I think I am a perfect customer, but maybe not. I am willing to pay full price for a quality product, I never use coupons, I don’t waste time in stores, and I am incredibly loyal to stores or restaurants that meet my expectations. If these expectations are met, I frequent the establishment. If not, I never go back, ever (well unless of course I’m with my wife). While most people prefer to get a great deal on something they don’t need, I would gladly pay full price on a high quality product I do need. Because of this, I consider myself an excellent customer… unfortunately for me most of the retail world would rather sell a mediocre product or service and occasionally give a large discount to keep your business. The list of establishments I frequent is very short.

Some of my expectations are fair like expecting the establishment to be clean and well kept (including bathrooms). While some of them are not as fair, like I never go to a restaurant a second time that doesn’t serve Diet Coke, or for that matter good Diet Coke (just get the mixture correct people). I also look at a store’s environmental and political impact as well. But most of the stores that I have written off were stricken from my mental list for bad service or quality.

Here are some specific ways you can get crossed off my list:

Offer me an extended warranty.  I will never buy an extended warranty for a product (Note to salespeople: Ask my wife, she will), and usually don’t even buy the product if they keep offering an extended warranty. If you’re aggressively trying to sell me the warranty, I pretty much assume you don’t have faith in the quality of your product, or you’re just trying to rip me off. Whatever happened to just backing up your product, no questions asked, because it is a quality product?

A salesperson not knowing what they’re talking about. If I feel like I know more about the product than the salesperson, I will rarely buy it. And if they tell me information about the product I know can’t be true, I walk out and never come back.

Average food. Restaurants are on a very short leash with me. If you serve me food that I think I could make better at home (and I’m a pretty good cook), why would I come back? We recently had guests for the weekend and the meal we had out was the worst of the weekend. It wasn’t bad, just the worst of the weekend. If I had beer on tap at home, I’d probably never go out.

I regularly go to Brixx for pizza and beer; I had a surprisingly nice experience at CarMax; and Sears had a very knowledgeable salesperson who sold me an American made lawnmower. McDonald’s has the best Diet Coke and as such, I return fairly often (The fact that McDonald’s was where I took my kid’s when they were little to unwind for an hour in the ball pit also factor’s in my willingness to go back. As the ball pits got really slimy somewhere between my middle and youngest child, I now only use the drive through).

My wife recently wrote off a major women’s clothes store because she received such bad customer service over the phone. It really was crappy. She was done. She was never going back. Later, she was walking through the mall and noticed they had a 70% sale on cute dresses. Eight days after her customer service fiasco, two dresses were rung up on our credit card. Eight days. I guess this is what stores are looking for. Maybe I’m the worst customer.