One week ago, I went to get freeze-dried liver and ended up with a bee in my bonnet. I was in Petco and what I saw – an employee doing in the guise of training – was a problem. What has happened since; namely, NOTHING, is the bigger problem.
Before I get into my beef with Petco, here’s my thing about customer service: It can be challenging. It’s often totally annoying. People are cray-cray. In one fashion or another, I’ve worked in customer service my whole life. I worked in restaurants from age 14 to…well, too long. But I had to kiss ass and solve problems that ranged from the trivial to the mundane to the crazy to the serious. Much to my dismay, I took that experience into animal shelter work. I totally wondered at my first animal shelter interview why my future boss quizzed me on how I’d handle “difficult people.”
Often, the customer really is right. And when they’re not, they still are. Because word of mouth travels at the speed of a slug when you do something right and the speed of light when you do something wrong.
When I came home from Petco that Saturday afternoon, I was fired up.
Not only because I saw a store employee using forceful and inappropriate methods to “train” a dog (which makes me want to slap a prong collar on the trainer, roll their fat ass over and see how willing they are to “submit” to me after that), but also because, when I went to check out, there was one cashier. Despite having four employees ask me what I needed while I was roaming the store, she totally ignored me. I could see that she was super-busy doing her hair in the two-way mirror into the office, so I totally understand how that was waaaay more important. After waiting patiently (shifting from foot to foot, jangling my keys, and yelling “I JUST CAN’T WAIT TO BUY THESE THINGS FROM YOUR STORE”) for a full minute, she turned around, pointedly looked around for another associate to ring up my two items, then sighed loudly, rolled her eyes, and, at long last, began to do her job.
I planned to let Petco have it on both counts. But when I started my indignant missive, I found out that my novel would have to wait– there’s a character limit on web-forms.
Brilliant, really…because I have seen some “customer emails” that were longer and less fun to read than Atlas Shrugged. So I pared it down. Here’s an abridged version of what I wrote, but I have some extraneous commentary in bold:
…I saw one of your trainers working with two small dogs [Doxie mix and Shih Tzu, probably]. I watched as the trainer put one dog on its side in what’s referred to as an “alpha rollover.”…The trainer overheard me [I was loudly indignant, but she didn’t pick up on that and apparently thought I was asking about the cool new training method she was using] and told me she’d tell me why [she was doing an alpha roll on the dog]. She told me that the dog she was pinning was growling/showing aggression towards the other dog and she was asserting dominance over said dog by holding it on the ground, therefore teaching it to submit/not be dominant.
[After she said that, I briefly explained what I wrote in the next paragraph to her and the couple letting her manhandle their dogs. I was…curt. Let’s say I was curt.]
…I do not know if ‘dominance theory’ and force training is what’s taught to your trainers; it’s an outmoded and potentially problematic training method. In fact, with dog aggression, forcing a dog on its side/back can actually increase dog reactivity by associating unpleasant things with other dogs, compounding the issue.
The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior has a position statement on dominance theory, stating that ‘…Veterinarians [should] not refer clients to trainers or behavior consultants who coach and advocate dominance hierarchy theory and the subsequent confrontational training that follows…’
I shop at Petco often for my dogs and the dogs I train, but I’m not sure I can continue to patronize your company if owners are being taught outdated and inappropriate methods for handling and training their animals.
So. I felt good. I was going to make a difference. I rarely complain (I mean, at restaurants and stores and such; in real life nearly 80% of my comments are some kind of whining), but I felt this was important.
I got a confirmation email. Then, on Sunday night, I got this message (all sic):
Dear [EthologyNerd],
Thank you for contacting PETCO regarding your concern with our store at [location redacted]. We are sorry to hear about your recent experience.(PP)
We strive to give a quality service to our customer and to their pets. I understand your disappointment onto this. Your observation is worth to be forwarded to upper management team.
I will be sharing a copy of your concern to the appropriate department in charge of this. Before I do so, will it be alright if we forward your contact information [phone number redacted] to the General Manager?
We look forward to your reply and do accept our apologies for the inconvenience. If we can be of any further assistance, please feel free to reply to this communication or call PETCO Customer Relations directly…Thank you again for contacting PETCO.
Sincerely,
Domingo A.
Customer Relations Coordinator
Healthier Pets. Happier People. Better World.
Fine. Stock response…and outsourced! Maybe it wasn’t outsourced, but in that case I’d certainly want my first line customer service reps responding to a complaint to be as well-spoken (written, whatever) as possible. In addition, I specifically said I wished to be contacted by email, but that’s just because I avoid talking to people when I’m not working at all costs.
I figured, though, maybe the GM would want more details, like what the trainer looked like so he or she could identify who it was. Maybe they didn’t want to send a bunch of emails back and forth. So I replied that they could forward my phone number and thanked the lovely Domingo for understanding my “disappointment onto this”.
As I type, it’s 4:53 PM CT a week later. Literally a week later nearly to the minute. No phone calls, no emails. No ferrets and roses sent to my door.
So, why do I care so much? All I really wanted was an assurance that this is NOT what Petco teaches its trainers. In customer service, one thing I’ve learned is that most issues are helped immensely by simply acknowledging that the customer is unhappy, or that the situation shouldn’t have happened.
On Petco’s website, they state that their training classes are “… promot[ing] a relationship of mutual respect and trust between pet and pet parent by using humane, positive, and voluntary reward-based training methods …By rewarding appropriate choices rather than simply punishing mistakes, dogs learn to listen out of respect and cooperation rather than fear, leading a healthier companionship!”
That’s great, but I think this is why I’m so annoyed; many of us know firsthand that what a company preaches and what they practice can often be very different. At best, Petco’s response (or lack thereof) has shown me they implicitly condone outdated training methods.
At worst, they’ve shown me they don’t care whether educated consumers spend their money at their stores. Think I’m kidding? It’s estimated that $50.84 billion dollars will be spent on pets in 2011. $48 billion in 2010.
But I do care where I spend my money. A lot of us vote with our dollars. If I spend every minute of every working hour explaining to people that canine behavior science has come a long way, that we need not use force, that dogs are not wolves, that even wolves don’t act like we thought they did, that science and research shows us it’s counterproductive… then how can I explicitly or implicitly endorse the training there? I see too many dogs that are unmanageable each day, sometimes as a result of poor training, to condone it.
I love to patronize the local, upscale pet supply store, but they don’t have Nylabones or fish food or cat litter. I have six mammals in my home to buy pet supplies for. I have never broken down exactly how much I spend on pet supplies because I’m so very, very scared to know the truth. I’m sure I could have paid for a Kia in cash, or gotten a boob job (that’s hyperbole, mine are real and they’re fantastic). At the very least.
I’ve got to get pet stuff somewhere, and Petco was a little bit more convenient than PetSmart, location-wise, but I know from now on I’m going out of my way. Because they didn’t go out of theirs to keep my business.
I feel better getting that off my chest.
