Just how far will a company go to satisfy their customers? Well, here's a tale for you.....
Way back at the start of this year, there was a great and wondrous sale of the mythical Bessey Clamps. The sale was initiated by Lee Valley and none other than Rob Lee Esq.
Down here (and I do mean DOWN here) we were feeling a little left-out and unfortunate that we didn't have the same great deal that you guys in the US and Canada had on offer (due to killer shipping costs).
On one of the Wreck's moderated sister groups in Oz, we began to make comments and the occasional "what if?" arose. It was suggested that a container should be shipped jointly by the group members, followed by the beginnings of a discussion for a bulk buy. Then Rob Lee, who is hereby granted the status of honorary Aussie, stepped in with an admission that he was under e-mail bombardment from Oz, and offered to check freight forwarders for volume prices.
With that post, Rob doomed himself and his staff to four months of hard work and an ongoing barrage of e-mails and orders from a host of long-neglected Aussie woodworkers.
(please note that the cut-off date for orders was the same as the US date)
To say that the thread got its share of attention is an understatement. To date there have been over 23,753 views and 495 posts. These resulted in a rather large order being gathered together and shipped to the other side of the earth to a destination in Sydney, to be broken down and on-forwarded to individual sites.
It has been an object lesson in willful logistics. Dozens of woodworkers joining together with a company overseas to arrange the details. People volunteering to perform distribution and other tasks. Others voluntarily increasing their payments to ensure the organizers get 'something' for their efforts.
The savings have been substantial. The effort immense. The timescale lengthy. The enjoyment - substantial.
Thanks Rob, to you and your staff for their special effort. Whenever people with like minds band together it is amazing what can be accomplished. In particular, the photos and updates were great! We all learned a lot about LV through the virtual tour and got to meet some of the staff. (special thanks to the Internet orders team).
I like tools that have a story attached to them, and these will be part of the "Great Oz Bessey Story", to be retold for a long time in Australian woodworking circles. It will, and already has, raised the bar for customer service down here.
Your staff and the Company are a credit to the industry, well done. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did, and still are.
Groggy
Oh, and the link to the thread? Look here: