Let’s Talk About Good And Bad Customer Service – Justin Winery (good) and Nameless Knife Guy (bad)

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This month we’ve had experience with incredibly good and incredibly bad customer service, and the experiences were so wildly contradictory that I had to write something up.

Some baggage handler stole my old Spyderco Delicia from the outside pocket of my suitcase on one of my trips. I finally got around to replacing it, went to Froogle (yes, Google Product Search) and found a low-price vendor. Well, you get what you pay for…the knife never shows up. Seller explains that he mailed it. I explain that it didn’t show up. Seller asks if one of my neighbors might have stolen it. I explain that that’s unlikely since all three of them have keys to our house and could steal anything they wanted if they were so inclined. I ask if I need to deal with this through Paypal. He agrees to send mea new knife, registered mail, which he does.

He then demands payment for the new knife. I go “Huh?” and he says that the first one might still show up. I think about it, feel for the plight of the small businessman, and pay him, after getting his commitment that he’ll refund my full payment on the 30th day after the order.

I’m generous, I guess. Well, the 30th day comes and goes, I remind him of his commitment to pay, and he replies:

I sent two knives in an act of good will. You never insured the first this your act of good will……………..I have to say you’ve been the most unappreciative customer I’ve ever encountered. You just happen to throw away the packaging………………….. You ain’t entitled to nothing you should’ve gotten insurance but I think you got that one too……..just cause you threw away the packaging…………………… and start acting like your doing me a favor

I’ll send you a refund just as we agreed you’ll have it tomorrow

—– Original Message —–
From: “Marc Danziger”
To: “XXXXXXX”
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 7:02 PM
Subject: So where are we on this?

> I’ve paid you for two knives – in a clear act of goodwill – when I’ve only received one.
>
> You committed to refund my money if I hadn’t received the 1st knife on June 20 – which I haven’t received.
>
> So where are we?
>
>
> Marc

He then refunds the cost of the knife, less shipping and Paypal fees. I’ve redacted his name because I don’t want a long email hassle with him nor to improve his Google search ranking…

Then, on the other hand, there’s Justin Winery.

We had our great dinner at Justin, and when we reserved it, did so as a part of a package that cost $(umpty) per person. When we got the bill, our knowledgeable and funny server Tim gave it to me because TG was – um, happy. From the wine and the meal. Very, extremely happy.

I paid it, noting in the back of my head that they hadn’t charged us the ‘package’ price, but the menu price – which meant that we paid some $40 more.

Now I won’t say that it was because I was – happy – too, or because I didn’t want to bum the vibe of a great dinner. I just went “$40? eh.” and paid it.

Now TG is my opposite in all matters financial. Had she been engaged with Jim the Knife Guy, she’d have laid brutal emails on him, shut down his PayPal account, and had his dog sent to the pound.

She goes through all our credit card statements, catching errors and saving me from my worst Charlie Sheen tendencies (or at least making sure I don’t overtip). When she saw the $40, she hit the roof. I suggested we let it go, and apologized. She explained that she’d deal with me later (I may go into hiding).

Here’s the email we received from Justin:

“Dear [TG],

I have read your account regarding what transpired last Thursday with your Dinner Transportation package out to Deborah’s Room. While I am elated that your overall experience was very positive, I am sorry we did not do such a good job in recognizing the fact you had booked our All Inclusive Transportation Package. I did speak to Timothy about this and he admits to making a mistake in recognizing and applying the correct pricing for your dinner. We are taking the necessary steps to communicate with our staff and avoid further misunderstandings with these packages. Hopefully, we have learned a lesson from this that will help us better manage this program.

JUST to give you some background perspective about our transportation program. Back in April of this year we decided to begin offering transportation out to Deborah’s Room and satisfy the innumerable requests from guests who expressed their desire to come to our lovely winery restaurant without being responsible for the driving. We decided to move forward and “trial balloon” this service, treading the fine line between offering the service at a fair price while at the same time making sure the JUSTIN staff delivering the services is being compensated fairly for their efforts. For simplicities sake we decided to adopt an all inclusive pricing policy instead of “a la carte”. I am sorry that this became a source of confusion during your visit.

I want to thank you for taking the time to describe what happened. Your input is very valuable so we can “tweak” this program and be able to continue offering the service beyond this trail period. Also, I’m positively excited about Marc blogging about your experience and spreading the word about Deborah’s Room and our magical setting!!

