August 1 I ordered 60 rare earth magnets from Lee Valley. I got a receipt and confirmation number. Checking on the order today they have no record of the order and are not willing to expedite shipping on the order unless I am willing to pay an additional $30+ dollars for second day shipping.
I'm thinking I should pay the original $10 shipping and they pick up the difference in price to get it here more quickly.
I canceled the order.
A follow up e-mail to Lee Valley was responded to by Lee Valley blaming me for taking too long to place the order.
I responded that once there is a receipt and order confirmation to be printed I should not have to worry whether the order was successful or not. And I sent them a copy of the receipt/order number.
Now waiting for the ultimate excuse at to why I am to blame for the order not going through.
How did you cancel an order they had no record of. If you had a reciept and conf they should have accepted that forwarded and done right.
If they didn't shame on them... another good company gone bad...
The rep began the order process over again while I was talking to him. I canceled this particular order after learning that my shipping charges were going to more than triple to get the order in about the same time frame as the original order.
That was my expectation, I sent them a copy of the receipt after they in so many words indicated that maybe I had no such receipt.
I don't think it is another company gone bad, I think they should have gone further to see what was wrong with their system loosing the order instead of saying that I took too long to accept the details of the order. I got a freaking receipt and order number. I think I pushed the buttons fast enough. ;~)
Here's a case of a low-level clerk with little or no understanding of the value of customer satisfaction. When I come up against this kind of stuff, I always ask to speak to the supervisor. I usually get a satisfactory resolution.
Larry
On 8/6/2013 11:57 AM, Gramp's shop wrote:
You are probably right but FWIW I followed up with an e-mail and this is the response that I got and my response
Original e-mail.
-----Original Message----- From: Leon Bridges [mailto: snipped-for-privacy@swbell.net] Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 11:56 AM To: Lee Valley Service Subject: Customer Web Site Inquiry
Not happy with my latest on-line order that has been lost before it was shipped and the solution offered by your rep on the telephone.
August 1 I placed an order for 60, 99K3103 magnets. I got a receipt and order number 28821112. I would be glad to send a copy of the confirmation receipt.
Following up on the order this morning you have no record of the order. This was a time sensitive order that needed to be received with in two weeks at the latest. Typically I have been able to count on this time frame. Your rep offered to charge me an addition normal upgraded shipping charge to resubmit and ship the order again.
This is a Lee Valley error, I felt that I should not have to pay extra for expedited shipping to correct this error. I declined to replace the order.
Leon Bridges
They Responded,
On 8/6/2013 11:10 AM, Lee Valley Service wrote: > Thank you for your e-mail. We checked our system and as the phone representative stated we did not receive a recent order from you nor does the order # 28821112 exist in our system. > > Please be aware that when you get to the final payment screen on our website, this makes a quick connection to our sales system so that your total can be calculated, and this is when an order number is assigned. If there is an error with an order placed online, for example: the credit card and/or expiry date are not entered correctly, a customer takes too long to place their order when in the Checkout process or there is any break in the network connection between your system and ours from that time to when you complete your order and it tries to transmit through to us, then it may not complete the transmission to us. The order is then considered incomplete and placed in an error batch which is automatically deleted from our system. This is what happened to your order. Our system is set up this way to avoid incomplete orders from bogging it down. > > Note that when an order is successfully placed online, the customer will receive an "Order Confirmation" e-mail within minutes after sending the order to us stating that we have received your order. The customer will also receive a "Shipping Confirmation" e-mail within 48 hours of placing the order stating the order has been shipped. If you do not receive these confirmations, it means we have not received the order. > > Regards, > Caroline Brisson > Internet Customer Service Representative
And so far I have responded to the above response with,
Regardless of what you think may have happened, please see attached confirmation receipt, if this is not good enough to prove that I did every thing necessary to insure that my order was effectively placed, your system has a flaw. Once I get a receipt I should not have to wonder if the order went through or not.
Leon Bridges
That sure does not sound like the Lee Valley of yore.
Too many numbnut Millennials?
Very odd, they have always done good by me, I regularly order on line for an in store pickup (saves the line ups), always get the confirmation, then the pickup notice usually arrives shortly after the store opens, since I often order late at night. Then a ten minute drive, pick it up at the pickup counter, and a ten minute drive back home.
I have always been happy with Lee Valley in fact I send my customers to their site to pick out hardware for the furniture that I design and build for them. I let them save by bypassing me and ordering direct from LeeValley.
I got a follow up phone call and I took it further to talk to some one that might care about what is going on. I described the process and was assured that if I got the "print receipt" page with the items on the order and receipt and confirmation number that I had done all that I could do to insure that the order was taken and received.
I explained to them that I had already placed the order with another company however I think they may want to look further into this situation because if it happened to me how many others may it have happened to and they simply did not follow up. They seemed a bit more interested at that point. And I reminded this person that I sent a copy of the receipt and confirmation for them to review.
At this point I am done with it all, Amazon got the order.
LOL Exactly, Our system does not indicate that it issued a confirmation number and receipt therefore it could not have happened, you must have had a senior moment and imagined all of this.
Those are cheap/inexpensive but unfortunately considerable smaller than the 1/2" x 1/8" maginets that I need.
Lee Valley Tools Ltd. Attn: Robin Lee P.O. Box 1780 Ogdensburg, NY 13669-6780
Agreed. Lee Valley lives and dies on its reputation for customer service.
If Leon has not already done so, he should be sending one or more complaints to something above general customer service.
Leon, I would have joined those saying that doesn't sound like Lee Valley but I had a experience recently that makes me wonder. I had ordered 3 dozen cabinet knobs from their closeout page. The page went to an out of stock status a short time later. The next day it was back to an in stock status. Didn't make a lot of sense, and I was concerned that they might have shipped less than a full order.
So I called them,and got a very grumpy (almost snarly) assurance that they had shipped the whole 3 dozen.
Obviously I didn't incur any damages here, but I'm not used to that kind of telephone response from LV. Also, the fact that they went out and then in stock makes me wonder if it was a real closeout - if not that's a bit on the edge of ethical. Of course, that could just be a bad job of computer programming.
I hope our experiences don't reflect a change of business plan at LV.
I'm sure it's just a software problem and that they are not intentionally treating their customers poorly!
Could be another order was cancelled or a payment problem happened. Maybe one of the stores returned a bunch to the main warehouse. Many legit reasons for it.
I have a lot of respect for Leon, but I think he is over reacting on this. Stuff happens, not worth getting your undies in a knot over this. It is magnets, not an organ transplant.
I really don't think I am over reacting, They are basically saying that there was no order generated, and that I am at fault with the way I placed my order. I have a receipt to prove that there was. Either way I ordered from them because of their reputation and the fact that if there is a problem they handle it much better than my past dealings with Amazon when I had a problem. Amazon was less expensive but I was willing to wait longer, 2 weeks, and pay a bit more for that ease of mind. My mistake.
snip
That is a horrible response from LV. It should have been:
"I'm terribly sorry about your experience and will certainly investigate what happened in our system.
While we obviously did not ship your order in time, I am taking the liberty of sending you a gift card in the full amount of your order as some small compensation.
Again, my sincere apologies, and my thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Sincerely,
Really Good Customer Service Rep"
djb
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