I'm not sure that assignment of a rating in terms of number of stars is very meaningful in this case, but I did the best that I could. Additionally, my review isn't about the quality of the specific service that Karen provides; it's about aspects of her 'business practices'. I feel it's appropriate to provide this sort of review because I'm confident that like me, many people do consider such things to be important. Just as it is my intention to fairly represent Karen's actions, I hope that the reader will take a moment to fairly consider that my frustration isn't simply that events worked out rather poorly for me in my single encounter with her (again, not service related), but that Karen's treatment of this situation was not what one might expect from a professional. Basically, I'm disappointed about the considerable inconvenience that I was caused by the lack of thought that she demonstrated, and the misstatements that she made when I inquired about the accessibility of her business location. And most importantly, I'm disappointed by how she reacted when I described my concerns to her.
When I (finally ;) arrived at her location for my appointment yesterday, I was frustrated, and I felt that the best way to proceed was to present the issue to her, and to gauge her reaction to it. I wanted to at least feel as though there was some reasonable level of empathy, if not a certain amount of contrition, given that she had clearly (though very likely not intentionally) been just plain wrong in her description of the accessibility of her location, particularly concerning parking - and that this led to considerable problems for me. I did at very first feel as though perhaps I was seeing some of that empathy, but only moments into that conversation, it became my impression that she was in fact being rather defensive. Unfortunately, we're now talking about judging a person's word choice and tone of voice, etc. This isn't an easy thing to do, but we do of course make such judgements - and I felt that I was doing so very fairly. The comment, "Well, I'm sorry about the misunderstanding about the parking." could mean a couple of things. Does it adequately address the notion that you were specifically told that there was "street parking all around the location" when in fact, such parking is illegal in the wide area around the business over the hours surrounding the time of the scheduled appointment - and that that led to considerable delay in your arrival (among other inconveniences)? I don't think so.
Now, I don't believe that description of 'location accessibility' should be a top priority for a business ;) But when a customer relates to a business the extent of his inconvenience based on the several misstatements that the business made in this regard (there were other things beyond the availability of street parking), what sort of reaction should that customer be able to expect? Karen pretty quickly offered the suggestion that I didn't "have to" go through with the appointment at that time if I didn't feel comfortable about it. Again, I had mixed feelings about the nature of this comment. This could be showing empathy, but her tone didn't convey this to me. This whole discourse only lasted a couple of minutes, and it never got heated - both good things ;) My decision about what to do next was made when she followed-up that last comment with the rather terse reminder that, "...you've got 40 minutes left in your appointment..."
Firstly, after including the two or three minutes of conversation about her misstatements, we were actually 15 minutes beyond the scheduled start of my one-hour appointment. At very minimum, that's not the point at which one would like to encounter any negative "rounding" whatsoever ;) More importantly, I had just related to her that it took me well over an hour to drive 5.5 miles though a section of town that was difficult to traverse well beyond what had been described, to circle the area looking for the street parking that I was told to expect, and then to park several blocks away at the first garage I could find that actually had available space for short-term parking (and that parking was pretty darn expensive - which, while not *specifically* in conflict with her description of the parking situation, was a surprise considering the way that she had described the situation). All of this, yet in our introductory phone conversation when I asked whether Metro might be a good choice (which entailed a walk of a few blocks), Karen advised that driving and parking shouldn't be a big deal.
Even if she didn't want to take any actual responsibility for all of the inconveniences, she most certainly could have spoken in a fashion that seemed to be more contrite. Beyond all of the arguable or questionable comments, I would certainly try to show some accommodation if I had incorrectly advised a client about the legality of parking anywhere in the area surrounding my location. read more