So PM (user name witheld but it's Rookie).
So, we took the time to look some stuff up and here's what we discovered:
June 22nd 2005: Order placed for 3 items total time to place order 20-30 minutes
DEPO + Predator Chromium + Shipping
Predator Chromium Upgrade
Clear E36 328 Coupe - Front Clears + Side Markers - LED TURN FOR THE COUPES
At this time, only the DEPO were out of stock - as you were told that there was a 3 week delay for their arrival - this was present on the site at the time of purchase as well on the link. LEDs were in stock, clears were on the boat coming to us (supposedly).
July 5th: Customs Clearance Received. This is 2 weeks (not 3 as promised).
July 6th: Product Delivered to Our Warehouse
July 7th-9th (yes, we work Saturdays): Product inventoried, labeled, and sorted (over 400 headlights, it takes some time).
July 11th: Label Generated 1 week later. Still within the 3 week delay promised on the phone. Label generated because the product had finally cleared customs and was delivered to us. Custom orders (anything with HID/Xenon or Angel eyes are pre-installed) are done after the initial orders that require nothing but boxing up are shipped. We an only usually handle 10 per day, so your order probably
July 12th-16th All Products Dropped Off We shipped over 50 headlights that week. Those dropped off late on Friday probably didn't get scanned until Monday. However, we did have some products that had been dropped off on July 12-16th that for some reason were held up at the facility (bad label? bad scan? bad something), issues cleared, seems that PM's problem was one of these.
July 21st - Package Shows Delivery
Yes, this is 1 full month, but 3 weeks of which are explained away by the standard customs delay with new shipments and 1 week is just shipping.
Now, for the email threads during this process.
June 24th - "Did it ship yet" email from customer. at 8am, response at 4pm of
"Depos will be shipping as soon as the boat clears
"
June 27th - "Did you ship my clears and leds" and "can you specify no signature" <-- suspicious. 4:21pm, response @ 4:24pm of "We cannot ship them unsigned, but you can specify to have FedEx hold at the location until you are ready"
July 6th - "Did my lights ship yet?" email -
Quote:
Originally posted by "pm"+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE("pm")</div><div class='quotemain'>> I was trying to find out if the order of DEPO headlights had cleared
> cutsoms yet? I was also wondering if they had shipped out yet, I was
> thinking about changing my order from white LED turn signals, to
> yellow LED turn signals. The reason I keep asking is that when you
> took my email address it got entered incorrectly and I had to call in
> order to get a reciept.
[/b] |
Clearly, we have his email and have been responding: response to this email was:
Quote:
Originally posted by "umnitza"+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE("umnitza")</div><div class='quotemain'>> They are shipping today, literally today. They cleared and are on
> their way.[/b] |
Now, yes, this could have a double meaning, but it was SHIPPING TO US - if you can look at the timeline above.
July 6th - "Is it too late to switch" somethin gin the order" 2pm, response 4:43pm "Probably, we'll check" <-- we did check, emailed the customer back later that afternoon to say that it was not possible as we had sold out of those - by customers own admission, he had email problems so probably didn't get this response.
July 14th - <!--QuoteBegin-PM@
Hi, My email has been very spotty lately and was wonder if my order has shipped yet or not? I talked to someone at your shop on tuesday and they said that it would go out as soon as ups.com or fedex.com was back up. I am beginning to get concerned that this shipment will not ship. It has been damn near three to four weeks since I posted the order. I understand that customs held things up on the depos however they cleared well over a week ago. I would like a status on when exactly they will be shipped out.[/quote] at 9am, our response at 11am was to mail a copy of the attachment that was the label generated for the shipment.
July 14th - <!--QuoteBegin-PM Thank you for the shipping reciept. However I am still confused. When I talked to someone at your shop at 5:45pm on the eleventh, they said they were still waiting for fedex.com to come back up so they could print the reciept and the package would be out the door first thing the next morning. However when I went to fedex.com and tracked this shipment, it says that the shipping info was sent into them but it says nothing about it having been picked up or dropped off to them by your company. I am beginning to grow impatient with the delay, and the constant miscommunication. I would like to know with absolute certianty if this package has walked out your front door yet or not.[/quote] at 3pm, our response at 11am was to mail a copy of the attachment that was the label generated for the shipment. Here's our actual response: "It's out the door 100%, I'll check with FedEx and see what's going on
"
July18th - 7:40am "I have tried to call fedex a couple of times in the past few days and have not been able to get through or have been cutoff. Have you been able to find out what exactly is going on with this shipment? Are you 110% positive that the box made it out your door, because the way fedex works they scan the barcodes every time they touch a package. Making it very difficult to lose track of a package. Maybe there was a problem with the code, who knows. How long should it take by fedex ground to get from there to here? I have been keeping an eye out and haven't seen or heard anything. If you can let me know as soon as possible that would be great.
Our response 7:47am:
You'll probably see the package on Wednesday or Thursday. They have slow tracking times.
3 hours later:
"Thanks, I will keep an eye out this week.
By the way I have a friend who is looking to add heated seats to his E46 sports seats, I found a write up on it on the net. Evidently they sell a kit with part number: (52 11 94 02 814) for the e36. Can you get a kit like this for the e46, rather than having to go to the stealership? I would rather support aftermarket shops than the dealerships.
"
Our response 30 minutes later: "Thanks for your request
But we cannot get Dealer parts that are that new at this time
"
July 21st - a lengthy 5 paragraph angry letter about half the order not showing, yes, that's right, we didn't ship the clears or the LED - because by the time we had to, we didn't have them.
Here's our response:
"We appreciate what you have been through. We've tried to send you email updates all along, we hope that they were of some comfort. We also called you to let you know when they arrived and when they would be shipping. As to the rest of your order, we are going to investigate exactly what happened and get back to you tomorrow."
Yes, we called the customer to make sure it was still ok.
July 22nd - instructions requested on the phone, sent immediately.
July 27nd - a week later: "Alright. I finally got all the stuff that I needed to install my new depos. Having to locate nice H1 bulbs was both expensive and a hassle. If you are not going to include a set of bulbs then you need to take down the note on your website that says you include a set of them!
Alright on my headlight with one non working ring... I tried swapping the white wires are still only one works. I then tried ever possible combination of the two sides of the harnesses for the angel eyes and still no response. The out ring will not light up with the powered side of either harness. I have not hot swapped anything so I know that I didn't burn anything up. I turned every thing off and pulled the fuses before swapping the white wires around. On the inside of the housing when I opened it up to put the H1 bulb in a white wire fell out of one of the black harnesses. After messing with that and getting it to stay in the harness where it belongs and repeating the testing procedure above still the one ring will not work, and the ring that is lighting up is half brightness compared to the other headlight.
I think the actual ring that is not lighting up may be dead. Is there any way to get you guys to make this right?"
While our site never actually said that we would include bulbs (in fact it clearly states that they are either an option or simply not included) we did go ahead and send bulbs this time.
Thank you for your offer to include H1s it is refreshing to know that you are trying to rectify the situation.
PM
So, in the end, I'm not exactly sure where the breakdown in communication happened, but it wasn't from lack of effort on our part to keep the customer informed.
All data taken directly from email.
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