How NOT to do Business Part II

In my last blog I wrote about how I had a bad experience with a business. When I hung up the phone on Friday I thought that was the end of that bad experience. I wrote in my blog about it and called it a day. I basically filed it away and figured nothing else would come of it.

I was wrong. I'm very rarely wrong but when I am I can admit it. This afternoon around 4:30pm my office phone rings. I pick up the phone without even glancing at the phone and give my usual greeting. I'm shocked to hear the voice on the other end, "Jenny, this is "stupid guy" from "stupid company" and I'm calling because..." His because would leave you floored.

This guy decided that he wanted money for doing mock ups for me. I'm sorry but what?! Yep. He explained to me that his company only provides free art work IF they get the job and that since we chose not to go with them we owe him $300.00. Excuse me? He didn't even do any art work. My graphic designer (God bless her, always working on last minute projects for me) created all the art work, all his team did was place it on a t-shirts DIGITALLY. Drag an already made logo to an already made t-shirt and arrange the logo on the shirt. Simple. Point and click. Okay, so maybe its not THAT simple but it most certainly is not 3 hours worth of work like he claimed.

I explained to him that i felt he was just doing this because he is angry that he did not get the job. When a company calls you to ask for a quote it is your job to give them an accurate description of what they will be getting. It is your job to give them what they ask for and if you don't "win" the bid you suck it up and consider the work you did to be a cost of business. It isn't like this guy designed an entire suite of products from scratch. I provided ALL the art work, it was all done for him!! I think what gets my goat the most is the fact that the ONLY reason he wants the money for pretend artwork is because we turned him down.

Not only that but during the phone conversation he mentions that he has our credit card information on file since we worked with them last year. What? Are you threatening me? Are you basically saying that you'll run our card number with or without my consent? At that point I told him that I was disappointed with his behaviour and that I do NOT authorize him to charge our card. That I have to speak to my boss about it and then I will call him back to let him know if he can charge the card or not. He goes on to say that he would rather speak with my boss directly since he is not pleased with the way that things turned out and doesn't think that my boss made a good decision as an executive and he feels as if I'm caught in the middle.

I'm not sure what I think is more insulting, the fact that he thinks I'm slow and don't understand how business works, the the president of a multi-million dollar company is stupid and makes bad decisions as an executive, or the fact that he thinks all of us are just going to sit there and take it. I mean seriously?

I told the guy thank you for his time and I'd be back with him shortly. I hung up and sent my boss an email explaining the situation and we now have preemptively contacted MasterCard in order make sure that this particular company doesn't charge our credit card.

Again I ask, what would you do if you were caught up in this situation? Would you lose your cool in a professional environment and tell this person where to shove it? Would you ignore the situation completely?  -- I'm going to call my friend who referred me to this particular vendor and let him know that not only will I NOT do business with him but I would suggest that they stop giving him out as a recommendation. What an unprofessional person.

How NOT to do business.

Today was what I'd call a rough day at work. I spent the majority of the day shooting off emails or calling people. The calls were rough. I had to inform a few companies that they lost bids to do work for us.

Let me give you a little insight. We are fast approaching trade show season in our industry. It's going to be a rough end of August through mid-October. Along with the everyday happening at work I have to plan tradeshows, make the price list for next year, put together the binder that includes the price list and product information, oh, and don't forget we are redoing a lot of packaging and launching new products. Yeah, I'm not going to be swamped AT ALL! But hey, that isn't the point of this post. The point is that we are in the midst of planning shows and we decided that we will be giving out t-shirts at some of these shows. The t-shirt will have our company name, the website, and the icons for twitter, facebook, and youtube.com (we've just recently gone into social media and launched a new website).

I called a company in Texas that does a large part of our printing of flyers, pamphlets etc. to see if they know anyone that prints t-shirts. While I was waiting for the referral to come via email I called the company that we use here in Montreal often for a quote. At the same time my boss asked me to ask our sales reps if they had a printing person that could get a good price. Let's be honest, the economy is pretty much crappy right now and we are all looking for the best price possible. I got the first bid in from the Montreal company and while I hit the forward button to show my boss I knew we wouldn't be using them. They were extremely over priced. Seriously.  The referral from my friend in Texas came through and we discussed t-shirt brand, feel, print ideas etc. while I was waiting on his quote a quote came in from one of my sales reps contacts. I informed this guy that I was waiting for a quote from another company. He said he understood.

