Hi Folks!
I apologize for the late post. I am sure some of you are waiting for my take on this post that I started. First of all, let me tell you that Mr. Jonathan Musick sent me an email yesterday. In the spirit of transparency, here's an excerpt from his email:
After examining all the facts the company owner determined that due to our upgrading the shipping to a method other than that of which you had chose, it was our responsibility to reship your order. You should receive your order via FedEx tomorrow.
Although I have not yet received the shipment today, I thank Mr. Musick for considering the "facts" of the matter - although they have not clearly accepted their resposibility and poor judgement of the situation. Just the same, he stepped up on his game and I am grateful for the gesture.
I believed I received the email after this thread was called to KK's attention by one of the posters. BFC rocks for being a great forum that is not only informative but an effective vehicle for dessiminating customer grievances. Kudos to you!
Let me respond to Mr. Whetsell's reply.
Sir, the first line of your post says exactly what YOU and your company needs....
That's a lot of credibility points for a guy with one (1) BF post!!
A good understanding of customers needs and wants. Think of the situation in a retail store - face to face transaction. If I complain about bad service to you as an owner of the store, you would first ask how credible I am? Well,
I am your customer, is that credible enough for you? If you want to talk about credibility - lets say, I am almost like you. I am a Senior Executive of a Fortune 200 company that deals in the service industry - 20+ years experience. I am a college graduate with post graduate degree from one of the top 10 U.S. Universities. I am a knife collector (mostly Scandinavian) and has recently became a fan of Ka-Bar BK series. Is that good enough for you?
Your long rant in defense of Mr. Musick is laudable. Almost mind-boggling that it may have cost you more to monolouge than simply just resolving my simple and petty problem. First of all, I never said that Jonathan is a bad person. All I am complaining about is how he handled the situation. Heck, I wasn't even complaining about your exorbitant shipping rate (lowest shipping at $9 for a $4.99 usps flat rate envelope with no insurance?). You see, your policy have surely influenced his decision to write me off the bat. Even if I repeatedly asked and begged for a concession (meaning, "at least satisfy me on this transaction, its not my fault"). I told him that among my orders, the most imporant item is the Tek Lok because I already disassembled my sheath and I have a camping trip over the weekend. All he said is "I understand but we have a policy and all we can tell you is order the item again and have it shipped by Fedex." To his credit, he did offered a discounted cost but I thought thats ridiculous considering that the cost of the items I ordered is just $16.
Okay, here's your policy posted in your website:
We will attempt to ship all orders received before 12:00PM on each business day. Orders received after 12:00PM will be shipped within 24 hours, or the following business day. KnifeKits.com will arrange for shipment of ordered product(s) to the Customer, Free On Board (F.O.B.) shipping point, meaning title to the product(s) and risk of loss passes to the Customer upon delivery to the carrier. KnifeKits.com will advise Customer of estimated shipping dates, but KnifeKits.com will, under no circumstances, be responsible for delays in delivery, and associated damages, due to events beyond its reasonable control, including without limitation, acts of God or public enemy, acts of federal, state or local government, fire, floods, civil disobedience, strikes, lockouts, and freight embargoes.
Do you really think this is necessary albeit it is wrong? Your responsibility as an "On-line Retailer" is to make sure that your mechandise gets into the hands of your customer.
The "customer experience" doesn't end when YOU make the sale. It ends when your customer received the mechandise and praised you for the excellent service. That's your goal - not just to make the sale! To put an irony in this policy, are you saying that me as a customer can also say that if my money leaves my pocket and you received a notice that the payment has been sent - but in the end you did not. Can I say that our transaction should be as good as sold and I should get my mechandise even if you didn't get your money?
I also think you need to revisit this statement:
All we ask is that you pick the quality of delivery based on a certain assumption of risk/reward.
Really? I tell you, you put this policy in large bold letter on your website and you will see your numebr of customers drop significantly.
A simple search of KnifeKits.com on these forums returned over 500 posts worth of historic content about our company. I’ll let that do our reputation defending!
Again, really? You see, 500 positive posts can be undone by 1 negative post. That's an industry fact. Because our technology today and the way we communicate travels faster than you think. People nowadays blog, tweet, posts to forum and update their facebook account. Unfortunately, I do them all! So if the conventional wisdom is 1 cutomer equals 10 referrals, today, you multiply that by 10 or more. Because your audience is bigger in the internet.
If you didn't received the link to this thread, you wouldn't have the chance to "defend" yourself. Actually, I wasn't expecting a long defensive rant. As an owner, I have higher expectations to you on the way you handle this situation. Seems like you leveleld yourself with your people instead of of being the "beacon of hope" that everyone expected you to be.
Your second post comment made me frown more:
Regarding the “risk/reward” aspect of shipping…
Hey man… they call it ground shipping for a reason. By the time it gets there, it’s been on the ground a lot. I guess that I have an unfair advantage on you. I’ve actually seen enough shipments to know what really works and what doesn’t. Show me someone in here who ships more than me for less money and I’ll listen to them. Short of schooling you and not the other way around, I’m out of here on this note…
I sent the customer’s package overnight FedEx. I'm a professional shipper and see what I choose? It doesn’t matter if they have to climb up a flagpole to deliver it, it will be there, unscratched, with a 10-gun salute tomorrow. I didn’t send it for any of your reasons. I sent it because we assumed the full risk when we upgraded his shipping method to Priority. If it were only parcel post, like he ordered, this wouldn’t be an issue to discuss until a week after next. I can see the smile on every real merchants face right now. Let he who hath ears, hear!
I think I've said enough. The beauty of a forum is it lets the truth out and it gives clarity to a simple situation gone bad because it was poorly handled. The only thing I can tell you Mr. Whetsell is LISTEN. Don't "school" your customers. That's the best way to double your historic 500 threads here in BFC. And double your sales for being the one of most customer-driven retailer in the internet.
Goodluck to you!
