The Mont Blanc cash teller at Heathrow airport that lost 750,000 Pounds.

 

Back in June 2014, the Queen’s Terminal was newly commissioned. It was and still is a beauty to behold. Maybe not such as beauty to behold when compared to the Emirates, Dubai Airport Terminals.

The Queen’s Terminal building has approximately 24 gates and is said to have been designed by the great Spanish architect, Luis Vidal. This was quite a buzz back then in 2014 and it was built on the site of the old original Terminal 2 building.

The terminal building was crisp and perhaps, every traveler’s delight. It was initially a little confusing to navigate because it was new and people missed their bearing, very easily back then.

If one was very observant, he would notice some passengers going round in circumlocution in oscillating like a pendulum. They were in search of their departure/ gates from one concourse to the other. Some asked a lot of questions and the connecting gates sometimes were quite a distance. This was why travelers got to the airport early so, they would sort out their gates early and make all the blunders ahead of their flight times.

The lounges are very comfortable, at least I can speak of the nice BA Lounge. It was very well laid out and the seating arrangements were quite comfortable. I don’t even want to talk about the snacks and food section, where one could eat uncountable times.

Imagine those early morning arrivals, after flying all night. It always left passengers famished. They could eat up a whole horse as they pounce of the lounge. What was interesting was that no matter how hungry one got, you could not exhaust the servings from the chef.

The chef(s) would smile and walk up to the mini food court area to deal out some more food like a fresh pack of poker cards.

The bathrooms were also well laid out but, you had to queue with your electronic tags to take a shower. The transit or wait of sometimes four to five hours was long enough for one to have a nice warm shower, a change of clothes and feast on the meals with still a couple of hours to spare before the announcements came booming through the speakers.

I recall once, I had to submit some assignment for my doctoral thesis. After flying all night, I had ample time to use the lounge Wi-Fi to complete and submit the assignment for the deadline.

The electronic information boards were frequently changing to notify passengers of possible gate changes and whether one was early, on time or late for their connecting flights.

You could not help but notice the business sense in airlines creating their own hobs. If you were flying BA, it did not matter where you were flying from, the flight would take you through Heathrow for good reasons. Your connection maybe a few hours and in those few hours you were sure to spend some good money at the airport.

It was the same thing if one was flying Air France. You knew you had to also fly through Charles De Gaulle Airport, Paris and you know, Paris is the home of perfumes and fashion. You would spend some nice money while waiting for the connecting flight.

I missed my way severally at Charles De Gaulle, especially when the airport was under renovation back in the days. I arrived in transit at Charles De Gaulle once and we went to the food court for a meal, but the service girl said she could not speak English, she could only speak French. One could not help but regret the days we were asked to learn French in school for free. It became obvious that no knowledge was lost. Thank God my son was there to bail us out. He spoke a few hiccups broken pidgin French that was enough to buy us a meal to wait for our connecting flight.

If you flew KLM, you knew you would also transit Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam. If you flew Emirate, you know you would also transit Emirate, Dubai Airport, UAE.

These are actually business hobs for the various airlines to funnel all passengers through their terminal buildings to keep you for some nice hours for connecting flight. Again, some passenger who were also coming from other airports would all mix-up/ blend up nicely heading in the same direction.

It is no wonder business owners invested a lot of money to own shops at terminal buildings, because passengers had good time to spend or spare while waiting for their connecting flights. Most bestsellers were perhaps first available at airport lounges.

It was hard not to see nice things to buy. Sometimes, one forgot to buy things for our loved ones, the terminal buildings were quick fixes. At other time, it was a good time to exhaust your foreign currency as one might not be needing it at the destination town.

One could buy novels, t shirts, shoes, bags, perfumes and a lot of gadgets aside from the sweets and chocolates and spirits. Most of the items were duty free, which meant they were cheaper than buying them in the cities.

This was the setting when I arrived the new Heathrow Terminal Building.

After the routine shower, change of clothes and a nice meal, I decided to take a walk around the new terminal building, not just to admire it, but also to see if there were a few things one could buy.

The smell of nice coffee rent the air and you couldn’t help but to catch a cup of coffee in a paper cup to help one along the way. One might even stop at a Pret fruits shop to have a go at it.

I wondered into this nice newly Mont Blanc franchise shop. Mont Blanc, you perhaps know, is a luxury brand and their items are not just luxurious and well crafted, they actually have timeless values.

Most international airport terminals have Mont Blanc franchise shops. You probably did not know that if you owned a Mont Blanc luxury item and you were stranded for cash, you could actually deposit your original Mont Blanc pen or wrist watch for the same value you bought it.