I felt overwhelmed but I knew one thing for sure. The Montreal company was out. The referral from Texas sent me mock ups via email but no pricing. He told me that he would stay in line with what we paid last year (I was off work for a year so I have no clue what it is). I told the company that my sales rep referred me to that although they have great prices and great mock ups I am still waiting on one more bid. He told me that he completely understood. A few minutes later I got another email from him asking for more details and he said "I'm confident that I'll be the price best and I'd like to be proactive while you wait for your final quote. Can I have the following information...."

My boss made the decision last night. He wanted to go with the company that my sales rep brought to us. He managed to get us higher quality shirts at a better price and he was located closer to come of our trade shows so the shipping price would be cheaper too.  I called the guy this morning and finalized some details and gave him the green light. BUT before I could do that I got a call from the Montreal company asking if we made a decision. Unfortunately I couldn't bring myself to let her down. What I told her instead was that we were waiting for another quote. She said, "Wow, that hurt." I don't understand why that could hurt? Are we supposed to blindly just accept your pricing without looking at another company? Are we supposed to assume that you are the best priced company? I'm really sorry but over the 4 years I've worked at this company I've quickly realized that instead of being the cheapest it really is one of the highest priced companies when doing printed materials. I think it might have hurt because my boss didn't just say "Okay" instead we decided to shop around.

I then had to call the company that was referred to me by a friend. I started off all nice and friendly and brought myself to say, "I'm really sorry but we have decided to go with another company" and then the guy went off on me. He asked what the pricing difference was and if we were willing to kill a business relationship over a couple hundred dollars and how he didn't feel his company was given a fair chance. I told him that "You were higher priced on lower quality shirts, therefore I'd assume that you are going to be higher priced on the higher quality shirts too" and he kept on going in. I mentioned that the other companies price quote included 24 Adidas polo shirts as well and then he says "Yeah Adidas is just throwing free shirts at everyone these days. He must have a rejected load" Wow. Excuse me!? Can't you just shut your face and accept that we decided to go with another company? Then he said the thing that irked me the most, "I don't understand how an executive would choose to go with a completely new company when we have worked together and proved that we price well, work on short deadlines, and always deliver on time." I basically, very politely told him, "I'm sorry but last year we did take a chance on you and it worked out for us, we are hoping that this year the same thing happens."

I completely understand that a company can be disappointed when they were expecting to land a $6000 job but I did inform them that I was waiting on other bids. I told all the companies that we were waiting on other bids (except the Montreal company who came in right around $10,000). I was honest and remained professional. I don't see how the owner of a company can just bitch and moan to me about us not choosing them. I would even understand him making a comment like, "I'm really sorry/disappointed that this didn't work out, I was looking forward to working with you." I can understand him telling a business partner how he's disappointed or how he was banking on getting the job. I just don't find it was very professional of him to complain directly to a company that MIGHT have used him again in the future. I can promise you one thing though, as long as I am at the company we will NOT work with that particular company again.

So, would you ever complain directly to a customer or potential customer?

Stupid is ...Stupid does

So I seem to have fallen into some kind of blog writing rut. Well to be honest, I've fallen into a rut when it comes to all aspects of my writing. Reading has sort of taken over right now. I'm reading the Twilight series and reading a lot of Derryan's writing. The story is coming along so great I'm excited and very happy to be a part of it. A part of it as his agent, a part of it as his creative inspiration, but the biggest part of it because we are cell mates. :) Friends for ever and I'm so proud of him.


Anyway this blog isn't about Derryan and his writing (although for a sneak peak you guys should make friends with 'Angel Morland' on Facebook). I spent a lot of time today reading blogs and I noticed a common thread on most of them: STUPID PEOPLE. No I don't mean the writers were stupid, but they were complaining about stupid people and who am I to ignore such a delectable topic?

I've had a lot of recent run ins with stupid people but the one from a couple of weeks ago really really stood out. I was home sick for 3 days with gasto (seriously the most unfun sickness you could have. You can't do anything but stay close to the bathroom!!) So since I was home Georgie called me and asked me to call Bell Canada about our satellite upstairs. For some reason the satellite in our bedroom would constantly lose the signal and more than half the channels wouldn't show up. It was the most annoying thing ever but we never had time to call because we only watch tv up there for like 20 minutes before bed. I was home so I might as well call them.

