal paste between the GPU and its heatsink, because my colleague had mistrusted him by asking questions. My colleague thought this was unfair as he suggested this was the punishment for distrusting him, which she claimed she hadn’t anyway. Then they got into a heated exchange because my colleague insisted they agreed to have the old battery removed before she arrived to pick up the laptop, so that the placement of the new battery would be quick. He disagreed, stating that he did not trust her and preferred to go through the whole process of battery replacement in front of her. This quickly degraded to the point she said she wanted to leave and asked him to screw the lower case back onto the laptop so she could check whether it still turns on and functions when plugged in. She had to repeat this request a couple of times before he went through with it. During this time he told her she doesn’t have enough sex, or reads too many books and that she’s crazy and needs to visit a psychiatric hospital. Additionally, he threatened her that he’d “destroy her” if she dared to post a negative review about the store, as he was recording the whole ordeal with his phone and, I guess, thought it could be used to blackmail her with.
Even if the two parties did agree to do the last part of the repair process on the pick-up date, I don’t see why a shop would hold a customer’s laptop on their shelves to eventually fix it in front of them at a later date, without even opening it to do preparatory work. My guess is they simply forgot and were quick to shift blame to the customer coming up with sorry excuses like “mistrusting the customer”.
I found the one-sided and unwarranted levelling of insults at her alarming and unacceptable, and very few people would have responded to that with the same level of patience. It seemed as if the technician/owner had some personal issues, was looking for a chance to create drama, and saw my colleague as someone whom he could attack without consequence. I question whether he could legitimately get five star reviews with such an attitude. I’d expect less prejudiced and hysterical conduct from customer facing service.
13 November 2023
Unprompted review
