I’m pushing 48 hours smoke free here pretty soon. Special thanks to my vapor. I got them on Thursday and there was a bit of an issue. I didn’t get everything I ordered. I made a complaint about the problem on the companies public forum (which I probably shouldn’t have) and all of their loyal customers (read: cheerleaders) jumped on my ass about it. Basically calling me a liar and saying I was trying to scam the company. Of course I wasn’t. I just wanted what I ordered, which apparently no longer existed on the site.
Someone at the company even went so far as to change the name of my thread to “silly customer complaint”. I was like “what the hell kind of customer service is this? Do you call all of your customer complaints silly?”
Anyway, someone, just a regular joe was smart enough to check the google cache for their website and found what I had ordered and posted the link up to the cache page on the thread. From there everyone jumped in saying they were sorry and how bad they felt and how they had all assumed this mass mob mentality toward me and didn’t believe me and so on. I think everyone learned something.
The CEO of the company called me Friday morning and apologized to me and is sending me about $100 in free stuff. He’s loading me up. So that’s cool. I really appreciate that. But at the same time, just because the CEO sends you a bunch of free stuff, does that really apologize for the initial way customer service treated me? I mean I would have thought they would have been a little nicer about it all from the beginning. Just the idea of them changing my thread title to “silly customer complaint” alone is not very professional. So now that they send me all this free shit do they really expect me to go back on there and sing their praises for such wonder customer service? I hope not. I’m willing to say they made it up to me with a bunch of free stuff. But I still think they need to work on their initial reaction to a customers complaint before I can give them a gold star for customer service.
Anyway, we’ll see how things go. I still have yet to get my free stuff. Hopefully Monday. But so far the vapor is decent. Not as hard as a cigarette but there are times I’m getting some really good throat hit. All of it is enough to keep me from wanting a real cigarette and I think my new plan is not to stay on the vapor but to slowly transition off of that as well.
http://www.quitsmokingjournals.com. It’ll help.
Tell em Brick sent you.
I don’t think you should deal with that company anymore. Get your free stuff and move on. You will never forget that initial impression and you will still have that in the back of your mind. They royally messed up. I think the other customers on that forum are sheep and they will continue to be sheep. You are a leader, so lead. Move on to a different company.
Good for you! But that company (or at least their customer service dept.) sounds a little weird.
It’s just terrible how they treated you. Take the freebies and flick off the company from your life.
@TheSeventhRhapsody – @MsKittyCatty –
Yeah I agree. Plus the CEO was a little strange. He seemed like a nice guy, but he kept trying talk to me like I was his buddy. I don’t like customer service like that. Maybe some people do. But I sort of expect customer service people to be like “Mr. Tesh, I’m sorry, we’re going to make it up to you by sending you a bunch of stuff, here is what we have in mind, anythign else we can add for you. Once again I really apologize, have a great day”
But he was like “Hey Mike, (five second pause) it’s —-, how you doin’? Sorry about that, I try to make it up to everyone, you just never know. Some of these fucking people try to take you for a ride. And well I had a few cocktails. So what do you do for a livin’… so how old are ya, cause I’m 50? (ten minutes later) yeah I try to make it up to everyone…” repeat repeat.
It was a really weird conversation, went on for far too long and repeated itself too much. I was at work and after a while I had to tell him I had to go. Like I said, seemed like a nice guy, just weird and not what I expect from customer service.
I wonder how many of those “loyal customers” on the forum were actually working for the company itself. it seems odd to me that so many customers would be so incredibly defensive and protective. People I know (myself included) will admit to having a complaint or two about a company or store they’ve dealt with even if it’s their favorite store in the entire universe. And I certainly can’t imagine that people would be so defensive that they would call other people liars on an internet forum dedicated to customer feedback.
anyway, i second what everyone else said: stay away from these guys, and I hope you are successful in your quitting plan.
@roxics – Haha, yeah that addition about the CEO confirms it. He’s clueless. Take the money and run.
Congrats on what looks to be a great solution for the smoking habit.
Man, that company treated you pretty bad… it doesn’t sound like you’ve lost your cool though… and that’s awesome. Congrats on quitting too!