Worlds Worst Customer Service Experience
WARNING RANT (with a sensible conclusion).
So, we’ve recently been on the receiving end of some absolutely terrible customer service by a 4wd store in Geelong Victoria, let’s call them “the shop” and the person we dealt with “DH”.
We ordered some parts from the shop and DH said the parts were in stock, turns out they weren’t and won’t be for some time and as I’m writing this there’s still no sign of the parts being delivered any time soon. DH created expectations that the parts would be delivered within a few days. The order was paid (in full in good faith).
Expectations 101 in business, create realistic expectations the you can deliver on (or exceed).
10 days went by and nothing arrived so we called the shop and spoke to a nice lady who said she’d chase it up, never had a reply. We tried numerous different methods to contact the company to find out what’s going on and never had a reply more than a couple of words long, not even a complete sentence, very frustrating. We did however get an email that said that the parts were on the way, yeh right…….
Not only was the shop very difficult to contact, we never received a call back from DH so getting anything done was an absolute nightmare.
Given that we had no substantial communication in this whole debacle, not enough that we would feel confident to make decision on, we rescinded our purchase order (via telephone, email and instant messenger) after finding out that parts hadn’t left the supplier in the USA.
This is the response we got.
“No problem, will get Xxxxx to do that and work out a fair restocking fee”
Now my question was, “re-stocking fee, for what? Don’t you have to have the parts in your store and take them out of stock to be able to charge a re-stocking fee?” We’re not paying any re-stocking fee!”
That’s when all hell broke loose, the world stopped rotating and apparently we’re the worst business owners on the planet.
DH started his tirade of abuse, threats and downright unprofessional behaviour. Not only did DH call us a liars and questioned our integrity but he also threatened to go to social media to recruit a gang of feedback thugs to publicly defame us by leaving negative feedback on our various review pages. We’re all for constructive feedback because it helps us know where we’ve gone wrong but falsifying reviews, there’s gotta be something illegal about that.
We requested a refund and under consumer law we’re absolutely entitled to one, not only was DH an arse about the whole thing, he blatantly broke the law and refused to refund our monies.
We’re not perfect and we do make mistakes and we’re aware of our short comings and weakness in business, the difference is we’re working on these things and the feedback questionnaire we send to our clients helps us immensely.
See feedback here http://www.mitchellbros4x4.com.au/pages/testimonials
Why is it so hard to get good service from some Australian business? Why do Australian businesses treat their clients this way?
Blog post 001 suggested that we should support local business and we firmly stand behind these sentiments but how can we, as consumers, be expected to put up with this type of poor business practice, rude behaviour and generally poor form when there’s thousands of businesses off shore that will gladly do business with the end user.
Is it because there’s no real competition in Australia? Markets are so small and small business so stretched with everyday operational issues that business owners feel like they can do whatever they like? Maybe they don’t know their customer service sucks, maybe they don’t care!
We use situations like this as a reflection of the way we conduct ourselves in business and how not to conduct ourselves. If we’ve ever do not exceeded expectations with you, please let us know because we’ll take ownership and fix the problem.
Aaron Mitchell