I am ready to be a SC

[sbandliz]

Yes, I am going to yell and scream and have a tantrum tomorrow. Read on and tell me whether I am justified in doing so or not (this is an e-mail I just send to the company):

Hello ... Express,

I am seriously regreting ever placing this order with your company!

The following is my frustrating encounters with your company so far:

1. Order placed on 9th of September and received an e-mail order confirmation. (so far so good)

2. Approx. a week later, seeing that the money hadn't come out of my credit card, I called to enquire about my order - I was told that your company is currently experiencing delay of up to 10 days in order processing.

3. Last Friday 21st of September, I contacted your company again - this time, I was told that you have just processed my order the day before, and that 3 items are now out of stock, and the Goji Berry plant has been delayed to October.

4. Today, Monday 24th September, I received an undated letter from your company informing me that the Goji Berry plant has been delayed to early October, and that my whole order has been placed on hold to wait for the Goji Berry Plant!

5. For additional information, I went to your website and searched for Goji Berry, and found that your website said that delivery date is "late November".

My frustrations with your company are:

1. It is very strange for a company with internet online ordering to have 10 days delay in order processing. With technologies in this day and age, such delays just doesn't exist anymore. There is nothing "Express" about your company. Note that on the same day of placing my order with your company, I also placed an order for plants with another garden through their online ordering system - they delivered within 3 days and their plants are now growing happily in my yard!

2. Every item on my order were "in stock" when order was placed. I am now being penalised because your company cannot process orders ontime. One of the reason for ordering from your company was the Mozzie Blocker plant, now with this item out of stock there is absolutely no advantage in placing this order at all.

3. Since your company has an internet online ordering system, wouldn't it make more sense to send out notices of any delays and changes to ordered items by e-mail? Instead of trusting your undated letter by snail mail?

4. If I had not called your office last Friday, I would still be in the dark as to why - only $420.25 was deducted from my card last Friday when my order was for $485.65 - since your undated letter did not mention that 3 of the items I ordered are now out of stock.

5. Which date can I trust for the Goji Berry Plant? Early October or late November? At the moment, My garden is prepared and ready to plant, any further delays will cause the top soil to be washed away with any rain.

Please advise whether I can cancel the order for Goji Berry and have my order shipped asap. I will be contacting your office tomorrow at Noon if I do not receive your reply by e-mail.

A very frustrated (soon to be ex) customer.

Liz

[cinema guy]

I think you are more than justified. Unless what they offer is unique or unbeatably priced, I would be giving serious consideration to cancelling my order and requesting a refund

[GingerBiscuit]

I think you are fully justified. However, yelling and screaming may not achieve much except to have you branded as a nutter. Being coldly polite and dripping with ice when you get through to someone who can actually deal with your complaint will be FAR more effective.
(have seen the boy do this to people who give bad service- genuinely terrifying)

[MrSunshineState]

I agree with Ginger. If you are polite but firm, that does not make you sucky. Screaming and yelling and throwing a hissy fit is what makes an SC.

[bigjimaz]

You did better than I would have given the situation. There's nothing SC in what you've written.

[Brightglaive]

sbandiz,

I'd say your e-mail was very well thought out and lucid. It was concise and to the point. It was well written and brought up very valid concerns. I'd rather deal with that kind of complaint than the " I pay your salary. It makes sense that you deliver on time. You should install now that I have had to wait. AND I want full refund too... blahblahblah... ad infiniteum" type of sucky customer.


I find it a little disconcerting that they only charged you for a lower amount than what your order actually was. I'd say that was them trying to satisfy customers that were initially charged the whole amount at the time of purchase. It almost seems like they are going to discontinue the plant inquestion because they can't get any stock. If that's the case they would've done better by initially admitting they were out of stock and taking no more orders on the plants in question. For those that were inconvenienced they should have sent out an apology letter stating that the plant is out-of-stock indefinately and if you wish you can be placed on a waiting list for the new plants and here is a five dollar coupon for your trouble.

All-in-all you are a better customer than most.

Brightglaive

[Ill_Used_Heroine]

They shouldn't have charged your credit card for ANYthing, if the entire order is on hold until October/November. You should be charged only upon shipment of the order, partial charge for partial shipment or full charge for full shipment. IMO, it's not right for anyone to have to pay for something before it's been received, which is something I sometimes have to deal with, living in Hawaii. If things aren't shipped Priority Mail or Express, I usually have to pay my credit card bill before I ever receive anything and I hate that!

[Kara]

Maybe it's because I work on the other end of these kind of things, but I'd hesitate to jump down their throats about it.

