Customer Service

[randall911]

Few minor details left out from the correspondence to protect the innocent (until proven guilty)


ME:

OK I am getting a bit annoyed right now.

I note that I have purchased (and paid for) the items on 5th of
November (which was a month ago) at which point I was told that the
items would be dispatched on the 27th.

Recent correspondence would indicate that you still have not shipped
my items, I have since asked on 2 separate occasions (this is a third
time) when will you ship and received no response from you.

Can you let me know what is going on?
Please note if I do not hear from you I will be filing a claim with
Paypal for a refund.

SUPPLIER:

I have received the parts and am in the process of building the **** in order that the orders were received. I will cancel your order and refund your payment.

ME:

I have received a note from Paypal that a refund has been issued.
You have refunded the first payment but not the second one.

I am not sure which part of my email was unclear: I was asking about a
dispatch date and said that if I do not hear from you I will be asking
for a refund.

Seeing you have immediately issued the refund you have either
misunderstood or do not want to sell me a product.

Either way I find it frustrating.

SUPPLIER:

Both payments were refunded, *** and *** but Paypal has to transfer the larger amount from my bank as I keep minimal funds in Paypal. I am surprised that your Paypal account does not indicate the pending transfer. Feel free to request a refund from your end if it makes you more comfortable.

I'm sorry that I caused you annoyance and frustration. I received the parts later than promised and still have to ******* and I can't commit to a firm completion date as the nice-to-have products take a lower priority in my projects. There is a window of 3-5 days from now that they will be done, but I can't resolve down further than that and you have led me to believe that you would call it fraud by that time. Since a refund is an acceptable final solution for you, that will be the best way for me to satisfy you. I'm sorry I did not consider the date critical as I have had products held up in customs for up to six weeks and consider a number of days one way or the other on an international order to be in the noise level. It is a mistake on my part for not communicating that.

Am I being a princess and overreacting (was quite annoyed when I was typing those emails) or is there an important component missing from the customer service perspective here?

Also from a business perspective wouldn’t you want to sell the product rather than push the customer away?

[Gustyones]

Was there any correspondence prior to your first email you quoted above? If not, I probably would have been slightly annoyed as the vendor. However, he obviously had a knee jerk reaction and took it a little too far. It sounds like he is content with his level of business and doesn't feel he needs to bend over backwards to please a customer or sell his product.

Just my thoughts..

[Drisump]

I'm not sure about the context but I live in Canada where it is quite routine for any orders from outside the country to take months to transact. Last year I purchased a couple of items for the Porsche from the states and waited three months for the order to be filled and ran through customs. I had put it on Visa and found, that the day of the order, the entire order had been billed to my account.....cheeky, I thought. My correspondence was over the phone and I must say the experience made me more aware of the Pelican quality of service....too bad they don't sell EVERYTHING. Sounds like the supplier is trying to make you happy but quality communication seems to be difficult in most businesses. I find people rarely read emails with full attention to the details contained, nothing beats the phone. Cheers

[RWebb]

federal law limits the time a mail order business can hold your money without shipping anything

I forget the details but you might want to contact the consumer protection agency in your state - usually in the Atty General's office.

[Flat Six]

So, um, where's the Tech content?

[Matt Monson]

If a customer threatened me with going to Pay Pal with a refund like that, I'd probably send the money back and tell the customer to take their business elsewhere. It's insulting. It presumes that the vendor is going to ignore you and blow you off and uses the threat of forcibly taking your money back to elicit a response. The response that sort of behaviour elicits from me is to tell the guy to piss off.

Now maybe there is more to this story and you have good reason to demand attention from the vendor in that way. But if there's no history of the vendor ignoring your emails, it comes off to me as needlessly harsh and openly distrustful of the vendor's intent.

[RWebb]

I went back and re-read his OP

Nov. 5 - payment made

1 month later - the 3rd Inquiry is made & Response is (some sort of assembly or fabrication or?? is involved) AND seller or manf'er has exceeded the promised by date AND explains he put customer's order on a slow schedule (?)

a partial refund is made & something about customs (for components??)

it is hard to say from this vague and fragmentary post, but IF this is a contract between 2 parties in the US with out any caveats being made by the "supplier" manf'er ahead of time, then something is wrong

OTOH, if the customer was having some sort of custom work done and the 1st payment was a down payment with the 2nd payment a progress payment, then nothing is wrong

a request for a refund or Paypal issue being raised on the 3rd contact after missing a promised by date is not out of line, is it?

[dshepp806]

I'd take my business elsewhere...period.

Doyle

[randall911]

Originally Posted by Gustyones

Was there any correspondence prior to your first email you quoted above? If not, I probably would have been slightly annoyed as the vendor. However, he obviously had a knee jerk reaction and took it a little too far. It sounds like he is content with his level of business and doesn't feel he needs to bend over backwards to please a customer or sell his product.
Just my thoughts..

