When Your Customers Become a Bother You May Need to Rethink Your Business Plan
Although I’ve always tried to create the impression that I am so careful as to be infallible, I do on occasion make a mistake. One such mistake happened recently which raised an interesting customer relationship issue.
My customer wanted a repeat order on an item I sourced thru my vendor, Kinroj Inc., so I efficiently emailed my vendor for an exact repeat. Oh, efficient but stupid, as my customer had changed their address since the original order. In fact, that previous order was the very last item delivered while they were still at the old address.
No big deal - right. I called my vendor, Kinroj, Inc. and told the helpful sales coordinator that I made a mistake on the ship to address ad needed to have them change it. The very first thing the sales coordinator said was “UPS charges us $25.00 to change the address so we will change you $25.00”.
Maybe you’re thinking they should have first asked me the correct address or assured me they would be able to take care of it, instead of leading with the extra charge? I know I was thinking exactly that.
So it’s always good to get another opinion, which I did by calling UPS directly. I asked if the recipient could make the change and was told that the sender (my valued vendor) had not allowed that option - only the vendor could change the ship to address. Just before hanging up I asked how much the charge was from UPS and was told the charge to change an address was $15.00 - that’s $15.00 not $25.00.
Back to the helpful sales coordinator who acknowledged that UPS charged $15.00 but they (Kinroj, Inc.) charged an additional $10.00 because of the "time it took them to make the change."
Now I don’t think this “project” required any overtime, or bringing on additional hires to complete the task. Is it just another example of a business just fed up with having to deal with the imperfections of its customers?
At first iI thought this was the result of an employee who lost track of the bigger picture. Until I got this email reply from the owner of the company
“As to the charge of $10 for fixing a problem, not of our creation, I do not find that to be exorbitant at all. If you think about it, we have to take those 5 minutes (which is really longer) getting hold of UPS and making it clear as to what is wanted; then she has to inform accounting that we will be billed by UPS for $15 (for something that only takes them 5 minutes), on order number xxxx, because the shipment has been redirected; and then we have to create an invoice and send it to you. In some cases we have to wait to get paid, in some cases we can run a credit card immediately. In all cases UPS gets their money within 7 days. I am sorry, but, I find $10 fee on top of $15 from UPS a small price to pay for a mistake.”
Chefs Catering: I think I or we as a company would eat that cost. I would make sure in the future that I or we didn't have the this happen again. I was told a long time ago "always inspect never expect"
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