With a big ride coming up I gave some thought to some new lights. Though I like my generator hub, something small and light and frictionless. A friend of mine VictimOfNoel (not his real name) has a set of the neat LED units from ayup which I quite liked. They come with a six hour battery and mounts etc which I thought would have been ideal for Audax rides. So I ordered some. Or at least tried to. Dearie gracious me.
First I had to endure their truly appalling website with it's shitty flash animation and bizzare design, which is not much fun over a dialup connection, trust me. Once I managed to find what I wanted it was impossible to find the exact price, because GST and shipping were added later in the process. Once I had ordered, I noticed the default shipping address in paypal was wrong, so I e-mailled them to ask if they could correct my error.
After a week of waiting for either a response to my e-mail or for my lights, I e-mailled ayup again this morning asking them to either confirm shipment of my lights, or to refund my money. Within 30 seconds my money was refunded. Shit! Even Tel$tra tries harder than that to hang onto customers. My refund was accompanied by a note referring me to a mass mailling they sent out during the week pointing out they were out of stock of some of the merchandise they were still selling on their website. No attempt to provide me with something different, no offer to ship something same day. Nothing.
I hate bad service. Even through their product is a decent one, they deserve to fail. I'll never deal with this company again and I recommend you don't either. During the week, I noticed this on a blog. Ayup manages to observe about four of these simple rules of how to shed customers:
First I had to endure their truly appalling website with it's shitty flash animation and bizzare design, which is not much fun over a dialup connection, trust me. Once I managed to find what I wanted it was impossible to find the exact price, because GST and shipping were added later in the process. Once I had ordered, I noticed the default shipping address in paypal was wrong, so I e-mailled them to ask if they could correct my error.
After a week of waiting for either a response to my e-mail or for my lights, I e-mailled ayup again this morning asking them to either confirm shipment of my lights, or to refund my money. Within 30 seconds my money was refunded. Shit! Even Tel$tra tries harder than that to hang onto customers. My refund was accompanied by a note referring me to a mass mailling they sent out during the week pointing out they were out of stock of some of the merchandise they were still selling on their website. No attempt to provide me with something different, no offer to ship something same day. Nothing.
I hate bad service. Even through their product is a decent one, they deserve to fail. I'll never deal with this company again and I recommend you don't either. During the week, I noticed this on a blog. Ayup manages to observe about four of these simple rules of how to shed customers:
1. Refuse to help when the customer is not happy with the product or service.
2. Ignore customers when they are standing there and it's obvious they need some attention. Better still, make sure you keep talking to your friend on the next register.
3. Push customers into buying stuff they don't need.
4. Lie.
5. Be rude and talk down to them. Do your best to make them feel like idiots.
6. Make sure you never have important items on your shelves.
7. Have only one or two people serving at peak times.
8. Display one price on the item, then charge a higher one.
9. Make sure your staff doesn't know how to do a simple transaction, like a lay-by.
10. Don't return phone calls or emails.
3,899km so far this year.
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4 comments:
Well, here's another potential customer they've lost. I'm looking at lighting gear at the moment, and just decided to give those guys a miss.
Oddly, I seem to be having difficulty with St Kilda Cycles in getting the broken wire in my E6 sorted out -- although that may be down to warranty issues with Busch & Muller. Normally their service is instant, to the point where I can call them about something on a Tuesday, and find it in my letterbox in Qld when I get home from work on the Wednesday.
Chris, the people who sold you the item are responsible to fix or replace it under warranty - whatever problems they may have with their supplier are THEIR problems not yours.
The Trade Practices Act covers this.
# 7 and #10 is so true. There's not many people to service you, and you're left to wait when clearly your time is more important. And second, no email addresses or phone numbers. Ahhh. gets me in the nerves..
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