Yes, there was correspondence prior to that email which was basically me asking about the delivery date to which I have received no response.
Yep, it is the second part of your message that I feel is an accurate description, no desire to sell the product due to what some refer to as “circumstances based attitude” which I am surprised with.

Originally Posted by Drisump

I'm not sure about the context but I live in Canada where it is quite routine for any orders from outside the country to take months to transact. Last year I purchased a couple of items for the Porsche from the states and waited three months for the order to be filled and ran through customs. I had put it on Visa and found, that the day of the order, the entire order had been billed to my account.....cheeky, I thought. My correspondence was over the phone and I must say the experience made me more aware of the Pelican quality of service....too bad they don't sell EVERYTHING. Sounds like the supplier is trying to make you happy but quality communication seems to be difficult in most businesses. I find people rarely read emails with full attention to the details contained, nothing beats the phone. Cheers

Thanks, I understand that order can take a while and I can accept that and work around it but I feel it needs to be communicated.

Originally Posted by RWebb

federal law limits the time a mail order business can hold your money without shipping anything

I forget the details but you might want to contact the consumer protection agency in your state - usually in the Atty General's office.

Thanks, the vendor promptly sent a refund (or at least the larger of the two payments I made), I do not think there was ever any intent of keeping the money and not delivering the product, just lousy communication and bit of an attitude I guess.

Originally Posted by Flat Six

So, um, where's the Tech content?

Sorry, may have posted in a wrong forum.

Originally Posted by Matt Monson

If a customer threatened me with going to Pay Pal with a refund like that, I'd probably send the money back and tell the customer to take their business elsewhere. It's insulting. It presumes that the vendor is going to ignore you and blow you off and uses the threat of forcibly taking your money back to elicit a response. The response that sort of behaviour elicits from me is to tell the guy to piss off.

Now maybe there is more to this story and you have good reason to demand attention from the vendor in that way. But if there's no history of the vendor ignoring your emails, it comes off to me as needlessly harsh and openly distrustful of the vendor's intent.

Thanks Matt, just out of curiosity - do you own a business?
I see where you are coming from but just to clarify – you are saying that my “threat” presumes that vendor will ignore me, that part is not an assumption but a fact, the vendor has ignored my previous requests. So what options do I have if I have already asked nicely twice and you do not respond? I see your point about customer pissing you off but again you seem to ignore the fact that customer is already pissed off with your/vendors poor attitude?

So do you think it is not insulting to ignore your client but it is insulting to threaten with a refund request?

Originally Posted by RWebb

I went back and re-read his OP

Nov. 5 - payment made

1 month later - the 3rd Inquiry is made & Response is (some sort of assembly or fabrication or?? is involved) AND seller or manf'er has exceeded the promised by date AND explains he put customer's order on a slow schedule (?)

a partial refund is made & something about customs (for components??)

it is hard to say from this vague and fragmentary post, but IF this is a contract between 2 parties in the US with out any caveats being made by the "supplier" manf'er ahead of time, then something is wrong

OTOH, if the customer was having some sort of custom work done and the 1st payment was a down payment with the 2nd payment a progress payment, then nothing is wrong

a request for a refund or Paypal issue being raised on the 3rd contact after missing a promised by date is not out of line, is it?

I deliberately removed the technical info from the messages, It is not custom work, it is a product from a vendor that this particular forum is quite familiar with.

The product itself and the issues with the supply side were not my issue more the fact there was no communication, and that the reply I received seemed to have a “fck off” statement politely wrapped up in a more acceptable language.

Seeing that this vendor has a quite a limited market for his product and that the world has become a global village where bad news travel fast I am surprised with his attitude. Would expect that from my seven year old son not from a business.
Perhaps I am expecting to much.

[randall911]

Originally Posted by dshepp806

I'd take my business elsewhere...period.

Doyle

Thanks Doyle, Yep I am going elswhere - I do not think that vendor is giving me any options anyway..

[brads911sc]

I dont think you are out of line.

You handed over your hard earned money. Thats your 1/2 of the agreement. Shipping the goods and communicating is the other half of the agreement.

These vendors that have Matt's attitude would never get my $$

[s_morrison57]

Who is the vender so no one else gets the same treatment? Name the name or forever be a princess.
Finn

[Matt Monson]

Originally Posted by randall911

Thanks Matt, just out of curiosity - do you own a business?
I see where you are coming from but just to clarify – you are saying that my “threat” presumes that vendor will ignore me, that part is not an assumption but a fact, the vendor has ignored my previous requests. So what options do I have if I have already asked nicely twice and you do not respond? I see your point about customer pissing you off but again you seem to ignore the fact that customer is already pissed off with your/vendors poor attitude?

So do you think it is not insulting to ignore your client but it is insulting to threaten with a refund request?

Randall,
I think a review of my first post will reveal that I read your story a bit too quickly and missed the part where you had sent 2 emails without response. That does definitely change things relative to what I said above. Sorry I missed that part and you are justifiably annoyed.

