Sunday, December 04, 2005

Customer Service Cheers & Jeers: My husband works in user experience design, which means he helps make web sites intuitive and user-friendly, and he's always had a customer service focus, even when he was working at the library reference desk. So I'm especially attuned to good or bad customer service when I see it, and to good or bad consumer web sites. Giving someone a good feeling about your company can be worth a lot more than advertising, and I see no excuse for poor customer service. Two companies have made impressions on me this past week...one positive and one not!:

Cheers to Paragon Gifts! When we didn't receive our order from them, a week past the time their online order status checker told us we should have received it, we e-mailed them about the problem, and they immediately sent a replacement order for no extra charge! Wow! Guess I'll be ordering from them again! (Edited later to add: Got it!)

Jeers to VistaPrint.com! After I placed my order, they offered me other products I could add to my order with no additional shipping. I selected one to get a better look at it, and to see if I could get it personalized with my name instead of my husband's, which was shown on the sample. Based on all my experience with that site as well as other sites like it, I assumed that if I clicked on it, I could edit the personalization, and if not I could at least decline to purchase it. But as soon as I clicked it, it said that it had already been added to my current order & already been charged to my account, & they allow NO changes to any orders that have been placed! I find that outrageous! My husband wouldn't want the product shown, so I decided to ask them to change the personalization anyway. They had an online customer service form, which I filled out at length & sent. I then got an automated e-mail reply from them, saying they only offer customer service by telephone!! Yet they had an online customer service form, and it's an online-only business! I decided to suck it up & call despite my phone phobia, only to find out they don't offer customer service at all on weekends. Funny, they somehow managed to send me an advertising e-mail on a weekend. This is not a company I want to do business with again.

Uh...sorry to be so commercial in this one. In other news I am going crazy trying to get ready for a move and Christmas at the same time. The move may get pushed back.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I got the girly product personalized with my name. And yeah, they're worthless to both you and me.