Dollar General review: Employees at store #18791/ complaint #0444667

Also Sprach ZarathustraDavid A. Green
1816 Jefferson Avenue, #7
Newport News, VA 23607
Tel: [protected]
November 16, 2023
Dollar General Corporate Headquarters
100 Mission Reach
Goodlettsville, TN 37072
Dollar General:
I am Dollar General Complaint #0444667. Today, at 11:00 AM, I had a very uncomfortable experience with two of your store representatives. The facility is located at 2311 Jefferson Avenue, Newport News, Virginia 23607(store #18791). One of the employees is a female assistant manager who identified herself as C.J., and the other is a female sales associate who identified herself as Name (she said this was her first day on the job and I did not see an employee badge on her.) Both employees were blatantly rude to me when I came into the store to complain about the trueliving Foaming Bathroom Cleaner Lemon Scent (ISBN #[protected]).
The problem I had with this product…
I had purchased this product 2 or 3 months ago and had discarded the receipt. After a few sprays from it over the period of time, the spray valve malfunctioned with more than half of the product left. The can will not spray at all, and I did not want to lose the other half of the foam, as I did not want to buy another can. The store manager named Kim knows me very well (has known me for at least 3 years), and has always worked with me about exchanges on defective products, even if I could not find the receipts. Kim is a good manager, very polite, and she has always shown me courtesy. She is one of the reasons I continue to bring my business to her Dollar General store. The way that she can identify me is that on various Sundays I will enter her establishment and purchase cases of Clover Valley distilled bottled drinking water (3 and 4 cases at a time), and she will tell you that I am one of her best customers who never gives her business any trouble. CJ and Name just started working there recently, and I had never seen them before today. Kim I know, CJ and Name I just met.
The problem I had with the assistant manager and the sales associate…
When I bought in the can of cleaner for exchange, Name went and found assistant manager CJ, showed her the can that it would not spray, and CJ came back to me fusing, “You cannot get a refund on this. It is almost empty!” I told her that the sprayer was defective and that was not my fault. She blamed me and said, “You broke it!” I explained to her that I did not break it and that Kim has always worked with me with exchanging defective product issues. When CJ asked for the receipt, I told her that I had tossed it, believing the product would not malfunction. She then said, “You don’t even have the receipt. We can’t exchange it!”
I wanted to call the corporate office with a complaint, but…
I then told her that I was going to call corporate about her rudeness to me and the fact that she would not exchange the product. CJ then walked away from me to the back to put up stock while I asked Name to provide me with the telephone number to corporate so that I could file a complaint. Name wrote down telephone number [protected] for me, and when I dialed that number in her presence, the number was a disconnected number. I was really upset then. I told her to call the manager out again to provide me the correct corporate number. She told me to go back to get the manager myself. I told her I did not really care to deal with her attitude, but Name still refused to call the manager up from. The contention was so great that consumers in the store could tell that these two employees did not know how to resolve the conflict.
I went to the back and told CJ that the telephone number to corporate that Name gave me was a disconnected number and I wanted the correct corporate number to file a complaint. CJ ignored me cutting boxes with her box cutter as if she did not want to hear me. I yelled at her loud enough for the consumers to hear me say, “Are you going to cut me with that box cutter?” I did not believe that she was going to do that, but I wanted to get her attention because she was rudely ignoring me, as if to say that I was bugging her and that is not the proper way to treat any consumer.
They called the police on me…
Finally, she put down her stock and she went to the front office to get the number, me complaining about her as I followed. Name threatened to call the police on me, and I said to her, “Call them! Use my phone!” Instead, CJ called 911, and I told her, “I promise you, I won’t go to jail today!” Before the police came, CJ went into the office and wrote the corporate number down on a piece of paper, which is [protected]. I later called that number when I got home, and found out that it was also an incorrect number to a place called The Rewards Center, which was offering a $100.00 Wal-Mart gift card and was in no way associated with Dollar General. How can a store employee give out 2 wrong numbers in the same day?
I waited around for the Newport News police to arrive, in the persons of Officer Bruiz and Officer Anderson. CJ gave them her side of the story and I gave them my side of the story. The officers had me to come outside to talk to them. I told them I only wanted the number to the corporate office of Dollar General, and the two employees were giving me a hard time about it. The two officers provided me with the correct number from police dispatch, which is [protected]. When I dialed that number at home, it was correct, and I called in the complaint from my apartment. The complaint number is #0444667.
