Friday, December 12, 2008

Mail Call

I've been anxiously waiting for some things to arrive in the mail. Every day I check the box, check the front porch, but nothing is there. FINALLY, everything showed up TODAY. The UPS guy came to my house twice today. Not sure why they couldn't combine it into one trip, but whatever.

What was I waiting for? 3 different photo orders. I ordered a bunch of prints for our Christmas letter and of our family photo shoot. I ordered several photo gifts from Vista Print, and I've WAITING WAITING WAITING for my free Oprah book from Snapfish.

How exciting to get it all in one day. In a mess of cardboard, I ripped open all the boxes to check my goods out. Everything was there, and it all looked great. Of course, Snapfish screwed up and sent me double my order on the prints - but they only charged me once, so all is well.

But, something was weird in the Vista Print box. After I pulled all of my stuff out, there were still 7 calendars in the bottom of the box. And they weren't mine - it was some other family's stuff! I kinda freaked out b/c if it was my stuff that was sent to some random person and I never got it, and I didn't have it for Christmas...what would I do?

So, I called Vista Print (by the way, I've used them several times before and always been happy with their products) to tell them what happened. You'll never guess what this chick (who I think was answering the phone from the Philippines) said. She told me to THROW AWAY the calendars and that the customer would just call them in a few days when they didn't receive their order. Are you kidding me???

I said that I could tell her some info about the product and maybe she could figure out who's order it was so they could reprint and reship. She said NO, that's not our policy. We'll just wait til they call us.

I asked her if she'd rather hear from an irate customer or just fix the problem now. Again, she said, that's not their policy to try to fix it!

I asked for a supervisor. After 5 minutes, the supervisor came on and told me the same thing. I finally convinced her that it would be better to try to figure out who the order belonged to. She asked for the order # on the box. Duh! The order # is mine since it came to me! Oh, she said, well, I need a first and last name then.

Luckily, the family had their names on one of the calendars, so the supervisor was able to find the order, reprint it, and ship it out to them. I told her maybe they should re-examine their customer service policy for how to handle mis-shipments.

Can you believe companies operate like this??? I think it will all work out, and I will probably use them again (they DO have some great deals), but I'll be sure to keep an eye on my delivery dates and make sure I don't wait too long to call when I don't receive something.

6 comments:

Rachel O said...

I'm not a big fan of vista print, but I understand why people use them. Not everyone has the resources of a designer to order stuff. :)

A guy in our office did the free book from Oprah and his turned out nice!

Jody said...

Customer service is severely lacking. Did you see my issue ordering flowers? 5 hours! http://www.iowageekonline.com/2008/12/can-1-800-flowers-redeem-themsleves.html

Glad you were pushy and got it fixed so those poor people didn't have to fret!

bandofbrothers said...

Yikes! You'd think in these days people would be working extra hard to keep their customers. That is wild. You are so awesome to go the extra mile for strangers. May God bless you!

Love Bears All Things said...

Not much for good customer relations are they? Wonder if they have so much business, they can stand to lose some.
I would have thought they would have been eager to make matters right. If you had the name, maybe you could find the address online and send the calendars on to them.
Mama Bear

Lynette said...

That is a so great for the other family that you did that for them!

maddie said...

What jerks! I'm glad you made a fuss over their mistake. Have you tried using the Kodak gallery? I use them all the time and never have any problems...