8 hours ago, dominosfleet said:

If youre ok with that, thats on you, but if hes this hostile to me leaving a bad review because he didnt call me back i can read those as bearing a bit of truth to them and that gives me a weird feeling in my stomach about this guy.

I'm not okay with it; his message was irresponsible and distressing, and not an appropriate way of dealing with the situation. That said, from what I've heard (your side of the story, not his) I think you aren't free of blame either. So long as you can only focus on who is more in the wrong, a pleasant resolution will elude you. So long as you focus as much as possible on fixing your mistakes, you'll walk away with a clean conscience and be better at solving conflict than the vast majority of other people out there (most of us could definitely be better about this.) With humility comes the greatest weapon in Star Wars: the high ground.

So I'm curious: independently of what he did, whether you ever plan to set foot in that shop again, or what you now interpret his personality to be, do you think you could have done better here? Or weren't entirely fair to him from the start?

The customer is always right. Regardless of how rude or inconsiderate a customer is, the business or the employee representing the business should always be respectful. I certainly would not go to this store and give them my hard earned money now.

20 minutes ago, The Jabbawookie said:

I'm not okay with it; his message was irresponsible and distressing, and not an appropriate way of dealing with the situation. That said, from what I've heard (your side of the story, not his) I think you aren't free of blame either. So long as you can only focus on who is more in the wrong, a pleasant resolution will elude you. So long as you focus as much as possible on fixing your mistakes, you'll walk away with a clean conscience and be better at solving conflict than the vast majority of other people out there (Lord knows most of us could be better about this.) With humility comes the greatest weapon in Star Wars: the high ground.

So I'm curious: independently of what he did, whether you ever plan to set foot in that shop again, or what you now interpret his personality to be, do you think you could have done better here? Or weren't entirely fair to him from the start?

I'm sorry Jabba I didn't mean to imply that you specifically were ok with it, I was more meaning "if someone was ok with this" as a general statement.

I'm sure there are always ways in which people can improve their end of a conversation to be more polite and this situation is no different on my end. However, I'd argue that my initial interaction up to the review was handled as well as I could have. On the phone my end of it went along the lines of "i won't be able to make it, concerned about the weather, do you offer refunds". That first interaction was pleasant on both ends . The second and third interactions were with the staff of the store and both times I was polite when I spoke with them and they were courteous as well. The final verbal interaction was saturday when I called the 4th time and the owner answered. I'd say that was a pleasant conversation, at least on his end, I mostly just said "alright" and "sure" to his statements that he wasn't going to uphold what he said he was going to do in addition to not having contacted me the two previous days after having been assured he would by his staff (which in retail means you're going to, something goes wrong at a store it's the owners fault, regardless who did the wrong thing). I was, however, very irritated at the perceived slight and wrote up the google review shortly thereafter still filled with ire. He actually attempted to contact me that night after the review posted but I've always been of the mind set that broken plates can't be fixed and so didn't see a necessity to return his, belated, message. The next morning I saw a post from family time games and was reminded that I still had them liked on my facebook and that I should correct that, in doing so I thought it made sense to rate them on there as well because of the negative exp I had to warn others against but it seemed pointless to go into detail because it would only get the ire in me going again and that wasn't necessary or healthy. (Which is why the facebook one was so short @comatose ).

At that I assumed the situation was behind me and was ready to move on but I woke to an angry message from the store owner about how I'm an awful person and how the armada community at his shop bad mouthed me (which sounds weird because I'd only taken part in one tournament out in indy and it seems weird that anyone would even know my real name vs my ffg ID, I've only said it a handful of times on here and never the last name, though the first is fairly unique). I came to the forums to see if I was crazily in the wrong. While I agree with some criticism of how I'd written the things out and exaggerated the timeline from wednesday to a week, which I've attempted to correct now that I'm less on tilt, I'm not sure that my end of the situation could have gone better between wednesday and saturday. @Darth Sanguis pointed out frustrations he could see from a small business perspective and I respect those while still disagreeing that it was my responsibility to make sure he treated his customers respectfully, all I ask is for an honest answer and for people to do what they say they're doing to do (again, at no point did i demand a refund or suggest i was owed one, I asked if he gave refunds and he said he would refund me 100% on wednesday and 50% on saturday, lol I'm still fine with 0% and even more so if it means I never have to interact with this guy again).

@The Jabbawookie fair response? At this point I think any apology on my end is just going to come off as a concession to him. After reading other negative reviews I'm pretty confident this guy bullies customers when he has a problem as a means of customer service and I have a poor reaction to bullies.

1 minute ago, dominosfleet said:

fair response? At this point I think any apology on my end is just going to come off as a concession to him. After reading other negative reviews I'm pretty confident this guy bullies customers when he has a problem as a means of customer service and I have a poor reaction to bullies.

At the end of the day you should of course do what you think is right. After all, you were there, and that mostly seems like a fairly reasonable explanation. It's this part that gives me pause:

3 minutes ago, dominosfleet said:

I'd say that was a pleasant conversation, at least on his end, I mostly just said "alright" and "sure" to his statements that he wasn't going to uphold what he said he was going to do in addition to not having contacted me the two previous days after having been assured he would by his staff (which in retail means you're going to, something goes wrong at a store it's the owners fault, regardless who did the wrong thing). I was, however, very irritated at the perceived slight and wrote up the google review shortly thereafter still filled with ire. He actually attempted to contact me that night after the review posted but I've always been of the mind set that broken plates can't be fixed and so didn't see a necessity to return his, belated, message.

