After waiting more than two months for my order to be delivered (during which time I sent you a total of two e-mails and left one voice mail message, to nicely nudge you towards first acknowledging the order and then to send my stuff), I discover on receiving it that you sent the wrong item, clearly labeled as such. So I dispatch another e-mail, politely pointing out the error and suggesting (since it is live plants, not easily returnable) that you send the correct item next year (for which I will pay, though a discount would be reasonable given the error).
This should not be an occasion for you to respond with a long angst-ridden screed about how you’ve struggled to endure my “pressure”, the hot weather and the unbearable rush of business during which you’ve only been able to “ship and sleep” (and incidentally, denying the rather obvious mistake you made).
I understand stuff gets screwed up and that personal problems can affect business, but I am not buying into your guilt trip.
Other hints on professionalism for the mail-order nursery trade (and small family-type businesses in general):
When you’re going through messy marital difficulties, brief e-mails to your customers with pending orders, and a statement on your website indicating there is a family problem and shipment delays can be expected are a good idea. What is not good is to maintain silence, accumulate a backlog of upset customers (while continuing to accept new orders) and then finally to post a lengthy harangue on your website explaining why you and your spouse are on the outs and that everything will work out, eventually. Even better, once your business has been thoroughly lambasted on a consumer review website, do not let your new girlfriend post a response on behalf of the business to tell complainers what shits they are.
Do not publish cutesy or sardonic hints in your catalogue or website on how people don’t know how to be good customers, so you will educate them (including jocular comments about how mean people can take their business someplace else). Just state your ordering and return policies and stick to them.
If you advertise a business in the paper or yellow pages, get a business phone line (assuming we are not talking about a small sideline like selling firewood or Weimaraner puppies). If you advertise a host of services offered by “Tri-County Landscape and Design”*, it leaves a poor impression if someone calls the listed number and gets a punch-drunk-sounding yahoo who answers, “…(pause)…Hulloooo?”
Oh, and a good rating on Angie’s List is not an automatic invitation to raise your prices 30%.
*this is a fictional example, so any actual punch-drunk-sounding yahoos operating under this business name should not take it personally.
Dear local minor-league ballpark management. If the game is not likely to start on time, due to rain earlier in the day and rain likely to occur during the scheduled game time, please tell the audience before the time when the game was supposed to start. You have a PA system, you have a scoreboard, use them. Put up a message that says “Rain Delay” and if at all possible, an estimated time of the first pitch.
(Game was scheduled to start at 7pm. Shortly AFTER 7 pm a message reading Rain Delay was finally put up. A bit later than that, “Estimated First Pitch 7:50” Actual first pitch not long after that. 1 1/2 innings were played, then the game stopped due to more rain. I left at 8:30, during a lull in the rain.)
I don’t know what kind of nursery it was or what you wanted, but I’ve always had amazing service from Bluestone Perennials. They stand by their guarantee absolutely, and when I just e-mailed them to ask for suggestions on what to replace my catmint that I got from them with, since it had taken over the whole bed (my fault, I knew it could be invasive), they sent me their suggestion for free!
By the way, here’s a really good site for reviews of mail order nurseries. I browse it for new, interesting (and reliable) companies, though the comments on the crappy ones are more fun to read.
When I worked as a purchaser for a 10 store botique we found a female artist who had her work printed onto the backs of white t-shirts. We thought they were unique so we ordered a couple hundred for our stores. When we received them in one of the boxes that had a couple dozen shirts we found they were printed defectively. The shirts had a fold in them when the design was applied so when you flatened out the shirt there was a solid white line across the design.
I called the lady to arrange to return/exchange/refund the defective 2 dozen.
Her reply: “Oh, I can’t make any more of those. They were a special order.”
Me: “No problem. I’ll just return the defective ones to you.”
Her: “Oh, I don’t take returns.”
Me: “Well, these aren’t returns just for the heck of it. They’re defective.”
Her: “Well they’re no good to me either.”
