I blogged last month about my experience with great customer service provided by a man named Rico. Here’s the other side of the coin—what happens when a customer is treated poorly. Unfortunately, I think this side of the coin is a lot more familiar to most of us.

My husband and I were discussing where to get take-out for dinner. He mentioned a couple of possibilities, minutes from where we live, and then interjected, “Well, I’ve got a blood feud going with Chang’s so we won’t be going there.”

Hmmmm….tell me more.

“Remember that garlic chicken last week that tasted strange? Well, I took it back to the restaurant the next day to get a refund. I felt like the woman gave me a hard time, saying I should have brought it back the same day. I told her to smell it to understand what I was talking about. She told me of course it would smell funny because it was the next day.”

I could see that this incident was not going to be easily forgotten by my husband. “I told this woman that over the last 8 years, we’ve spent hundreds of dollars on take out food there. All I wanted was a refund or credit for the single dish in 8 years that had gone bad. In fact, it was because we had had so many great meals from them that I thought they would want to know about this bad dish.”

Obviously, this was not the restaurant employee’s view. She offered to give half credit for the dish and only after my husband insisted, did she give him credit for a full order of garlic chicken. My husband made a declaration that is every business’s nightmare:

“I will never go back to that place.”

In the employee’s desire to save a few bucks and be right, she had lost a customer for life. How many more people will my husband tell this story to? How many more people will I tell this story to?