The “Service” Part of Customer Service Is Terribly Lacking With Far Too Many Companies

From my perspective, lack of service from customer service departments across the United States has been infecting far too many companies for my entire adult life and now it seems like the “service” part of customer service has gone the way of the Dodo. Real customer service will soon only be recalled by boomers in their “remember when…” conversations.

I’ve discussed customer service in one of my blog essays and there is another blog devoted to ethics that has published multiple essays devoted to problems with customer service.

Today I’d like to address how I’ve been seeing companies that are willing to post product specifications on their website under a banner titled “Technical Sheets”, or something similar, and some of the specifications they are providing like product dimensions are literally false for one reason or another. I don’t know if the data being provided by their engineering department is inaccurate or if the people assembling their website don’t understand what they’re given and translate it into something that they think might be right but in the end the website is literally providing false information.

I have run into multiple websites over the last five to ten years where there are multiple errors in the technical specifications on official company websites. Sometimes it’s obvious that a page was copied and pasted to create a new page, they edited a bunch of the things that needed to be edited for the new page, but forgot to remove details that no longer applied or change the address to links so customers that clicked on them got switched to the intended page.

When I find these kinds of things, I always take a couple to minutes to send a message to the customer service department so they can pass on the information to whoever they need to so the website can be fixed. The fact is that it’s likely that they will never fix website errors until someone points out the error. So I go out of my way to notify the company of their website errors as a service to them, completely free of charge and the only thing I expect is to be treated with respect and for them to fix their errors.

Sometimes I get a very sincere thank you, an offer for a discount coupon, or a box of swag sent to me to which I always tell them that I’m just letting them know so they can fix it not so they can do something for me. Part of my job before I retired a couple of years ago was to create and maintain the company website, it was a daunting task complete with a huge database and an online quote generator. I know I’m not perfect and every customer that provided me with information on errors or website suggestions was treated with sincere respect and a genuine thank you and I fixed what needed to be fixed immediately. Sometimes when I report these kind of errors to companies I got a request to contact them via phone, which I usually did only to find out that the person on the other end could barely speak English or they had such a strong thick accent that their words sound like a string of gibberish. After about 20 minutes of trying to communicate with someone when English was the second language that they had just learned, I’d get transferred around to find someone that could speak and understand English good enough to understand what I’m talking about. Then there are times that a brief message acknowledging your message that they had an error but not actually responding to the details of the message and nothing got fixed on the website for months. Then there are companies that respond to you with a “thank you” and then double down on a claim that their website is correct and tell you not to reply to the email address because they don’t monitor the email address and they close your case number. The last one on that list is what I’m going to discuss in this essay.

Here’s how this story unfolded.

A few years ago Beretta released the Beretta 80X Cheetah chambered in .380 Auto. The .380 auto was making a comeback because ammunition manufacturers were finally making .380 auto ammunition that would meet the minimum standards for the FBI, meeting these standards is a big deal for smaller calibers. The pistol was getting rave reviews. It was unique because it was a mid sized pistol chambered in .380acp, it had a double stack magazine, it was an accurate pistol, and it looked like a downsized Beretta 92 which has been a very popular pistol after the US military adopted it as the standard military sidearm replacing the 1911 .45 auto sometime in the 1980’s.

I’ve been a reasonable fan of the .380 auto, it has it’s niche, it’s easy to shoot, and it doesn’t beat your hands up like larger calibers can do. I studied the specifications that Beretta has on their website, everything seemed reasonable. I figured that I’d check out one of these new Beretta 80X Cheetah pistols and see what I think of it. I found one at a local dealer and put it in my hand to give it a once over without actually shooting it. It’s a very well built metal pistol that reminded me of the pistol I shot in the Army. It was nothing like the polymer pistols that have saturated the market, this was a significant piece of metal and seemed to be solid as a rock. The one thing I wasn’t personally fond of was the width of the grip, it seem to be larger than I was expecting and not as comfortable as I would have hoped, especially if I intended to use it for significant shooting with only one hand, it was absolutely fine for two handed shooting. I don’t have what I would consider to be large hands with long fingers, mine are probably considered medium size with medium length fingers. I ended up deciding that the pistol wasn’t for me because of the grip width.

Fast forward a few years. I’ve returned to Beretta’s website once in a while and recently I scrolled through the technical specifications for the newest Beretta 80X Cheetah’s. While scrolling through the spec’s I notice that the previous 1.25″ (1 1/4″) grip width had been decreased on some of the pistols to 1.06″ (1 1/16″), which means that they had reduced the grip width by .19″ (3/16″). That may not sound like a lot but I know from personal experience that even a 1/4″ can make a difference in grip with because as you grip a pistol around the grip it’s the total girth around the grip that is the full contact area of your hand. I know from experience that a grip width of between 1″ and 1 1/16″ is ideal for my size hand. Knowing this new information about the grip width I started investigating the pistols that had this new grip width.

I contacted Beretta’s customer service department via their website contact form to confirm that the two different dimensions for grip width were accurate and not an error. Here is the message I sent…

“Why are the grip widths listed for the 80X models not dimensionally consistent, some Grip Widths are listed at 1.06″ and others are listed at 1.25″? Unless I’m missing something very significant between the models, this seems like something is incorrect.”

A couple of days later, I received this information from Mary a “Technical Service Representative”…

Please note that that last quote “…this email chain will not be monitored for replies and is considered resolved at this time” is how customer service intentionally slams the door on communication with customers, it’s unprofessional customer service and it’s insulting. The more appropriate way to end this kind of response email is to give the customer the choice to agree that their issue has been resolved or to reply with further inquiries, this can be done with two separate button links in the email.

