Shoppe customer service - suggesion

[will]

I recently had a request to build a Mini-Mag with a sammie similar to one I had built for myself. Some of the items I made and had nickel plated, others I had gotten from other members. The last Item I would need is sammie from the shoppe. I had read some of the jeers and in that it was suggested that email go directly to the yahoo email address. Simple question, the item availability in the shoppe's site shows none availble, is the item count accurate. This was last week, I sent a followup today and also through the online portion of the shoppe's site. Still no answer.

This now represents a lost sale to the shoppe. I fully realize that answering a lot of technical questions and " tire kicker" questions can take a lot of time. I also realize that this is a business and one of it's goals should be to increase sales or provide a certain level of customer satisfaction. In my opinion, one of the things you don't want to do is what we used to call 'sales prevention' by virue of not answering a simple question of item availability.

I would suggest that if the email quantity is too much to handle in a timely fashion that the emails be separated in such a way to isolate potential sales from technical questions. It is possible that if you can increase sales maybe there would be funding for additional help, even if it is part time. Something that would not require any additional help is some sort of auto answer for any and all email received. It is very easy to say that an email was not delivered, and that does happen, with an auto answer at least the customer would know that the email has been delivered.

With any business, failure to take care of the customer base is never a good thing.

Oh - I will most likely not build the light that was requested at this time.

 

[dat2zip]

Sorry we didn't answer your email, but, as you know it cost us more in time and effort to make sandwiches then we sell them for. Never made money on them. I offered and made them available back in the days when there was nothing else similar. Today, it's hard to see how I can offer them in today market since I don't make anything on them. Occasionally I do make batches when I get time and only if I have free time.

Also, if you really needed one I'm sure you could have posted on CPF and found another member who would have assembled one from Shoppe components or other parts to fullfill you needs.

As for separation of email. We try our best to answer all emails. I could raise all our prices so that we could actually hire someone to help with emails, orders etc, but, that would mean all our product prices would go up substantially to do this. I have tried to keep shoppe prices at the bare bottom and this means limited tech, customer support. I've always said that CPF needs to help each other and posting is the best method to query the mass instead of going direct.

I did see your email, but, no where in your email did you said it was urgent or that you had a customer of your own requiring an immediate answer. It was a general query asking if we would be getting more online soon.

Wayne

 

[will]

Thank you for the reply. I only asked if the inventory was correct. I know that there are other options available at this time. No - I didn't state it was urgent,

Still - if you saw my email - you could have said there were none in stock and no plans to make any more. I am perfectly fine with that answer.

I was about 99 percent sure that there were none available, I just wanted to verify that.

I should point out that I have purchased items from the shoppe in the past. very fast shipment and no problems at all