Customer service annoyances
Mar. 7th, 2017 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rscSome of this is my fault, some isn't.
Yesterday evening I finally got around to making my online seed and plant orders for hits year.
First was Stark Bros. for strawberries. When I had filled out the order, it told me that the expected arrival date was March 11, which strikes me as totally ridiculous for this latitude -- we won't have our water turned on for another month at least -- but there was a little line above the notice to click to find out how to request a different ship date.
Which turned out to be "Call us after you've completed the order"(!!!). Of course it was after hours, so I couldn't talk to anyone until this morning, and when I called (at about 9:30) I was told that the order was already in shipping and no power on earth could stop it. The agent did very kindly tell me how to store the plants until I was ready to plant them. She agreed that the online order form ought to include the option to change the date. (I did not say what I was thinking, which was that whoever designed it to behave this way was either very stupid or very lazy or both.)
The one that was my fault was to Park Seed, from whom I ordered a bunch of seeds but overlooked one page or the print catalogue whose corner I had turned down, and therefore failed to order two kinds of Salvia that I wanted. I realized this as soon as I had closed out the order. After hours, of course.
So after I finished my call with Stark, I called Park. The guy said yes, I could make additions to the order -- oh, no, wait, that one has mostly already shipped, sorry, we can't do it. I decided that it was not worth making a separate order, on which I would probably have to pay shipping charges¹, for two seed packets; I'm guessing I can find either the seeds or the plants locally.
Next year I'll try to remember to do this earlier and not the day before I'm leaving town for four days. And I probably won't need to order strawberry plants next year.
¹Slightly to my surprise, there was no shipping charge on the original order, but I assume that's because it was over some triggering amount.
Yesterday evening I finally got around to making my online seed and plant orders for hits year.
First was Stark Bros. for strawberries. When I had filled out the order, it told me that the expected arrival date was March 11, which strikes me as totally ridiculous for this latitude -- we won't have our water turned on for another month at least -- but there was a little line above the notice to click to find out how to request a different ship date.
Which turned out to be "Call us after you've completed the order"(!!!). Of course it was after hours, so I couldn't talk to anyone until this morning, and when I called (at about 9:30) I was told that the order was already in shipping and no power on earth could stop it. The agent did very kindly tell me how to store the plants until I was ready to plant them. She agreed that the online order form ought to include the option to change the date. (I did not say what I was thinking, which was that whoever designed it to behave this way was either very stupid or very lazy or both.)
The one that was my fault was to Park Seed, from whom I ordered a bunch of seeds but overlooked one page or the print catalogue whose corner I had turned down, and therefore failed to order two kinds of Salvia that I wanted. I realized this as soon as I had closed out the order. After hours, of course.
So after I finished my call with Stark, I called Park. The guy said yes, I could make additions to the order -- oh, no, wait, that one has mostly already shipped, sorry, we can't do it. I decided that it was not worth making a separate order, on which I would probably have to pay shipping charges¹, for two seed packets; I'm guessing I can find either the seeds or the plants locally.
Next year I'll try to remember to do this earlier and not the day before I'm leaving town for four days. And I probably won't need to order strawberry plants next year.
¹Slightly to my surprise, there was no shipping charge on the original order, but I assume that's because it was over some triggering amount.
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Date: 2017-03-07 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
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