If the sale were indeed over, I am not at all “entitled” to the sale price since I did not give them any deposit or down payment. I merely gave them my name and phone number.

The case arrived yesterday at 2:00pm like they said they would.

I was selling computers for a few years before moving on to customer service. I have done the same thing several times under similar situations over the years as your colleague did.

In this case with the wine, I wanted to stress that the lady who answered my call, who really didn’t have any first hand knowledge about the case at all did a pretty good job which resulted in my getting what I wanted within just half an hour’s time.

A reasonable service would be for the salesman who took your order and then discovered that the special offer had finished to discuss the matter with his manager to sort it out, then call you to inform you of the fact but still honour the special price for your order, and then ask you whether you wish to order more of the goods at the same special price in the same order.

I worked as a temporary sales assistant in one of the big department stores in Regent Street, London during the X’mas holidays in 1989. A customer wanted to find a specific fine china tea set. We didn’t have it, but the permanent staff serving the customer called a few different department stores in Central London and found a store which stocked the item, and told the customer where to go. Now that is service.

Sales people in Hong Kong sometimes really piss me off. You ask them whether they stock something, if they don’t then they shut themselves off on the spot. If one is in a certain trade, then one is supposed to know what the competitors are doing, so shutting off as soon as the customer asks for something not available here a sign of insincere and disrespect to the customer, and totally unacceptable.