I wish I could apply your overage to your next wine club shipment, but I think Rebecca has taken steps to credit your card directly for this amount. However, I do want to make myself personally available to you next time you plan on visiting JUSTIN. Please do not hesitate to contact me at the numbers below.”

Short of sending us a case of ’97 Isosceles (nice idea, but not called for), I’m not sure how it gets any better than that.

I’m not going to say that that’s the only reason one businessman has an immensely successful winery and the other is selling knives out of his garage … but it sure doesn’t hurt.

My hat is off to Justin, and no, I’ll never buy another knife from ‘Jim’ again. OTOH, the new Delicias are really nice – the clip is epoxy-covered and rounded, and the blade seems just a bit sharper than the old one.

15 thoughts on “Let’s Talk About Good And Bad Customer Service – Justin Winery (good) and Nameless Knife Guy (bad)”

  1. Knives are important. If you still haven’t gotten one that satisfies you, please email me. I field inquiries on knives just from time to time.

    Reply

  2. I’ve found that the act of actual letter writing has been far more beneficial to satisfying my displeasure in something than a hastily sent email to some anonymous corporate account.

    That said, Spyderco has replaced not one, not two, but three knives due to defects since I’ve been a patron of theirs since 1996. Excellent company, excellent customer service, and thats why I deal directly with them and not a middle man. Its the same reason I deal with Nordstroms, which has one of the best customer service related retail operations on earth.

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  3. Yeah, while many of these small scale suppliers are good, there are some real doozies out there.

    I had an example a back in 2004 where I contracted a party to import some stuff from Taiwan. I paid up through Pay Pal and waited. After a while I e-mailed them with no response. I e-mailed them twice more and no response. At the last minute, before Pay Pal’s clock ran out, I started a complaint process. Pay Pal contacted them and also got no response. At this point I was still more interested in receiving the merchandise than a refund and all they had to do was agree to fulfill the contract. In due course, PP refunded my money. The very next day after I got my money the merchandise arrived by mail. They finally decided to contact me by e-mailing me requesting I resubmit payment. Twice. As part of the order was a gift for somebody and I had already spent the money by ordering a different gift, I ignored them.

    By simply not speaking up when they tried to correct their mistake, they not only lost both the merchandise and the cash, but also guaranteed I wouldn’t go back to them for future orders (which I had planned to do). All they had to do to avoid that was live up to their agreements with PP and myself and communicate, ie practice reasonable customer service.

    Or another time back in 2003 when I tried to place an order with a small time online retailer to be shipped as a gift (different gift than above) directly to a friend. Since it was to be shipped to my friend instead of myself, they were paranoid about fraud and, as a matter of standard policy, wanted me to do extremes such as photcopying both sides of my license to fax in or adding my friend as an authorized user of my credit card before they would fulfill the order. There were some other conditions that were so bizarre I thought the e-mail they sent was an example of what would later be known as a fishing attack and called the company up from the number on their website. Imagine my surprise when I learned it was real! Needless to say, I found another vendor who was more willing to work with me without extremes. And I still won’t do business with the first vendor even though they are still in business today and have become moderately successful in their field.

    Unfortunately customer service skills today seem to be very lacking.

    StargazerA5

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  4. Grim – that they are. And there are some works of functional art out there…but since I’m a dolt and lose them all the time, I’ve told myself that until I can keep a knife for two years (hasn’t happened yet) I don’t get a nice one…

    A.L.

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  5. I’m not going to say that that’s the only reason one businessman has an immensely successful winery and the other is selling knives out of his garage … but it sure doesn’t hurt.

    Maybe it’s the other way around, Marc: maybe the difference in the levels of customer service you have documented is an effect, not a cause, of the varying levels of “success” each business has. It would only make sense that an upscale winery/restaurant, whose reputation depends so heavily on positive customer feedback, would take care of a billing issue like yours quickly and courteously. Even though, as you note, they didn’t know (?) you would post a glowing encomium to them on your blog.

    But an individual simply selling goods mail-order? Eh! – not so much…

    That said, though, we have had plenty of experience with individual vendors/small businesspeople (mostly on Ebay) handling returns/shipping problems in a friendly and efficient manner: and had complaints with restaurants whose responses make Jim The Knife Guy look like a model of business decorum.

    Cool knife, btw.

