CHANTALE AND CLINTON CALL FOR SERVICE

THE RILEYS

On the evening of July 5, 2007, the Rileys were sitting around their dinner table reminiscing about the events of the past few weeks. Early in February, the Rileys had bought a new compact refrigerator which had started to malfunction. They had subsequently called the vendor’s repair service and had received extremely poor service. They were now wondering what they should do. Should they do nothing and treat the poor service as an isolated incident? Should they walk away vowing never to deal with this particular retailer and the brand? Should they write to the retailer, complain about the service and demand some form of apology or compensation? Or was there something else that they could do? Underlying all of these questions was the issue: Was it worth the trouble?

Chantale and Clinton Riley were two professional consultants: Chantale worked as an accountant and
Clinton was a financial advisor. Clinton was 60 years old and Chantale was 56 years old. They had met each other while at university in the 1970s and had been living in Montreal since 1980. They resided in
Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, one of the boroughs of Montreal. They had two children: a boy,
23 years old, who had just completed a bachelor’s degree at McGill University, and a girl, 18 years old, who had just completed her first year of CEGEP.1 All members of the family were completely bilingual in
English and French. In fact, McGill University was the first educational institution where the boy had been schooled in English; the girl had always attended French schools.

The Rileys had always been loyal to the Bryand brand of appliances, the private brand of The Canadian, one of the largest department store chains in Canada. The Canadian had more than 40,000 employees and annual sales of more than $5.5 billion.