Here at The House of Boogie, we occasionally call out those businesses which we feel are worthy of our business; hence the BoogieLinks to your lower left, which list some businesses with which we have dealt in the past and, as a result, which we can recommend.
Unfortunately, there are those which demonstrate ineptitude, incompetence and disorganization -- and, in answer to your first question, no, we're not referring to the government. There are companies like Playcentric, which manage to screw up every order they receive (they are, after all, located in Buffalo, NY) and there are companies like Buy.com, which go to great lengths to demonstrate the very definition of incompetence. There are, thankfully, some companies as bulletproof as it gets (ie Amazon.com -- none better). So the debate remains: if you order a bunch of crap and it gets to you, but in a delayed manner, without any customer support of any kind, is that business one which should keep you as a customer?
What follows is an excerpt of an e-mail I received today from The Lance Armstrong Foundation. I ordered a ten-pack of those yellow LiveStrong bracelets around the time my father went into the hospital, which was mid-August. They advised it would take six or so weeks to ship the bracelets, which, for ten small circles of rubber packed in little plastic bags and weighing an ounce apiece, I found to be a tad excessive. On top of the per-bracelet charge of $1, they charged me a $5 shipping/handling fee for the entire order. So six weeks, minimum, to get ten little rubber circles.
I would have said the hell with it but Niketown stopped selling them and it was for charity. So I went ahead with the order.
Six weeks later, nothing. No contact, no nothing. A friend of mine who I'd promised a bracelet mentioned them to me so I checked -- nothing newsworthy online at the site. So I e-mailed. And I got no response.
Eventually (another three weeks) the bracelets came. I was simply overjoyed at the bounty I'd received, packed into a soiled manilla envelope, crushed into a rectangular form as dictated by my mailbox. My wait was well worth it; the bracelets were distributed among friends and relatives without delay, and all was good. I will admit I laughed every time someone asked me about getting more, and explained how impressed I was with the LAF's (nonexistent) customer service.
Fast forward four months later, to this evening. I opened my e-mail and, behold and lo, this nugget of information which really put me at ease:
This company, which is the only legitimate place to purchase the yellow LiveStrong bracelets, which probably has my credit card info somewhere in their messy, disorganized, chaotic file room (or on their equally disheveled servers) actually managed to wait three months to e-mail me in order to advise me my order had shipped. Brilliant!The LAF Store-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Order Number: 22xxxx
Date Ordered: 2004-10-06 20:36:00
Ship Date: 2004-11-08
Order Information Update:
Thank you for ordering from the LAF Store! Your order has been
processed and is being shipped based upon the shipping method you selected
during the order process.Order status: ShippedYour order was shipped on:
2004-11-08If you would like to make an additional donation, please go
to: https://secure.laf.org/Donations/donate_amount.cfmIf you have any questions about your order, please use the
Contact Us page on the website, and we will answer you promptly.Sincerely,The LAF Store
They didn't bother to verify I'd gotten my order, they didn't bother to respond to the e-mail I'd sent to them four months ago, and they didn't bother to check in which state I'd filed a Better Business Bureau claim against them.
I highly recommend a visit to Chinatown to purchase these bracelets from any street vendor that sells them. Forget the fact that they will not be items from which the sale's proceeds will go to charity; forget the fact that the person selling you the bracelet won't likely know any english beyond the numbers and the conversion rates for dollars into a number of international currencies; and forget the fact that they're blatant, illegal duplicates of a legitimate product.
You won't have to wait over two months to get an wrinkled envelope of ten rubber yellow circles and you won't have to wait six months to get an e-mail which feels like a "golden oldie."
Incidentally, as much as I like supporting charities, I am not only opposed to supporting the LAF, if my experience with that organization's website is not atypical, I would cringe to ponder how my money was being misused and mishandled, much like this order was.
http://www.laf.org/
Caveat Emptor.
No comments:
Post a Comment