Why can't PetSmart answer its phones?

I've called my local PetSmart the last three business days trying to make a grooming appointment for my dog.

I'm promptly greeted with a barrage of PetSmart taglines that employees have to rattle off before they're allowed to say, "How can I help you?"

I ask to be transferred to the grooming department - and that's where the trouble begins.

Over the last three business days, grooming doesn't answer their phone and I'm eventually bounced back to the first person I spoke with. They transfer me again and process repeats until I finally hang up out of frustration.

This has gone on for the last three days. I started keeping track of the time I've spent to date:

Avg. time spent on hold trying to make appointment:
9 minutes per call.

Avg. total time spent on hold trying to make appointment:
27 minutes.


One PetSmart employee I spoke with told me that grooming doesn't have a designated person to answer their phone and that they can't leave dogs on the grooming table to answer incoming calls to take appointments. Sounds efficient!

Today I called PetSmart's customer service number, (800) 738-1385 ext. 2518, explaining to them I just wanted to make an appointment for my dog and that no one will answer the phone during business hours.

The woman confirmed my suspicion - this is indeed a bad business practice!

She even did perpetrated an annoying customer service that all PetSmart employees seem obligated to do; asking all sorts of inane questions about the dog including his age, breed, etc. - none of which has anything to do with, in this case, answering a phone.

The genuinely concerned cust. serv. rep. took all my info and said she'd look into it. She failed to give her name (in case I needed to call her back) and I failed to ask for it, because she actually sounded like she gave a crap.

I should have known better.

Call me naive, but I figure if somone says they're gonna call back, they will call back. That was hours ago.

Well, the cust. serv. rep hasn't called.
Nor has anyone from PetSmart.
And my dog still needs a haircut.

Update #1, 4:00 p.m., 6/6/06: I just called again to see if corporate HQ had cracked down and gotten its employees to answer the phone. When I asked to make a grooming appointment, the person who answered the phone said, "our groomers are incredibly busy right now" and gave me the option to leave a message or call back.

I chose the latter option because I've committed PetSmart's phone number to memory and I figure an incredibly busy groomer probably has a lot of dogs to deal with.

So, while PetSmart seems to have addressed the problem of bouncing around customers in phone purgatory, making a grooming appointment remains an impossible task.

I even called a local pet groomer to take my business elsewhere, something I should have done in the first place, but they were booked up six to seven weeks in advance. Meanwhile, my dog still needs a haircut.

Update #2, 11:30 a.m., 6/7/2006: My local PetSmart called after corporate followed up on my complaint. They were awfully wishy-washy and reiterated the "we're so darn busy" line I got yesterday.

I told them that this morning, after four days of being unable to make an appointment at PetSmart, I made an appointment with another business (who answered their phone on the first ring.)

Not surprisingly, the PetSmart representative made no effort to keep my business and offered a half-hearted apology, adding, "well, hopefully this won't happen the next time."

Next time?!

Update #3, 12:10 p.m., 6/7/2006: Even e-mailing PetSmart is a challenge!

I tried e-mailing the customer service e-mail listed on their Web site (storehelp@petsmart.com) and I got an auto-generated response, indicating it's no longer valid and directing me to another e-mail form.

11 comments:

Chris said...

We called our local PetSmart to schedule a grooming. We've been going there for over a year now and they always have between 2 and 5 people working in the grooming department. The last time we called, they said, "Our grooming manager is on vacation until the end of the month, so we can't schedule anything until the beginning of July"

So, if the manager goes on vacation (for a month!?), everyone else gets off too, or are they paid to stand around since they aren't allowed to schedule appointments?

Anonymous said...

The way we solved this problem is that we make the next appoint at the same time we take the dogs in for their current appointment. There hasn't been a problem with this so far.

We did go to the store to make the initial appointment however, we needed some stuff anyway...

Anonymous said...

Support a local business instead ... that is what you should have done to begin with.

Anonymous said...

Whislt buying dog food my usual exchange at PS goes like this:

PS: What type of dog do you have?

ME: I don't it's for my Grandma.

PS: What type of dog does she have?

ME: She doesn't have a dog.

PS: Uh, oh.

ME: What? It's high quality isn't it?

Anonymous said...

My local Pet Smart runs out of numerous pet supplies constantly. I have 2 dogs, fish, ferrets, and feed thge birds/squirrels in the yard. (No, really I'm an extremely busy professional). I go into Pet Smart every two to three days (they are around the corner from my house).
Me- You are out of my brand of specialty food, again...
Them- Well, we're getting a truck in x number of days...
Repeat the above for grooming products, ferret food, fish food, aquarium supplies. No apology, no offer to retain my business, no call-backs. Went yesterday to get ProAquatics product for my Aquarium that I waited 2 weeks for after being told was coming on the truck in 3 days, and was told "Yep, it's here but it's on a pallet and we can't unload the pallet till this weekend. No, we can't just go get the one product you want off the pallet..." Again, no apology. No coupon, no attempt to retain me as a customer...

Maulleigh said...

One of my favorite new websites for sh*t like this is www.yelp.com

You've gone to the top but it's nice to let other people know they're not alone.

Anonymous said...

This is why I have scissors, and electric clippers and do my animals myself. Yeah it takes me extra time, but saves me money and the hassle.

Anonymous said...

I used to work for PetSmart. While every store will certainly differ, the people I worked around would always make sure you got your appointment scheduled. After a couple of bounce-backs we'd either go into grooming to make them answer or have the head manager take the appointment.

As for the supply shortages, I can vouch that happened quite a lot. As far as I was aware it wasn't the same products all the time, but stuff would run out and I got to deal with some pretty pissed off people.

I will say if you shopped when I was working and it was on a pallette, I was your designated, reliable monkey to climb up the steel and pull it out by hand :p

Anonymous said...

And as far as grooming, or any other service or product, if there is a demand then you expand services to meet demand. It is false economy to piss off paying customers when a demand for a product or service isn't met. Hire some high school kids at part time minimum wages to wash, use your trained staff to do cuts, styles, and more complicated services. Put on a simplified phone tree that allows the customer to leave info and a call back number to schedule appointments. Expand hours to meet demand. I've found other dog wash/grooming servers when my local Pet Smart did the exact same thing they did to Dave. We have a guy with a truck that comes to your house, the truck is a mobile wash, dry, style salon. Same price, I don't have to leave the comfort of my home....

Anonymous said...

You can't make everyone happy, because there's always going to be someone with a stick up their ass the wrong way no matter what you do.

Where do you work? Next time someone gets pissy they don't get their way right when they want it, regardless of the convenience or availibility of any employee, just see how you feel.

Anonymous said...

Hey Dave, you are a real whinner. I worked at Petsmart in the grooming salon and they worked our tails off and we always went the extra mile to please the customers, even the jerks,(and believe me, there were alot of them). The store policy is that we have to ask all the stupid questions; they have secret shoppers who call and rate you on a point system. They'll put in your "file" that you didn't ask certain questions and freak out on you and the grooming manager. The threat is you'll be fired.
As an employee, we have no power over phone systems, store policies, etc., it's management. By the way, your really not that important.