My credentials as a 25 year veteran in the
customer service field…
Before I continue this complaint, I want to share with you my credentials and experience in the field of telephone customer service. I have worked for past companies such as:
 Spiegel Group Telesevices (to include Newport News, Inc. and Eddie Bauer),
 West Corporation (to include FSG credit applications and Prescription Solutions),
 Hampton Roads Transportation (as a nightshift customer service supervisor and trainer at yellow cab company) and
 Hampton Roads Transit (customer service provider of public transit information).
My telephone customer service experience ranges more than 25 years (1995 to 2020) where I was forced into early retirement due to health reasons. In addition to that:
 I am also the published author of 14 books that are read within the community (employees at Piggly Wiggly supermarket six blocks away, and Southeast Community Pharmacy customers next door to Dollar General enjoy my novels).
 I am also a legally ordained minister with the Gospel Spreading Church five blocks away, and my ordination is on record at the Circuit Court in Newport News for your information.
To make myself clear, I AM IN NO WAY RIFF RAFT THAT ENTERS THIS STORE. I AM A RESPECTABLE LAW ABIDING CITIZEN WHO DEMANDS RESPECT FROM EVERYONE I DO BUSINESS WITH.
CJ and Name made the following mistakes in
handling my complaint…
As an experienced retired customer service employee, I have uncovered several mistakes CJ and Name made in their encounter with my complaint about the can of foam, and how they responded to me:
• Never give out improper corporate information. Both CJ and Name gave phone numbers that were not connected to the business. That shows that these two employees are either incompetent in doing their jobs, or were trying to keep me from calling in a complaint on them.
• Never assume that the consumer damaged the product when they bring it back, because you could be wrong. CJ assumed that I had broken the sprayer on the can, and that was very offensive to me as a customer.
• Never ignore a customer that is talking to you about a complaint. Put down what you are working on and give them your undivided attention.
• Never assume that a complaining customer is riff raft. If these two had known that I were an author, minister and retired customer service representative, they may have responded differently. You never know if a member of Congress, a Navy Admiral or a Movie Producer is shopping in your store. Your attitude could damage your business. Remember, first impression count heavily with customers.
• Never deal with a complaining customer in front of other consumers. Pull them in an office or to the side privately away from the public to avoid appearing unprofessional to the customers.
• Show empathy to the consumer when a product has failed to live up to its promise. Say something like, “I am sorry that this item is not functioning properly. Let’s see if we can wait until the store manager returns and can work something out.”
• Never call law enforcement on a complaining customer unless there is evidence that the customer is going to get violent. Most complaining customers are like barking dogs that will not bite. But if one picks up a box cutter or a knife, shakes a pistol in in your face, or threatens to do you bodily harm, that is the time to call the police.
• Never argue with a customer who is bringing the product back. Contending over the product only adds fuel to the fire. To calm the consumer down, you have to be calm in your choice of words.
• The customer is not always right, so learn how to apologize anyway, even if you are not wrong. It is not saying the employee is wrong, it is saying that you want to bring a peaceful end to the conflicting situation.
• Always be willing to give your first name when a customer asks you for it. I don’t believe that Name is the associate that I had the bad experience with. When you give any other name than your correct name, it causes trust issues with the public. That can damage your business also.
Let us start over again with apologies to each other…
I want it noted that I have such a good relationship with Store #18791 that I would like to start over again with my relationship with CJ and Name. I do not want this incident to cause me to carry my business to Family Dollar, Piggly Wiggly or Dollar Tree, when we can restore the good relationship we once had. I am willing to do my part to apologize for the misunderstandings that we had on today, and start over, if CJ and Name would agree to apologize to me. I demand an apology from both of them, but I am willing to extend my apology first. To be willing to apologize and not to have this contention in the future is not an admission of guilt, but a fresh start in good business practices in the community with the public. It will show the community that consumers and retailers can get along and respect each other. In being upset about the situation, I told CJ and Name that they should be fired for their blatant rudeness towards me. However, I would like to recant that statement and instead say, “CJ and Name should not be fired, but have additional customer service training to prepare themselves for situations like this in the future.”
