2009-05-21 French understanding of a happy holiday
2009-04-02 Carrefour Product and Service Quality
Carrefour states the following at the their website:
"Quality is one of our main source of competitive differentiation and is part of the fundamental policies defining the implementation of the Group’s strategy. It always corresponds to what the customer explicitly or implicitly wants and must be clearly perceived as such. The value for money must be the best."
We bought last week a pair of no brand jogging shoes from Carrefour. After one week they broke down. Yesterday we went to exchange the shoes and the reaction was unpleasant and rather unexpected.
The lady in the customer service booth explained that jogging shoes only have a warranty for textile parts, not for sole. So because there was a hole in the sole of both shoes, nothing could be done. We asked her kindly to provide us proof that we had talked with her about the issue. This would have been necessary for filing a consumer complaint against Carrefour, but she refused without explanation.
Next we asked her name so that we could at least refer to the incident in the complaint, but she refused again. Instead she lost her temper. Our next question was to speak with her superior. She showed a photo of the store manager in a poster hanging on the wall, but added that the manager would be too busy to talk with us anyway. So our only option for having a proof was to take her photo so that she could be identified later if necessary.
At this point the lady got really mad and asked the guards to take our camera. The photos were erased, but the guards agreed to ask some kind of boss to help us. The boss came, yelled at us something in French and ran away. That was their understanding of the quality of service as one of our main source of competitive differentiation.
The shoes cost us 8.90 € and they lasted for less than one week. Our expectation was one year or more, so the annual price of the shoes would have been 462,80 €. According to Carrefour policy quality always corresponds to what the customer explicitly or implicitly wants and must be clearly perceived as such. The value for money must be the best. What do you think, is 462,80€ for jogging shoes the best value for the money?
One can only speculate what will happen when a customer discovers something dangerous in Carrefour food products or children toys. Perhaps someone will have to die before Carrefour shows respect to customers and follows the rules of responsible commerce. Do you dare to use Carrefour?
Keywords: Carrefour, product, safety, service, quality, responsible commerce, boycott, group, strategy, customer service, food product safety, dangerous, problem, trouble, concern.
2009-04-01 Increasing Search Engine Ranking
Every blogger would like to be at the top of search results in search engines. Here is a tip for enhancing your blog ranking significantly without penalties or spam.
Search engines list web pages with a so called ranking system. By adding the following code you will make sure that your blog is at the top of search results. Those who act rapidly, will get the best results as rankings are awarded in the order they are indexed.
Click the red box below and copy the code. Write a new blog entry and paste the code to the end of the story. When Google will index your pages next time, it will discover the code and increase your ranking depending on how fast you act compared to your rivals.
Keywords: blog, seo, optimization, search engine, Google, page rank, ranking, code, blogger, blogging.
2009-03-22 Demonstration against Sarkozy in France
There were demonstrations today in France against Sarkozy and his government. We took part in one of them.
Country: France
2009-01-29 French Parking - When Timing Is Everything
Typical French parking in the middle of the road and a lucky last minute escape before the police toes the car away. One would expect him to be happy but the guy looks annoyed.
Country: France
Travel photos globally: [2004-2006], [2006-2007], [2007-2008], [2009-]
[Happiness test] [Travel blog generator] [Free e-books] [Music] [Travel videos]