Me: “OK. If you don’t want them back I’ll just destroy them here and just pay you for the good ones.”
Her: “Oh, I don’t do refunds.”
Me: “Well, it’s not a refund since I haven’t paid you yet. I’ll just short pay the invoice and put the notes on it.”
Her: “You can’t do that. I, I, I’m a starving artist. I had to pay for those shirts. Now your not going to pay me for them. I’m going to go out of business if you don’t pay me in full. sob, sob.”
So I short payed her and shipped the defective shirts back to her on my dime.
She still called our parent company at least once a month to say she still hadn’t been paid in full and we were destroying her business.
I called a gutter-cleaning service to get an estimate of how much it would cost to get our rain gutters cleaned. The woman who answered the phone told me she’d drive past the house and write an estimate based on that.
I called her Monday, and she told me she had driven past, but she hadn’t written the estimate yet. Yesterday, I called her and she said that she had the estimate prepared, but that she was out of the office on a job and that she would call me back later in the afternoon. It’s now Wednesday afternoon, almost a week after I first called her, and I still don’t have an estimate.
I have an appointment with a different company tomorrow, and they’ll be the ones who will get our business. Not the flaky woman who can’t get it together enough to call a potential customer back.
The company (or at least this particular incarnation of it) appears to be defunct and the Garden Watchdog consumer review page is not linkable for some reason, but here’s an excerpt from the girlfriend’s totally TMI “company comment” (names deleted):
"This is ( 's) new love as someone refered to me as. My name is ( ) and maybe you people who have nothing better to do than than slander ( ) would like to know what I see first hand.
I met ( ) AFTER he and ( ) FILED for divorce…let me make that very clear! ( ) had very bad health problems and ( ) did his best to support her health wise after she was gone and the divorce filed. I have never seen a messier or more destructive divorce in my life. In case anyone cares…( ) is doing quite well now and is getting her health back. I do get along with her and wish her nothing but the best.
Now, this is what people don’t see or seem to want to hear. ( ) is NOT a thief or con!..I know some of you will think ( ) put me up to writing this. NOT TRUE!!"
It goes on in this vein for quite awhile. I was tempted to send in a big order, but resisted…
There’s this one garden place in Northern California I ordered from. I could kinda tell perusing the site is was basically a women-power-cat-goddess-type “family owned” business. So I ordered some stuff from them to support the cause, as it were. After a couple years I snapped a photo of some of the plants they’d sent and got the snottiest, PMS-menstrual/menopausal email back. WTF? I emailed them back apologizing for trying to be nice, and then emailed all my friends I’d recommended them to and said “they’re a bunch of bitches, don’t order from them.” Everyone wrote back and said, “God, what bitches, they’re off my list.”
Moral of the story? Don’t put a hormonal bitch in charge of answering your customer service emails. I can order plants LOTS of places.
OTOH, I’ve dealt with Vanveen Bulbs in Washington, and the owner is the sweetest, most helpful person. Even though they don’t have the largest selection around, they still get my business whenever possible.
I’m having trouble parsing this. You snapped a photo of plants they’d sent and… emailed them the photo? To show them how the plants were growing, or something? And they answered bitchily because… you sent an email with a picture attached?
A few months back I used up the last of my favorite Alpha Hydroxy moisturizer. I tried in vain to find some more and finally did discover it, on the “discontinued products” page of the manufacturer’s website. ACK! A very similarly packaged product, called “Clear Skin Renewal” was available but it had lacked alpha hydroxy and SPF15, both of which were essential to me.
Panicked, I searched the internet for it, but no luck. Finally, via a link from the manufacturer’s website, I found a mom and pop kind of store that had a banner across the top that read, “It’s not discontinued, it’s here!” I did a search and there it was! Since the product looked so similar to Clear Skin Renewal, I didn’t rely just on the photo, but double checked the description. No worries, it was a VERBATIM description of the product from the manufacturer’s website and included the words “alpha hydroxy.” Title was correct, Photo was correct, Description was correct. Woo hoo! So I bought 7 of them.