Generally the department where the order is placed and the department where it is stored and shipped are completely seperate. The shipping center may not even be on the same side of the country. It's entirely possible to order something and then it goes out of stock. It's happened to me, I think it happens to everyone. The people that manage the website aren't always able to update 2 seconds after a product is out of stock. Same for the group that manages the inventory availability for the reps taking the orders (my company doesn't show me any quantity at all when I place an order, so I have no idea how many may be there).

Shipping delays suck. 2 months? Not unheard of. I have a phone right now that has been out of stock for 2 and a half months. It's fairly new, the manufacturer knows we need more of them, and they have yet to send them to us. But guess who gets to hear the yells and screams of customers over it? Not the manufacturer, that's for sure.

I see this happen a lot, especially as we get closer to the holidays. I order a phone for someone, then the next day, or 2 days later, we get an update that those phones are on backorder. We don't notify customers, only because we don't have a list of what customers ordered the device in question, and researching it would take too much time (there are too many other customers who need their stuff taken care of to pull people off to look these up). Of course, we don't charge until after the order ships, but when you authorize them to charge you, then it's not illegal or anything.

Do you have a right to cancel the order? By all means, if that's what you want, then do it. Do you have a right to be upset? Sure, this kind of situation isn't fun. Do you have a right to be sucky? No. Because this situation isn't fun for them either. Express your regret in needing to cancel the order because of the delay, but don't be sucky about it. Trust me, it's far beyond the ability of the rep you'll be talking to do anything about it. They can't send you something they don't have. It takes time to manufacture (or in this case grow) more of the product to fill the order. And if it was all part of the same order and all going to be 1 package, then I can see why they're waiting until the out of stock items come in to ship it to you.

[Andara Bledin]

I don't know how it works in Australia, but in the US, they would have been required to contact you as soon as they knew there would be a delay and offer you a new ship date or to let you cancel. To be repeated every time the ship date was missed.

I would cancel, myself. That is incredibly poor service. Unless they had something impossible to get, and even then, I'm not sure I'd be willing to help support them.

^-.-^

[Alfie]

Am I able to assume that you are going to leave out the emoticons?

I think that it's written really well. However, just as everyone else has said, I dont think that yelling etc on the phone to them will be of any help. Just call them if they don't call you in regards to you letter. When you call them, tell them that you are requesting a refund. Explain your point, but do not be a SC about it. If you are a SC about it, they can just as easily make it difficult for you as you can for them. I think that you are legally entittled to a refund, and they will know that.

I've found that in my experiences, being nice and polite but firm will get you what you want, and will take the stress out of it. I had an issue once where I had my mum's watch engraved as well as a pen for dad, the job was done REALLY badly. All I had to do was explain to them what they did wrong, and they provided the solution (replace the watch and pen, and get someone else to engrave it). I used the same strategy when I had my brand new camera die on me, and recieved the same result.

[Crazeyal]

I'd simply demand a refund and not do business with them ever again. Railing against a random person will not fix the inadequate policies that allowed the mistakes. None of the people with the power to change even a TINY amount of proceedure will be answering phones. Asking for a supervisor will get you the person in charge of the operators. yelling at THAT person will simply either piss him off, end your call, or make some petty revenge directed at YOU happen.

Sorry to be brutally honest, but it doesn't seem like you've been paying attention.

The letter you put up is restrained, more polite than probably deserved, and succinct. Screaming at dishonest people will NEVER WORK. Screaming at honest people with no power to change a broken system is why this place exists.

[sbandliz]

Lurking on this website has definitely taught me a few things - being calm and clear will get you more help in most situations.

Another reason for my stress was that I was hoping for the yard to be fully planted with flowers for Hubby's 40th party this weekend - big family shin dig at home. Oh well, can't be helped.

My reason for sending an e-mail first was that I know I will be too emotional on the phone. At least with e-mail I can double check what I am saying. Well, this is the reply I got this morning at 11am:

Hello ...,

Thank you for your message we can certainly cancel the Goji Berry from your order and send the order straight out. We can do this today and however we will wait for your OK to do such. We have passed your email on to our Managing Director, we appreciate feedback such as yours and feel it important to pass it on to our Management team, as it helps improve the service we provide our customers.

Thank you and happy gardening!
Regards,
... Express

I hope they do forward my e-mail to the management team - the people who are ultimately responsible for this mess.

[Primer]

I'm still waiting on a speedometer head for my '98 Nissan Frontier that was ordered back in August...of 2006. At least I haven't been charged for it yet. The DH just replaced the water pump yesterday. At least that part was not "on backorder."