Another wonderful example of how not to run your business.

Back on May 31st, I ordered one of those jars with a magnifying lens for kids to explore bugs.  My 3 year old loves bugs.   I also ordered a magnifying lens for myself.

So I placed my order via PayPal and everything went smoothly.  I received an email from PayPal with a confirmation of the transaction.  They said I would hear from OpticsPlanet.com separately.

That didn’t happen.  So a couple of days ago I sent OpticsPlanet an email basically showing I had processed a PayPal transaction and what was the status of my order.

Here is the response I received today (20 days after the sale).

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 1:43 PM, OpticsPlanet Customer Service <Care@opticsplanet.com> wrote:

Hello:

Thank you for your interest in Optics Planet. We are still holding on this item from Nikon. They should be arriving soon, is what the manufacturer keep telling us, we are starting to get a few orders on hold for this exact item.  I have bumped you to the top of the list, so you will receive the product when they first arrive back into our stock.  If you have any further questions, please do not   hesitate in contacting us.  Thank you for your patience with this order.

Best regards,

Matthew S.,

Sales Team

Here is my reply today:

Matthew,

Thank you for your reply and update.  It is protocol to email the customer when payment is processed (received) to both confirm the purchase order AND to notify if there are back order issues.  Putting the burden of tracking a timely shipment on the customer is not a good business practice.

I’m sure you will agree that OpticsPlanet’s competition is broad and varied, leaving me many choices on my next purchase of similar merchandise.

I trust you will ship my order in an expeditiously quick manner when Nikon gets their act together – being that you have my money.

Regards

Here is Matthews reply:

Hello Samuel:

Thank you for your follow up. We typically charge your credit card when we are ready to ship the product out. However when a payment is made via paypal, the payment is instant and we do not have the ability to charge at a later date. We can give you a full refund and keep your order on hold; however we would have to re-invoice you before we would ship the product out, we can give you a full refund and cancel your order, or we can leave the order as is and ship the product out the same day it arrives back into stock. Please let me know how you would like to proceed.

Matthew,

I mentioned nothing of canceling my order.  Please ship when available.

Whether billed when the product is available or billed instantly via PayPal, this does not address the fact I was not made aware of a back order issue.  You made a noble attempt to explain your BILLING policy, but that has not been my concern.

I would welcome your policy regarding customer communication when products are unavailable – billed or not.

Fortunately the items were not time sensitive.  There is still plenty of summer left and bugs to magnify.  I just ask to be kept informed.  This is customer service 101 folks.

Starting a new category today: “As Seen On Twitter“.  Not sure how REGULAR it will become, but there are some clever things people say there.

If you are dismayed at the lack of compatible FireFox 3.0 extensions and themes, do not dismay. Simply point your RSS Reader to this URL and watch the flood of updates poor in. Keep a handy list nearby of your “most wanted’ and when they show up in your feed, grab ‘em up. I’ve found this much easier than navigating Mozilla’s web site, especially now that they are experiencing mondo downloads with the new 3.0 release.

Here’s a look at my Google Reader at the time I’m writing this.

Hmmm.  I followed a link to Humor-Blogs.com from the JunkDrawerBlog.com (@Sun. June 15, 7:45am EST) and came upon the following:

Server Error in ‘/’ Application.

ERROR [42000] [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Could not allocate space for object ‘dbo.hits’.'PK__hits__145C0A3F’ in database ‘humorblogs’ because the ‘PRIMARY’ filegroup is full. Create disk space by deleting unneeded files, dropping objects in the filegroup, adding additional files to the filegroup, or setting autogrowth on for existing files in the filegroup.

There was a whole page of gobbley gook and it appears the whole site is flat on it’s back with it’s legs in the air.  I’m not so sure I would want a whole page of specific errors shown to the world if this happened to my site.  They should look into an Error Page – but something semi-humorous of course.

Error Message Example:  “Sorry!  It appears we have a huge MySQL database wedgie.  As soon as we de-wad our panites, we’ll be back on line!”

photo credit: moneydick

This is the kind of carnage one bad joke can wreak and that’s GOTTA hurt.

A woman calls her boss one morning and tells him that she is staying home because she is not feeling well.

"What’s the matter"? he asks.

"I have a case of anal glaucoma", she says in a week voice.

"What the hell is anal glaucoma?"

"I can’t see my ass coming into work today."

photo credit: khluvr621

Forgive me for posting yet another Craigslist ditty.  My wife came across this one.  It was in the “Items Wanted” category.

Hi,

I don’t have a man so I’m doing what every woman does: desiring to make – and henceforth devour- a giant bowl of chocolate frosting. I make delicious chocolate frosting.

My dilemna? I have every ingredient neccessary, minus the imperative box of confectioner’s sugar. To make matters worse, I have no transportation so I can’t go to the store to purchase said box of sugar.

This is where you come in. Help a girl out and give me your stash of confectioner’s sugar so I can turn it into chocolate frosting which I will then eat directly from the bowl with a spoon and fill the void in my heart.

Thank you for reading.

I found this advert to be funny, endearing and at the same time, sad.  If there is anyone out there with a ‘stash’ of said sweetness, here is the Reply-To address: sale-664901111@craigslist.org

Here’s another winner:

GIANT BOULDER MOUTAIN BIKE PERFECT CONDITION

HARDLY RODE! Steel Grey with black gel seat upgrade, bottle holder, giant black seat bag, upgraded pedals, added scott handle bars, mud guards, and kick stand. Newer tires and handle bar grips. Must sell moving out of state! Make me an offer!

If you’re going to advertise something on Craigslist.org and you want ME to part with my hard earned money, then PLEASE include some frigging pictures!  If you don’t know how – asked the pimply-faced kid who mows your grass or just about anybody else who lives in your neighborhood.

Let’s take a look at my offer:  I’m not buying your bike. 

Secondly, learn how to conjugate the verb ‘ride’.

Thirdly, you’re under suspicion because a bike "Hardly Rode Ridden" and in "PERFECT CONDITION" would not need pedal upgrades.  A person could potentially own a brand new bike, shred it to hell and it would still be considered hardly ridden.

Lastly, did anyone tell you that MICHIGAN’s economy sucks a left nut?  So don’t go jackin’ the CraigsList readers around with all this ‘my bike is perfect’ and ‘I’m moving out of state’ (evidently somewhere people don’t ride bikes) ballyhoo.  We all know gas prices blow and people are switching to alternative modes of transportation – i.e., BICYCLES – so don’t go taking advantage of the situation.

I don’t even know what color or what year it is.  Oh, I get it!  I’m suppose to CALL the person and then have them tell me all this on the phone and then get directions and then waste gas driving 30 miles one way to find out that the bike doesn’t fit me because it was built for Mini-Me.

This is advertising 101 people.  Stop wasting our time.

[And if you want to see how it should be done, here is an example.]