Yes, you could and the shop could hold it for some months, so that if you were flying through that was again, you could claim back your item, or failing which they would retool it for sale. The shops also served as pun-shops.

This is why some people “invest” in high end luxury items, because the value actually does not wane.

So, I owned one of those Jonathan Hyde’s Limited Edition Mont Blanc pens. It was very affordable back in the days. It was made of polished black ivory. One could get a pair for a little less than half a million naira but today, they would be going for over two million naira.

Sometimes, one wondered why one would “invest” so much money on a writing material like a pen.

So, the value of that Mont Blanc pen does not diminish. If you kept and used it well, and for some reason ran out of cash, or was tired of using the pen and wanted back your money, you could deposit the pen in a Mont Blanc shop for almost the same amount of money you bought it back then.

While window shopping at this Mont Blanc shop, I noticed that people were picking up several items to buy, but when they made their way to the teller cashier lady, she would inform them that the teller electronic automated machine was faulty and so, she could not sell the items to them.

I found this very disturbing. I observed closer, how the teller cashier lady, was turning back customers and they would disappointedly drop back the item and walk out of the shop.

A lady picked up a Mont Blanc laptop bag that was handmade and pure crocodile skin. It cost about 25,000 pounds and she wanted it. It looked very nice, even I could not help admiring it, though that was way too expensive way to carry a laptop, except perhaps it was like saving one’s money by buying the items that could be returned. But the lady also suffered the same fate, as the teller cashier lady also sang the same old song that the teller cashier automated machine was faulty and she could not accept payments.

It did not matter the mode of payment, whether cash, PoS or transfer, the teller cashier lady still needed the electronic automated cash register do document the sales.

I was in no hurry, because my flight was not until another four hours. So, I admired more items. Again, more customers streamed into the shop and at this point the cashier lady appeared irritated that so many customers were walking through the door, unknown to them, they would not be able to buy and pay for their items, because the same tale of faulty machine automated teller would be “sold” to them.

She seemed frustrated that she had to repeat this every time, like a broken record, and perhaps wished it could just stick up a sign for the customers to comply and stopped brining items to her for payment.

The teller cashier lady decided to almost make it like a public announcement, as customers were walking in, just to warn them that they would be disappointed, because the items they wanted to buy, would not go home with them as they would not be able to pay for it. Why? The teller automated cashier machine was faulty.

I am not very good with arithmetic but I counted at least 750,000 worth of items that were picked by customers who walked to the desk to pay for them and had to drop them, in frustration, because the teller cashier lady would turn them back that the machine was faulty.

I could not help but imagine how she was ruining the business of the owner who owned the franchise by letting go such an amount of money before it was even 10:00 am in the morning.

I wondered if she would do this to her own business, if she was paying that much overheads for a shop at the new termina building, she would allow 750,000 pounds sales to be washed away by a lame excuse that the teller cash register machine was faulty.

I knew that there were at least two (2) Mont Blanc shops at the airport terminal and she confirmed that much and told customers, except they did not mind going upstairs with her for payment for the item. To this option, she dropped her voice so that no customer would take her to task on the second payment option.

It was the way she said it that even further put off customers who practically junked the items and moved on.

My Ombudsman cap came on and I decided I was not going to let this slip away. I just wanted to buy a bottle of ink which was just 10 pounds. The original mont blanc ink was hard to find and I was not going to walk away and not buy it for the same reasons she was giving other customers.

She did not even notice that I had been in the shop for at least 30 minutes, if not more and had seen all virtually all the turned down customers. I thought of so many things in a split second. The customer care skill was lacking and as I recall a customer also complained of the shabby treatment.

When it was my turn for “payment”, she was about to belt out the same phrase of faulty teller machine, before I told her that I just observed that she turned away over and rejected over 750,000 pounds that morning.

I asked her if she owned 750,000 pounds?! She was startled at my approach, that I did not just go away like other customers.

She asserted that she was a cashier and not an IT maintenance person and could not know how to fix the faulty cash register. She further informed me, in case I cared to know, that she had reported the faulty machine to her management and the maintenance technician would be there at about noon time.

I told her that her excuse was not acceptable for her to let a whooping 750,000 pounds go. She asked me what she could have done in the circumstances.

I told her if she was nice to the customers, she would have taken them in groups after their orders with the items, upstairs to the second shop to pay for their items and the customers who really wanted the items would not mind that discomfort to buy an item they really wanted, because like me, I was not going to travel without that bottle of ink.

