A few weeks ago I placed an order online with a global company for a birthday gift for my 12 year old daughter. The value of the order was about $100.
The website said that it would arrive from the warehouse in France to my home in Switzerland in about 2-3 days. After two days I could see from the online tracking that it had reached Switzerland and was awaiting clearance in Swiss customs. Several more days passed, and it was still in customs. I emailed the company. Someone responded fairly promptly telling me that sometimes customs takes a few days and that I should just wait. More days passed, and more emails. Told to wait. I told the company that I have had many things shipped from abroad to Switzerland in the last 20+ years and it never took more than a day or two in customs. I asked her to look into it with her shipper. She said to wait.
Finally I got fed up and started calling around myself. I called the French post, then the Swiss post, and then the Suisse customs. Finally the customs office was able to tell me what the problem was: the sender had failed to specify the value of the goods on the customs form. So in the end I had to do this myself to get the package released to me.
In the end it was 18 days from when I placed the order to when my daughter got her birthday present.
I sent one final email to the company explaining all the work that I put in and my displeasure that it was caused by their error. They sent a polite response saying that these things happen (no apology) and that they hoped my daughter enjoyed her gift.
I am not impressed by their attitude throughout this process. I had received an email from TrustPilot asking for my review, so clearly giving them a negative review is an option. But I am thinking of asking them for some sort of material compensation, given that the whole thing was caused by their incompetence and resulted in my putting in a fair amount of my own time to fix the problem (about 2 hours is my guess).
Would it be reasonable for me to ask for compensation, or am I just overreacting?
Give an honest negative review, then never deal with them again. If a friend is shopping for something the company sells, urge your friend to shop elsewhere.
Why are you due compensation? You could have reasonably asked for your money back when the package hadn’t been delivered but you received the item and gave it to your daughter. I really wish I could successfully sue people for wasting my time but life isn’t built around that concept.
A better-managed company would apologize, own their mistake completely, and refund part of the purchase cost to help make up for the crappy service/delay/OP’s effort.
In the present case, the company has been made aware that they made a mistake and caused considerably delay and remedial effort on the part of the OP, but they’ve already demonstrated that they’re not willing to apologize, own the mistake even a little bit, or refund any part of the purchase price.
An honest negative review that clearly articulates a factual sequence of events and the burden on the OP is entirely fair.
I’m sorry but the more I reread the complaint the more I have to laugh. This is an insane post. My wife heard me chuckle and came over to read as well. Her family is from Switzerland and she said she hopes this person is not the norm.
To be fair to the OP, this is where the company starts to show poor customer service. They made a mistake - fine, mistakes happen - but one of the first rules of marketing is ‘fail gracefully’ - correct your mistakes as soon as you can, either by going the extra mile to fix the problem, give your customer their money back, or send them a gift to make them feel better about you. Research shows we actually warm to companies which fail, but respond well to their failure.
The OP hasn’t earned the right to compensation, but the company has certainly earned the right to a poor review.
Yes, you should ask them for compensation. Why let your personal feelings or values of what’s right and wrong affect your dealings with a corporation? Are you worried that St. Peter or some band of organized morality police are going to cite you? I assure you that there are vanishingly few corporations that would let their values of what’s right or wrong dictate their policy towards their users. So yea… get what you can from them and -as others have said- don’t shop there again.
The “right” to compensation… you’ve got to be kidding me. Corporations have been screwing us all along. If you can get compensated, then you should.
You have no idea whether this is some Amazon MegaCorp, or a little Mom and Pop shop selling home knitted dolls. There’s a lesson to be learned by the company, certainly, but this concept of ‘Let’s screw them for all they’ve got’ isn’t always the right thing to do.
I’m a former Vice-President of a few different New York Stock Exchange-traded retail companies. In a few organizations, Customer Service reported to me.
If you asked for compensation – given the circumstances – I’d probably offer you free shipping on your next order, a 10% discount on your next order – something, but something that was effectively a “store credit.”
I’d feel like we did wrong by you. I’d take responsibility for our error and the inconvenience (which, to me, is still harm, even if not pure economic damage) it caused, and I’d seek to retain you as a customer if I could.
Modnote: This is borderline on a warning. You’ve insulted Orville_mogul with this posts. Attacking the poster is not allowed. Attacking the content of the post itself is.
Sorry they treated you that badly. @SanVito is right, not much to do about a package not arriving but at that point they should have done something, taken some action or given you a refund. Just one more thing you should complain about in your review. At least you managed to get the gift eventually but that really sucks.
I don’t think it’s absurd to request compensation for wasted time and a very delayed delivery. I also don’t think there’s any chance you’ll receive it, since a company with any decent customer service would have made different choices along the way, so there’s really no point in doing so.