They shipped the Clear Skin Renewal. Argh! So I called them and explained that they’d shipped “Clear Skin Renewal” instead of “Alpha Hydroxy Renewal” and could they send the correct stuff. She checked and reported that they couldn’t send out the Alpha Hydroxy one because that SKU had been discontinued. Well, no shit, Shirley. Why would I pay +30% above retail and $10 shipping for a product that was readily available at any store?
The CSR then pointed me to a disclaimer on their website that said (and this is verbatim off of their website):
And how does that apply to me? It wasn’t a change in packaging, it was an entirely different SKU! One had Alpha Hydroxy as the active ingredient and the other didn’t. Then I showed her how the title, the screen shot of the product and the description clearly stated “Alpha Hydroxy.” What she had shipped didn’t have AH. They shipped the wrong SKU. I even showed her how the description of the product I ordered matched the description off the manufacturer’s website to the letter.
She then said that I could return the product within 10 days, at my cost, and here was a Return Authorization number. Oh, and by the way, I’d be charged a 40% stocking fee. WHAT? Why? She went back to the original disclaimer and then pointed me to this one (again, verbatim off their website):
“So what you’re saying is that you could have shipped me a package of PENCILS, and as long as the SKU matched what was listed on the packing slip, I’d have no recourse?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that you should have compared SKUs.”
“How does one compare a SKU number when they don’t have the product any more?”
“You could have gotten it from the store.”
“It’s been DISCONTINUED! Which is why I paid 30% above the retail price, plus $10 shipping. I ordered it from you because your motto is: “It’s not discontinued; it’s here!!””
“Our policy clearly states—”
At that point my head exploded.
So I asked to speak to a supervisor. After 10 minutes on hold, she came back and told me that her supervisor was in a meeting. But that she’d agree to allow me to send back the product back, against their VERY CLEARLY STATED POLICY. I confirmed that they were going to waive the 40% restocking fee and she said yes. I jotted down her name, time and date, and hung up. Then I shipped the product back that very day, via Priority Shipping, following the their return policy (again, verbatim):
Italics mine.
Because I wasn’t born yesterday and because their website screamed “Assholes,” I took screenshots of the product, photo and description as well as screenshots of the manufacturer website. And I’m glad I did. Because when I got my AMEX statement they, predictably, had deducted 40% for a restocking fee.
Long story even longer. I didn’t even bother calling them, but immediately opened a dispute with AMEX. The vendor denied the dispute (of course they did), citing their ridiculous disclaimers and AMEX initially resolved it in their favor. But, armed with all my screen shots (they, of course, had changed the title, etc. on their website by then) and claim that the CSR had agreed to waive the 40% fee, they backed down.
Good thing because I was prepared to take it to the freaking Supreme Court. I don’t know how many customers have been cheated by their ridiculous, and possibly illegal, “policies” as I’m sure that those policies violate consumer protection laws. But since it was resolved in my favor, and they refunded my full purchase price including their (but not my) shipping costs, I didn’t pursue it further.
Oh, and was I going to tell them that they’d already refunded the purchase price less 40% restocking fee? No. Because I happen to have a disclaimer of my own:
“UNLESS YOU NOTIFY ME WITHIN 26 MINUTES OF DOUBLE REFUNDS, I WILL POCKET THE EXTRA CASH WITH NO PANGS OF CONSCIENCE.”
it was a fews years ago now, and I didn’t keep either their or my original email. But yeah, I snapped a photo of how well the plant was doing because you know, some places actually like that, and got a snotty response as if I was complaining about their plants (hey, I’m not that bad a photographer). I sent the response to a friend of mine and she said it sounded bitchy too. Maybe it was a misunderstanding but I did reply and say sorry for apparently pissing you off, but never got a response to that. So screw them and their business.
I sent Bluestone Perennials a picture once, as a “one year later” of one of their preplanned gardens, and not only were they so pleased and so gushing about it, they had all kinds of questions about my heirloom roses to the left of the butterfly garden too.