A rewarding incentive from me as a gesture of conflict resolution…
If we all agree to apologize to each other for our actions that occurred on today, Thursday, November 16, 2023, and not to repeat them, I, David A. Green, agree to an incentive, to give CJ and Name a free copy of one of the 6 of my14 books listed on lulu.com that I have in stock at my apartment. The books are listed below:
The Young and the Foolish ©2008 ISBN [protected]
Darcel P. McIntyre is the principal of Phoebus High School in the city of Hampton Virginia. She is a popular, well liked administrator, but just ten days before school is out, a suicide plot surfaces. A seventeen year old couple in love are about to end their lives on the last day of school, but with the help of a prayerful bible club that she secretly established within the institution, the identities of the two are revealed. Risking her career, as well as two young lives in the balance, it is a race against time to convince Brian Atwell and Sylvia Murdoch of the precious gift of life, while yet for a third suspect – a runaway girl – it may be too late!
Vengeance! © 2008 ISBN [protected]
This is the story of three victims. Victim number one is confined to a wheelchair for life. Victim number two is confined to a jail cell facing the death penalty. Victim number three is confined to a casket waiting to be buried. Hatred, revenge, malice, anger, love and forgiveness are the key elements which determine the fate of each one. David Lance, teen bully and roughneck, aims to settle a personal vendetta with a friend who betrayed him, only to find out that it backfires and he has to suffer the consequences until God and a local courtroom judge helps him to see the error of his ways. Then comes the reaping of the whirlwind.
Unequally Yoked ©2009 ISBN [protected]
After a failed engagement robs her of her good name and everything that she owns, Olivia Satin turns to God for direction and purpose. As He talks with her during her darkest moments, her faith is restored when He perfects her spiritual life and introduces her to the man he has for her to marry. Obtaining this gift from God contains challenges, especially when she wakes up one morning and learns about an anonymous deposit of almost five million dollars into her bank account. Suspicious of foul play, she is thrust between the federal government and the narcotics underworld, where she learns that she must pray to the Almighty to make the right decisions in order to avoid a catastrophe and stay out of jail.
The Years That The Locust Hath Eaten © 2009 ISBN [protected]
Doris Pearlman is a sixty nine year old rich, widowed New Yorker who is tossed into motherhood through the court appointed guardianship of her niece’s three infant children: Angela age four, Lionel age three, and Cheryl age two. To divert them from exposure to the entanglement of urban life, Doris sets her attentions on rural living. With her nanny in tow, the five move to the church owned farm in James City County, Virginia and into a home that she and her late husband erected thirty years earlier. Upon arrival, she learns that the land is extremely underdeveloped and a target for government takeover through condemnation and Eminent Domain. To protect the land as well as restore “the years that the locust hath eaten”, Doris quickly devises a challenging plan in an attempt to transform the dilapidated property into a producing farm and tourist attraction, thus saving the greatest piece of historical legacy that the church has ever acquired.
A Peach Out of Reach ©2011 ISBN [protected]
A Peach Out of Reach is a coming of age novel set in the mid 1990’s about a young girl who encounters the evil world that she lives in. Teen pregnancy, bullying, kidnapping, assault and murder have a devastating impact on her life, driving her into recklessness due to low self esteem. Toni Morrison is the fourteen year old daughter of a minister and his wife who try to steer her straight through the church’s youth outreach program, The Young People’s Purity Club, which teaches abstinence from improper contact with the opposite sex. The rebellious teen faces devastation from the death of her best friend, and the truth about her birth father. When her parents are given the task of setting up the Purity Club in their affiliated church in Philadelphia, Toni faces much rejection from the children there. After a boy dies protecting her from a pervert, Toni believes that she is the product of a ‘bad seed’, until she meets a young man years later who changes her whole outlook on life and wins her heart.
If manager Kim can help to set up this peaceful apology meeting between me, CJ and Name, I will be happy to even give her a free copy of one of these six books that I have in stock. Kim has my permission to share this letter with CJ and Name. This letter has also been emailed to the Dollar General corporate complaint line, which is at www.complaintsboard/new_complaint. Let us start over again, before further damage is done to Dollar General. I am willing if these 2 employees, CJ and Name, are. God Bless You.
Sincerely,
David A. Green
Author, Minister and Customer Service Veteran
“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)