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  6. Speaking of knives an’ such (slipping in quick kinda-sorta-on-topic bleg if I may). My old car toolbox multitool has gone missing. I’d had it so long, I no longer remember what kind it was or even where I got it. But, sadly, I must now replace it and I’m looking for recommendations on ‘with what.’ It needs to have at least one healthy-sized blade, and another, smaller one would be nice. Beyond that, it doesn’t have to be fancy, just the basics a non-Tim-Taylor might find handy and usable. And sturdy. Very sturdy. It’ll probably get banged around a lot.

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  7. I almost didn’t post this, but I figured someone might take the plunge and check this company out because of it, and they deserve it. More companies need to be rewarded for good customer service.

    I use Vonage at home. I’ve called their customer support line twice, once because their website failed to register the MACC address of a new VOIP router (replacing one that lightning had done away with), and another time because I was calling long distance with an (unknown to me) incorrect number and the resulting error message recording indicated “lines are busy” instead of “invalid number.”

    Both calls connected me to a human being in under 20 seconds (from the point of being queued). Both times the person was calm, very polite, friendly (idle talk while waiting for something), and both went out of their way to help.

    For example, the tech on the long-distance issue did the following:
    * Routed my line through a troubleshooting server to analyze the call path and subsequent breakdown.
    * Took my number and then hung up while he did more research. I wasn’t held up on hold.
    * 15 minutes later, he calls back and tells me that he has 1) called the number with a Vonage phone at his location to verify that the problem was not limited to my line, 2) called the number from a hardline to verify that the number was responding.
    * He then explains that while Vonage lines report “lines busy” (which he plainly says is incorrect), the hardline reported that the number was invalid.
    * Instead of letting it go there, he starts searching online for information on the proper way to call the country I was trying to reach (e.g. how to translate a number presented as a local number into a long distance one, which in this case was not a simple addition of country code).

    I’m used to customer service finding a quick and dirty way to prove that their company is not responsible for the problem, not go out of their way to help me fix a wrong number.

    I’m a big fan of word of mouth, and good deeds deserve praise — so there you go.

    -Chris
    (Not affiliated with Vonage in any way, just a customer).

    Reply

  10. Well, they give you funny looks before they handcuff you when you take them through the security checkpoint…

    …although I used to fly with one all the time pre-9/11…

    A.L.

    Reply

  11. bq. Goodness. Have you gone over the edge?

    No kidding! Everyone knows a decent utility knife should be half-serrated. (But that makes for even scarier pictures.)

    bq. …although I used to fly with one all the time pre-9/11

    A few months before 9/11, I opened my backpack on the plane to discover I had forgotten to take out a 5-inch blade I had been using to cut apart boxes a few days before. Apparently the x-ray screeners didn’t think it was important enough to warrant stopping me, or the regulations were lenient enough to allow it. IIRC the rules back then were to allow utility knives up to 3 inches, but I never had one confiscated.

    Of course, post 9/11 I’ve had to leave my multi-tool at home and I’ve had my dinky “Utilikey”:http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=utilikey&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2 confiscated twice.

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  13. … as mine is…

    Doh!’nt you mean “…as mine WAS…”?

    Did it get taken or not? Manufactured crisis or slip-o-the-tongue?

    Either way, enough of the crybaby act. At least you didn’t get kicked out of a McCain campaign event and threatened with arrest by police because you were exercising your First Amendment right by holding a sign saying “George Bush = McCain.”:http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_9844803

    Count your blessings to have been born in the Greatest Country the Earth has Ever Known!

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  14. AL, a question regarding postal insurance. If you chose not to purchase postal insurance why should the seller refund your money? I realize he said he would and that’s reason enough but it sounds like he agreed to only after you stated you’d go through paypal to get a refund (and paypal would in turn take it from his account to return to you). I think it was a mistake on his part not to require you to purchase insurance or at least strongly suggest it. I also think it sounded like customer relations isn’t one of his top priorities. He sounds like a jerk. Still, you said you get what you pay for but if you didn’t pay for the insurance why should you get it? Why should the seller be called upon to insure the package either directly via a refund or indirectly through paypal?

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  15. Bert – if he could produce evidence that it’d been mailed, sure. Without that why would I take his word for it?

    Gillette – the new one “is”. Note that I actually did get one…and for grins, wear a “Obama=Dukakis” t-shirt to an Obama rally and blog how it goes for you…

    A.L.

    Reply

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