I don't know of another supplier who will let you wander around in
his back room... Regarding the owner, on my first or second visit
some years ago, I was browsing... I never fail to stop in for a
visit when I am in NYC...
Hi Bob,
Glad to hear you had a more positive experience. People tend to be
nicer face-to-face. Its great that you can go there in person and get
the royal treatment. Most of us don’t have that luxury, and have to
deal with them via phone, where relative anonymity seems to allow the
deterioration of otherwise accepted norms of customer service.
The contrast between your experience and mine serves to illustrate
that unless you find a way to “endear” yourself to them, you can
take a hike, as far as they’re concerned. And I have.
We too have experienced ‘small company problems’ with Metalliferous.
Our shipments (to New Zealand) are held up for weeks. When I ask
about this the owner tells me frankly my small orders are a waste of
their time as they have to specially go down to the local post office
to ship it. So they put an order from us aside until they get time to
do that. This while they claim to be an international vendor.
Once when an order was so long in arriving I asked by email that
since it was required urgently now, could they please use a courier
rather than Airmail. Their reply was “What’s a ‘courier’?” OK so
maybe Fed-X and UPS are not ‘courier companies’ in the States like
they are here, but was that so indecipherable?
Another problem we’ve experience on more than one occasion is faxes
not getting through to them while my fax records a successful send.
This also happens to me when I fax Rio. I resolved to email all my
orders and send a follow-up soon after.
However much we experience problems, I do believe in giving these
vendors ample opportunity to clean up their act. Often it’s fixable,
and staying with a vendor that has pledged to improve is probably
better than trying to find another.
Brian
B r i a n A d a m
SUMMER 2002 - C A N A D A - U S A