She got angry and told me her job function and that she could not do what I was suggesting. I told her she was even being rude to me and raising her voice, and she did not know if I was even the franchise owner of the shop!

Now, I got her attention!

She was quiet now and examined me closely. I knew that most of the staff at these franchisee store did not know who owned them. They just applied for the job through agencies and got hired.

They had no interest of the franchise shop owner at heart and did not care if sales were made or not and they were not paid according to how much sales they made. So, they lost nothing ss a franchise shop owner was bleeding 750,000 pounds in less than an hour of customers walk-in as a result of an inept sales/ attendant person.

I said it again, for emphasis, that she did not even know, if I was the owner of the franchise store and that I had observed how she was talking to the customers and allowed them to walk away without buying the items and showed little or no concerns for the customers.

Now, she started sweating… She started to make another excuse that she was pregnant and it would be too much task for her to be going up and down the stores to ensure customers paid for their items. This was in spite of the fact that the escalators were fully functional and the entire process was not going to be more than ten minutes.

At this time, her voice had dropped to like volume 2 from volume 9.5 and she tried to make up for the bad behavior still not sure if I was actually the owner of the shop and what my reaction would be.

I had actually watched a reality show where franchise shop owners walked into their shops and were treated very shabbily by their own shop attendants, who thought they were just another customer and the shop attendant ended up getting fired. Some ignored the shop owners and were taking selfies. Others were plainly rude to their bosses unknowingly and they got fired.

I also saw another shop attendant who was very skillful and showed a lot of initiative and emotional intelligence, without knowing this was their boss. She treated all customers nicely and the same. She got a raise and a scholarship to go for further studies.

When we notice shops shutting down after a few months or years, this is part of the reason. The sales attendants chase away customers by their attitude.

I had decided that I would make this shop attendant stew in her mess. I allowed the conversation to linger on a little longer, as the tried to probe further to be sure if her job was safe.

She gave me the option of following her upstairs to pay for my bottle of ink which was just 10 pounds. At this time, I decided to make it two bottles, so that it would be worth her trouble. Meanwhile, she had turned down a total of 750,000 pounds paying customers.

I accepted the offer and she sort of shut down the cashier desk area and asked another shop attendant next door to stand in for her, while she took “this gentleman” upstairs to pay for his two bottles of ink.

Immediately she struck conversation with me and was explaining how she went for anti-natal the day before and was told to be on bed rest and all the sympathy stories she could tell me. But that because of the love she had for her job, she still made it to the shop.

I kept a straight face and did not entertain too much of her stories. I sort of acted the “boss” here from the reality shows I had watched. We got on the escalator and to the shop upstairs and she asked me if I was transiting Heathrow, because I had no carryon bags or trolleys. I ignored the question as she was probing to be sure of my identity.

Just before we got into the second job, she could not hold on to her curiosity anymore. She asked me pointedly: “you are not the shop owner, are you”?! I ignored the question and she was now fidgeting and twiddling her thumbs.

She became more confused and agitated, when the teller cashier upstairs was very polite and courteous to me.

We exchanged pleasantries as she scanned my items and asked for my card. I was careful not to bring out a Nigerian card, as I was enjoying the suspense. I paid for the two bottle of ink and we made our way back down to the shop downstairs.

She asked me for the second time: “you are not the owner of the shop, are you”? I smiled and told her I was not the owner of the shop, to ally her fears, but that she should treat every customer as though they were the owners of the shop and make sales, because it was from the sale that she was being paid. I asked her to imagine that I was really her boss. She said she was sure, show would have been fired!

I submitted to her that if she was throwing away 750,000 pounds daily, before long, the shop would shut down and she would be out of job.

She agreed and apologized to me for her shoddy behavior and that she was relived I was not the shop owner. I told her I was transiting Heathrow going to Lagos, Nigeria.

I am sure this left a bitter taste in her mouth, how I worked her up for much for just 20 pounds and I was not even the owner of the shop, she feared I was!

Just then, the IT technician arrived to fix the faulty automated cash teller machine.

A Customer Ombudsman never walks away from an opportunity to enlighten, educate, enlighten a customer care or sales person, because it reduces the level of customers’ complaints and improves sales, if customers were treated rightly.

 

Dr. Uwem Akangson is a Customer’s Ombudsman, a Member of the International Ombudsman Association, (IOA) USA, a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, (ACIArb) UK, an Alumni of the Harvard Business School (HBS) & a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) Nigeria.