Because, basically, you didn't communicate to him personally that anything was wrong when the chance was there, then provided bad press on the internet, then ignored a possible attempt he made to fix things once he learned you weren't okay with it, then provided more bad press on the internet. From his perspective, since he probably didn't think there was a problem, that's kind of a punch in the gut. And it seems clear he's pretty bad at handling such things, but at least he did try to talk when all the cards were on the table. He tried to glue the broken plate back together, which is easier than looking for a new set of plates or eating salad out of a drinking glass. If continuing that analogy makes sense.

Best outcome is a resolution, especially now its been bought to everyone's attention.

Thats gonna mean concessions on your part, and you should swallow your pride and bury the hatchet.

Failure to do so and you will look like a screaching snowflake 😃

If it is a matter of Honour, you still need to be the bigger man and fully de escalate before you come back to us with tales of unfair treatment.

Being a third party to this interaction and therefore not having all the facts, I am not going to comment on who is in the right/wrong.

What I will say is that all my experiences with Family Time Games and its owners have been extremely positive. This is not something I say lightly. I am not the type of person to post reviews or make posts about anything anywhere on the internet but in this situation, I feel compelled to say something.

I would like to encourage people who see this forum thread to not just write off this store and avoid it. I believe it to be a place worth going to and deserves to be given a chance if you have never been there.

18 minutes ago, Liebniz said:

Being a third party to this interaction and therefore not having all the facts, I am not going to comment on who is in the right/wrong.

What I will say is that all my experiences with Family Time Games and its owners have been extremely positive. This is not something I say lightly. I am not the type of person to post reviews or make posts about anything anywhere on the internet but in this situation, I feel compelled to say something.

I would like to encourage people who see this forum thread to not just write off this store and avoid it. I believe it to be a place worth going to and deserves to be given a chance if you have never been there.

I'd be on board with you if it wasn't for those other reviews on there where he was manhandling customers. I would avoid bringing kids to this place based on his anger issues. I'm also pretty much done with this conversation. I've been stressed out about it most of the day, at this point it's just not worth talking about anymore. feel free to ask questions if you have them or say whatever you'd like in here, I'm just saying I won't likely be stopping by too much anymore, there's no reason for this situation to have gotten anywhere near where it went.

For the record, "the customer is always right", is wrong. Its second to, "the employee comes first". Now this doesnt mean I defend the way things were handled, a polite "we don't want your custom" would have sufficed. However, can y'all stop perpetuating this myth please.

Can concur, customer is not always right, this comes from 14 years of experience in a customer service field. Sometimes they customer wants to be right SO badly, even when they are totally, totally wrong.

4 hours ago, Ginkapo said:

For the record, "the customer is always right", is wrong. Its second to, "the employee comes first". Now this doesnt mean I defend the way things were handled, a polite "we don't want your custom" would have sufficed. However, can y'all stop perpetuating this myth please.

This is actually the exact type of scenario that caused the "customer is always right" mentally. A disgruntled customer is going to go home angry, and tell friends/family/internet strangers all about how angry they are, from their side of the story only. The business doesn't get to chip in too.

That's why you bend over backwards for them. It has nothing to do with morality or ethics. A pissed customer will cause trouble you can't counter, so put on a fake smile and pretend they're right.

Sometimes customers are trying to steal from you. Customers will abuse the "the customer is always right" ethic to try and extort a business.

6 hours ago, duck_bird said:

This is actually the exact type of scenario that caused the "customer is always right" mentally. A disgruntled customer is going to go home angry, and tell friends/family/internet strangers all about how angry they are, from their side of the story only. The business doesn't get to chip in too.

That's why you bend over backwards for them. It has nothing to do with morality or ethics. A pissed customer will cause trouble you can't counter, so put on a fake smile and pretend they're right.

The mentality was started in a time when most shops did treat their customers as if they were halfbrained dimwits who didn't know what kind of air they like to breathe. It wasn't initially intended to "not have somebody rant about you" but to make the customer feel welcome and appreciated. The same way some shops nowadays have to make ther employees feel again. The modern problem of "the customer is allways right" is the same problem as with anything else in the age of the internet. A) Anyone can put their personal opinion about something on the internet, which leads to B) Everybody feels obligated to put their personal opinion about something on the internet... As I do...RIGHT NOW!

Like most of the others here already said, I too do not want to jump to any conclusions without knowing both sides of the story. Still, seeing the presented evidence, I think both sides could've deescalated the situation by simply talking to one another in a civilized way, instead of ignoring the other or going behind their back. Lastly, sometimes you should just think about how mad you are or talk about it with a friend, and then take the moral highroad and forget about it.

On 2/5/2019 at 6:39 AM, duck_bird said:

This is actually the exact type of scenario that caused the "customer is always right" mentally. A disgruntled customer is going to go home angry, and tell friends/family/internet strangers all about how angry they are, from their side of the story only. The business doesn't get to chip in too.

That's why you bend over backwards for them. It has nothing to do with morality or ethics. A pissed customer will cause trouble you can't counter, so put on a fake smile and pretend they're right.

Lol i mostly would have been fine if I hadn't gotten a threatening message (from the business itself) accusing me of being an awful person for leaving a bad review.