Just brutal customer service. A chain of incompetence culminating in today’s online customer service “Instaserve” chat…
You have been connected to Lou Ann Hesch.
Lou Ann Hesch: Welcome to the Wine Enthusiast, how may I help you?
Lou Ann Hesch: Hi Chris
chris blum: Hi I have a problem with an item
chris blum: this is an item that I cancelled on 4/30 but they shipped anyway. now it is damaged
chris blum: Hello?
chris blum: Anybody home?
chris blum: hello??
chris blum: Did you leave for lunch?
chris blum: the time is now 12:07 CST.
chris blum: I am still waiting
chris blum: the time is now 12:09 CST
chris blum: I am still waiting
chris blum: the time is now 12:12 CST
Thank you for using InstantService. You may now close this window.
I was cut off at 12:18. I guess “Instaserve” is meant to be ironic.
This is an abominable example of good customer service and WE should be tarred & feathered & run out of town.
Or…it may be a technological glitch that caused the communication channel to be shut down.
Hard to say which is the case. I trust you tried communicating again, Chris?
Tom
Explained the issues and was put on hold for a few minutes then transferred to Vinocave’s voicemail with no button or way to get back to Wineenthusiast. (not a vinocave product BTW) Had to hang up and redial.
Put on hold for just under 10 minutes before I hung up. Waited a while and called back
Put on hold for maybe 5 minutes before I hung up.
Used the online chat function with the transcript you saw above.
Finally got a human!!! Asked for a manager to explain everything up to this point. No manager for me, but the lady on the line apologized and arranged for a pick up.
But lets back up to April 30th when I got notice that the product was backordered. I cancelled the order. In the interim, I had missed out on buying a Vinoteque that was being offered on closeout. I went online and saw that the backorder issues with this product are not uncommon. When I reviewed the product on your website saying that I cancelled because of backorder, the review was deleted. As a potential customer, I would want to know if a product’s delivery time was the greatest work of fiction since War and Peace. But I guess I can understand if you thought it wasn’t relevant.
So when I got back from vacation to find that the item had shipped, I wish I would have called and recancelled the order. But at this point, I still had not found a replacement, the price was right, and I thought “what the heck, I’ll arrange for delivery”. I even paid our maintenance guy to help me unpack it and put it together.
So the pieces were unpacked and it became clear that the product was both damaged (assume in transit) and defective (laminate peeling). I was kinda pissed at this point, but I didn’t want to call when I was angry. I waited to today to call, only to be repeatedly stonewalled.
But, don’t listen to me. Don’t change your phone system, evaluate your product offerings or retrain your employees. Everything is fine.
Serenity Now…Serenity Now…Serenity Now.
Yeah but Chris - I thought the same thing Tom did. In the initial post you just said you called and got disconnected and then waited on the phone for a while hoping to be reconnected. That’s not necessarily the fault of the WE, especially as we’ve had lots of storms these past few days.
Should have posted the explanatory post first. Matter of fact, you should send Adam a letter including that!
No storm disconnect happened. I got the phone menu and sat on eternahold; twice until I hung up.
I was just kinda exasperated. I’m out $10 I tipped the delivery guys, $30 that I’ll end up giving maintenance guy, and I’m staring at a pile of wood pieces that need to all be sorted and repackaged into five or six different boxes. It’s not a huge deal, but then poor Tom posts a response that I read as a snarky defense of his company.
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