In order to simplify my parents’ lives, I decided to investigate options for locks to the house that required only 1 key, rather than several different ones. That is when I decided to call several shops I thought would be able to help, one of them being a chain of shops named Batiself. A very friendly man on the phone “explained it all” to me, but said it would probably take him two working days to get an exact quote, and that he’d get back to me latest on Wednesday (my call was on Saturday).
So a week later (yay), not really happy anymore with the promise of the friendly man, I called them again, and I was told he’d call back. A few days still later, I decided to go to the competition’s shop, and purchased what I needed there, and though the security levels were lower, it also came at a very low price. However, another week later, the man finally called me back with a quote that was twice as high as what I’d already paid, but still a low price, considering that the security was almost twice as strong; he told me he couldn’t order it without a deposit, so I decided to check it out.
That is when I thought I’d traveled to another, “lonely”, planet. In the whole shop, there must have been about 5 employees, and about 50 customers, each looking for answers to their questions, and none of the employees seeming all to be happy to be working. They were happy to chat to each other, but as soon as they were “interupted” by customers with questions, I thought I’d recognized a couple of looks from old Westerns.
Luckily, I caught a hold of a “dry” man rather quickly, and explained the phonecalls to him; he tried (a little) to find the order, with no luck of course, but said he could just do a new one, on the spot. The price was slightly higher, but I’d actually chosen to go for a still slightly better solution, and I asked him to proceed. Apart from all else that seemed to go wrong there, I wondered why the other friendly bloke was unable to give me a quote over the phone as the quote in itself had taken no more than 2 minutes, and why he’d taken nearly 3 weeks.
The new guy then informed me I had to pay for a deposit of nearly 80% of the cost (?), and asked me that I “by all means” not loose the paper that confirmed me paying the deposit. Then, the woman cashing in did not speak to me as I’d dared interrupt her call about the previous night’s adventure to the other cashier, and nearly broke my credit card whilst swiping it. That was a key moment where I thought to myself that I really needed to build up more courage so that next time I am in this sort of situation, I cancel the order and walk out tall, right there, right then.
A few days later, I received a call, went to pick up the stuff, but forgot the receipt in the car. At checkout, I apologized and said it was in the car, and that I’d get it for her if she wanted, but she said no, no need. This was all-in-all a really frustrating experience to me, although I must say, the locks in themselves are really rather good (hence the 2 stars). But at checkout, I noticed that there was an employee of the month contest, where customers could vote for a member of staff. I wondered if anyone had considered voting for any member of staff yet…has anyone had a good experience at Batiself yet?