But my root point, which is one about human nature is still something to consider. The second email you posted expressed confusion about why your money was sent back and indicates that what you meant was that if you did not hear from him you will be asking for a refund. But whether you meant to or not, you didn't say that in your first email that you posted. Like I said, you forcibly threatened to take your money back. My response as a person, on the receiving end of that would be different than if you had said,"If you are unable to fulfill your commitment in a timely fashion I would like you to return my money".

The reality is we really still don't have the full picture here and it's hard for any of us to really know your situation and what has transpired without you posting those two unanswered emails.

I am a vendor, a very well known one, and I like to think a respected one. I do business all over the world. And I will give you a real example from a very recent situation I was in that ended differently than your scenario. Like yourself, my customer was in Australia. He had previously placed an order and we were just waiting for his wire transfer to clear our account before we shipped. He sent the payment on Nov 22nd (US date, he initiated payment on the 23rd down under). On Nov 24th he sent an email asking if we had gotten the payment and when to expect tracking details. Nov 24th was Thanksgiving in America. The customer didn't know that. Not hearing a reply over the long weekend, the customer sent a follow up email on his Monday morning (Nov 28th by his calendar, the evening of Sunday Nov 27th here in the States).

I went to work on monday the 28th. I take emails in the order received from oldest to newest. That particular day the phones were ringing off the hook and I didn't sit down to my desk to even start dealing with the 5 day backlog of emails until around 3pm my time. That's about dawn on Tuesday in Australia. Shortly after that, I get a third email from the customer. He was pissed. He thought I had been ignoring him. I was very apologetic and explained the circumstances and he understood. It also didn't hurt things that I one of the things I had done on that day was check my bank acccount, see the payment, and had shipped his parts prior to that third email. But the point of the story is that things are not always what they seem.

And please understand that I am not unsympathetic to your situation. Maybe this guy you are dealing with is a total douche. Or maybe he's one of the vendors around here who makes a very refined hand crafted product who gets overwhelmed from time to time. Doughtery Cams comes to mind. John goes AWOL from time to time when he gets buried and you can find threads about it. I really don't know the "truth" of your situation and really can't say one way or another.

In closing, I will tell you what I do as a business to avoid these sorts of problems and misunderstandings.
1. I don't take deposits on back ordered in-line products. Period. I also don't keep a waiting list. I tell the customer my expected back in stock date and ask them to contact me around that date for an update. I will take your name and number and attempt to remember to contact you, but always tell the customer that if they don't hear from me, get in touch, because I do get buried and things do fall through the cracks.

2. If it's a custom job, I take a 50% deposit with the balance due prior to shipment. My parts can take 4-6 months to make. If it's custom, it can sometimes be longer. I make it clear up front that custom work has a sliding delivery date and I will do my best to hit a desired date, but that there are often circumstances beyond my control that push dates back. If someone wants custom work, they need to be ok with that.

3. I don't take Pay Pal. Pay Pal is a screw job on the vendors. Not only are their service fees higher than credit card processing, they offer next to no protections for the vendor. They are great for the customer, but the vendor doesn't have much support. I get great support from Visa and Mastercard.

Like I said above, I like to think that I am a well respected vendor. There's a lot of my customers on this board, and maybe one or two of them will speak up and tell how they have been treated by me. I live by the golden rule and do unto others. I try to treat everyone with mutual respect. But if anyone thinks I'm a dick because of what I expressed above it's your right to spend your hard earned money with another company.

Kind Regards,

Matt Monson
Guard Transmission LLC
Guard Transmission

[Quicksilver]

Originally Posted by RWebb

federal law limits the time a mail order business can hold your money without shipping anything

I forget the details but you might want to contact the consumer protection agency in your state - usually in the Atty General's office.

The FTC rules for mail order are that you can't charge a credit card until the item ships. Paypal isn't a credit card so that doesn't really apply. I suspect that this would fall under the cash sale rules so they would have 30 days to ship it under backorder rules. By the time 30 days rolls around they must have notified you and they can only keep the order active if you specifically tell them to keep it on backorder. If you tell them to cancel or if you don't reply they they are required to cancel the order.


The readers digest version is here:
http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus02-business-guide-mail-and-telephone-order-merchandise-rule
The rules have been extended to specifically mention the internet since I last was involved in this stuff. Not sure how completely this applies to sales through ebay/paypal though. The transaction is complicated by the middle man so who knows how a court interprets it.

The exact wording/representation in the original ebay ad would have a lot to do with if the mail order rules apply. The shipping representation is the key thing. If it says it is built to order that is one thing. If it is represented as a completed in-stock item that is another.
Assuming it falls under this rule don't expect the FTC to take any action. They expend their energy on the bigger fish who mess with hundreds or thousands of people. Lots of direct marketing companies have operated for years by charging the credit cards first and then reversing the charges if they can't fulfill the order.

It looks like the seller has technically followed the timing rules (assuming the refund comes through) but not because he has any awareness of those rules. He just has awareness of paypal disputes...