Now before I get to the phone call let me give you some backstory to me. When I was 13 years old I was diagnosed with a disease called myasthenia gravis. It's an immune disease where my body produces too many antibodies and therefore gets bored of me not being sick and attacks my ATP cells which totally reduces my energy and my strength. It is managable but when I am sick or stressed my disease completely skyrockets and I feel like I'm dead. It ends up affecting my muscles so I'm pretty weak and have hard time going up and down stairs etc. When my disease acts up it can be bad to the point that you'd think I am physically disabled. In fact, the goverment of Quebec seems to think so and I have a handicap parking tag. Don't worry about me, I've come to terms with it...anyway.... By now you should know HOW I felt when I called Bell.

So I'm downstairs in my living room watching TV when George calls me to talk to Bell. I sit down and dial their number and go through this whole automated thing where I enter my phone number, say why I'm calling and blah blah. The lovely automated operator, Emily, informs me that I must be in front of the tv that I am calling to trouble shoot. I hang up the phone and drag my sick ass up the stairs and have my puppy nipping at my heels. Heaven forbid he be downstairs alone!

Now I'm in front of the tv that isn't working properly and I call Bell and when I get a human on the phone I realize that the trouble is starting, not the trouble shooting process. I get a guy named "Sam" on the phone and I can tell you one thing. Wherever "Sam" comes from Sam is NOT a common name. A more common name in his area is probably something along the lines of Harminder or Abu. His accent is really thick and heavy and I'm just trying to understand him clearly. We start trouble shooting by pushing a bunch of buttons on my remote and checking the settings on the receiver and all kinds of other not fun things. Finally "Sam" decides that it is not something he can fix by having me push buttons and now its time to see if the problem is with the receiver or not. He asks me to unhook this receiver and take it downstairs to see if it will work there. At this point I proceed to tell "Sam" that I am physically disabled and unable to move heavy furniture, disconnect the receiver, struggled down the stairs where I would have to move more heavy furniture, disconnect the currently set up receiver and reconnect this one.

At this point "Sam" tells me that it is protocol and that he can not skip a step in the trouble shooting process. I tell him that I work for a company that also has a lot of calls for customer service and that we too have protocol but there are special circumstances that require us to skip our protocol and just make executive decisions. I told Sam that I think he should send a Bell tech out to my house in order to replace the receiver to fix this problem as it is not the first time I am having the same problem with the same reciver. Sam basically tells me to go fuck myself and that he can't skip any steps. I ask to speak to a manager. I get a floor supervisor named "Dan". Believe me he wasn't a Dan either. After explaining the situation to him and getting the same result my blood is pumping and I'm furious. I want to beat the living shit out of everyone where Dan and Sam work. I ask to speak to someone else and then I must have gone though 5 customer service reps /pseudo tech agents and I start to demand to speak to someone in CANADA. I tell the last person I'm on the phone with, "John" that when I pay my bill I pay it in Canadian dollars at a Canadian bank for a Canadian service and I'd like to speak to someone in my country which is when I get a line like "Yes Jenny, I understand but Bell Canada has many offices all over the world if you hang up and come back into the queue you may get your call answered by someone in Canada or India." I roll my eyes and hang up the telephone. Are these guys serious?

I pick up the telephone again and start the process again. Instead of asking for tech support when Emily asks why I'm calling I say CANCEL. Wouldn't you know that within 10 seconds I had a lady named Sarah on the phone, and guess what, she probably was a real Sarah, from Canada! Sarah asks why I'm canceling since I'm such a valued Bell Canada customer and I explain to her how Sam over in India wanted me to risk my life, at the very least, my face, in order to save Bell some money by having a tech come out to my house. She's completely horrified at the situation and schedules an appointment to have a tech come to my house early the next morning and gives me 30% off of my entire Bell bill for the next 12 months.

What I don't understand is how you can ask someone who is telling you they are HANDICAPPED and UNABLE to go down the stairs to still do it just because the script on their screen tells them to. I was completely shocked.

A few days later I get an apology letter from Bell telling me they are sorry for my experience calling their call center and they gave me a telephone number to call in case I have any further problems with their services which they hope I don't.

So yeah, I kind of found that to be pretty fucking stupid. How does one go about asking a cripple to hobble down the stairs? And for those of you who know me, I can be really descriptive. I was explaining to Sam, Dan, and John how much work it would be for me to get the reciever and carry it down the stairs without me misstepping, falling, rolling down a flight of stairs before landing on my face and hitting my nose so hard that fragments of broken nose bones get into my brain and render me dead within seconds....

Ah, the wonders of outsourcing for cheap labour.