Probably the most infuriating thing you can hear as a customer is "sorry it's company policy."
This statement isn't productive. It doesn't find a solution to the problem. It's a blanket statement that employees hide behind because they're not empowered to be able to make a decision for themselves that might actually be in the best interest of the company they work for.
On Friday, November 10th I got an email from Dogtopia saying that a couple of my dog's vaccinations were expiring and needed to be updated. No big deal I thought, we already had a vet appointment for the 18th for her annual check-up.
My wife called Dogtopia today (the 13th) to verify if we could continue to bring Pickles in for daycare knowing that we had her booked to get her shots. The employee that answered the phone said she would be fine with it, but she doesn't make the rules and would have to talk to the manager (Sheena). It was a flat out no from Sheena. My wife couldn't believe it and called me.
I work close by so I thought I would leave work early and go in person and talk to Sheena to see what the issue was. She explained to me that it's "company policy" that dogs cannot continue to come for daycare when their vaccinations aren't current. I can completely understand this. A policy like this should exist. As responsible pet owners we want to know that the place we're taking our pets is reasonably safe. The failure here is a lack of customer service. If they have a system that tells when a dog's vaccinations are expiring, where's the notice? The email was sent on the day of expiration, not a week or two before with a note saying "You can't bring Pickles in after the 10th unless her shots are up to date, just an FYI".
Because it's an immediate cutoff this then brings up the issue of losing the convenience of Dogtopia's services. My wife and I plan our lives knowing that we can drop off our pup for a day of play and she'll be pooped out and we don't have to worry about going out at night on that odd weekday where we make plans and won't be home. We had planned to bring her tomorrow because we were going to a concert in the evening. Not a normal Tuesday night, but we don't want to rush home, feed the dog, and then leave again as we don't think it's fair to our dog to be alone all day, to then be alone all night too. We could have made other plans.
The really infuriating things about all of this is that we're talking about Dogtopia here. This isn't Walmart or some other big box store where I'm I'm just some one-off random customer. My wife and I have been coming here for almost two years, we came over from Superdogs. We've never had any issues, never a complaint, nothing but a great experience up until now. We bring our dog here at least once a week, spent thousands on daycare, it's just mind boggling.
I asked Sheena "Is your policy so strict that you're willing to lose a loyal customer because of one week?" She said "yes". I told her to remove Pickles from their system and walked out.
15-20 minutes later I got an email from Sheena saying they don't want to lose Pickles but she can't return until she is "up to date on all vaccinations...as stated in the client agreement signed as per our policy." What I love about this email is that Sheena offers to extend the time frame to use up Pickles' remaining day of daycare in the package we purchased. Dogtopia's POLICY is that you must use up your full package within a month of purchase. So apparently some policies can be changed as they feel necessary, but not the ones that would actually keep a customer. read more