Well Rounded Service Not Always Easy to Find
About a month ago my wife and I were doing a bit of shopping around in the “big city.” We weren’t on the hunt for much other than soy or anything-but-petroleum-based candles from what I can recall. While both of us are very good at winning the frugal award, my wife couldn’t resist some round leather coasters she thought would make a perfect fit for her workplace (she’s kinda in charge of the brand around the office). After a few minutes of contemplation, the coasters made their way to the checkout counter and later to the local engraving shop where she had them customized with the company brand. The final product nestled in wonderfully at the office and everything was just peachy until my wife decided she wanted to get a few more for the company’s other location. 
Since it was an hour drive to the store (I’m not one for bad press so the name of “the store” shall remain anonymous) she bought the original coasters from, she decided to get online and order more. Seemed like a simple enough plan. In fact, as far as she knew, within a matter of days from placing her order, she was assuming she’d have product on hand, ready to be custom engraved again. Well, that was the plan anyway. The shipment did indeed arrive as scheduled. However, upon opening it she discovered that in place of the round coasters she ordered, someone somewhere decided “Well we don’t have any round ones so we’ll just send her these ugly square ones!” Ugggh!! What is it with a policy like this?
I think the part of the customer service story that’s even harder for me to embrace is the way the “service” representative handled the issue. When my wife called to explain what happened, the woman proceeded to tell her to “simply” take the coasters back to the store and exchange them for the right ones. My wife had to remind the woman that the reason she ordered the ROUND coasters online in the first place was because the nearest store was over an hour drive away. So it wasn’t exactly convenient for her to have to spend money or time to fix something that was clearly the result of carelessness on the company’s part. Then the service rep explained that my wife could once again “simply” return the product using the return label in the box. Hmmm. Guess what? No return label to be found. And this is a big company. One that as I said will remain unnamed, but one that should be ashamed of such disappointing service.
Fortunately, my wife had a meeting near the store just yesterday so she was able to avoid any further disappointment by just taking the product back to the store and getting what was ordered online in the first place. A lot of extra work on her part. And no apologies or inspiring action taken on the store’s part. Boo!
While I can’t guarantee PERFECTION, I can say that at CFgear we treat every one of our customers with kindness and respect. And we make sure if there ever is an issue with their customized flash drives, we are the ones who do the work to make it right…not the customer. I think our passion for people, our commitment to delivering the most precisely engineered promotional flash drive products has helped spread oodles of good feelings vs. the bad feelings my wife surely has about “the store” that is far from being able to deliver well “rounded” service.