So I took Beretta at their word that the grip width dimensions were correct. After my investigating into the Beretta 80X Cheetah pistols with 1.06″ grip width, checking lots of reviews, checking ballistics, I decided on the 80X that I wanted. I save a little longer that I would have for the standard off the shelf model and instead I got the Langdon Tactical version of the Beretta 80X Cheetah that was chambered in .32acp with all of Langdon Tactical upgrades. The .32acp round is a bit smaller than the .380acp but I’ve already got a really good .380acp and for the kind of fun shooting I do, this .32acp seemed to be a perfect fit. I ordered the pistol and never looked back.

When I got the pistol I could tell right away that the Langdon Tactical upgrades I got were well worth the additional dollars. The pistol was awesome and it functioned flawlessly.

While getting used to the pistol, I noticed something I really hadn’t expected, shooting it one handed wasn’t nearly as comfortable as I had expected it to be after they had reduced the grip width. So I go out my caliper and measured the grip width and I was shocked, I really mean I was shocked! The grip width wasn’t the 1.06″ as advertised on Beretta’s website, it wasn’t even the 1.25″ that the earlier models were advertised to be, it physically measured to be between 1.280″-1.285″ across all of the grip textured surfaces where your hand come in contact with the pistol. The Beretta website advertised dimension for the grip width was .220″ off, that’s a huge discrepancy!

NOTE: The only thing on my 80X that measures 1.06″ in width is the width of the slide. There are major differences between the physical slide and the physical grip, anyone with any experience with pistols knows this fact.

Now just to prove my claims here are some screen shots straight from Beretta’s website. First a screenshot showing the advertised grip width of 1.25″, I circled it in red…

Next, a screenshot showing the advertised grip width of 1.06″, I circled it in red..

Next, a photo of me measuring the physical grip width of my 80X…

Anyone that understands how to read a dial caliper can see that the measured physical dimension is 1.285″.

So after I took the effort to initially contact Beretta to confirm the grip width dimensions, then getting an actual pistol and finding out that the actual physical dimension wasn’t either of the dimension they advertise on their website, and it was actually larger than any of the advertised dimensions they provided. I expected a smaller grip width pistol and what I got was a larger grip width pistol than advertised, I wasn’t very happy. I really like the pistol for two handed shooting, it’s really accurate with the red dot I put on it; but, I do a lot of one handed shooting, some of it for Bulls Eye Competition, and this pistol really wasn’t comfortable for that, at least not for me. It’s not that it’s impossible for me to shoot it one handed, it’s just not comfortable for me for extended use that way. I have much larger caliber pistols with narrow grips that are very comfortable for me to shoot one handed.

So after a day or so, of stewing, I figured it was time to send Beretta a message about this, here is what I sent…

“I believe that the grip width dimension listed for all 80X Cheetah pistols is incorrect. I just purchased a brand new Langdon Tactical 80X Cheetah Tactical 32ACP loaded with all the features that Langdon Tactical does and my grip measures between 1.280″-1.285″ across all grip texture surfaces and 1.265″ across the mounting screw heads. There is no place on my grip with that it measures 1.06″ like it’s listed on the website. This dimension is 0.220″ off from the listed dimension of 1.06″ and that makes a big difference in the total girth around the entire grip. For smaller hands, like mine, this can be make or break. When I tried the 80X cheetah two years ago I wasn’t comfortable with the grip width at 1.25″ and I was very please to see that Beretta had reduced the grip width by 3/16″ so I decided to purchase the Langdon Tactical version. Now I’m physically stuck with the same 1.25″ grip width that I tested two years ago and didn’t like. I’ve included screen shots of a couple of the specification pages off your website and neither one has the correct dimension. I’m a retired manufacturing engineer, you could add up a dozen manufacturing dimensional tolerances and not likely reach that 0.220″ difference. The listed dimensions not corresponding with physical dimensions is unacceptable. Please don’t respond to me like you did before with my original discussion regarding the grip with differences (Case no. 00345541) via email telling me that this has been resolved and that you don’t monitor the email address you send the response from, it’s insulting. I expect a discussion in a professional manner to resolve this issue not another blurb telling me that the dimensions listed are correct – which was false!”

The screenshots of specifications I mentioned in that were like the ones I posted above showing the two different grip width dimensions.

After I submitted that message I got the following via email…

After they had four days to review the contents of my message, I got the following response from Beretta…

There wasn’t any discussion about the contents of my message. Nothing like a professional customer service depart might write, like “Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on with these different dimensions, please contact us during regular business hours to help resolve this.”. They just sent just a slamming of the communication door “Case has been closed.“ and then silence.

That’s how the story unfolded.

Remember how Mary ended her email response to me in the initial response (see above)…

“We will continue to be here for you, thank you for being the best part of Beretta!”

After I confirmed that the grip width dimension was incorrect (is that considered false advertising?) and the response I got when I explained it all to them, it doesn’t seem like they’re here for me. Mary’s statement doesn’t seem to be backed up by action.

My goal from the my first contact with them about the grip width is simply for them to FIX their website. If they’re too self absorbed to pay attention to a customer offering help, that’s their problem not mine.

I’ve done what I set out to do, I informed Beretta of their errors, the rest is up to Beretta.

As usual; if things change and Beretta decides to contact me, I’ll update this essay with any new information.

I reserve the right to fix typos and grammatical errors without changing the core content.