E-Stim Systems Blog: October 2014

Friday, 17 October 2014

Interesting chat on chat

Just has a rather 'interesting' chap on our chat system who was rather 'upset' to say the least about the fact that we appear to have taken his money and then failed to tell him that his goods were not in stock - thus breaching, according to him all sorts of interesting consumer laws, and how would we like the bad publicity of all of this?

Now normally I would apologise and try to to ensure that the delay in his order was quickly sorted out, but he dropped out before I could actually answer his question. So just in case he is reading this, and for general interest I am offering my answers here...

You took my money before dispatching the goods!

We like Amazon, EBay etc have to take payment at the time you place the order - why? Well if we didn't we would have a record of all of your credit card details in order to take the payment in the future. For me personally I don't like that idea and I don't see why you would... If we don't record your card details in any way, then we cannot abuse them.

Impossible to steal what we don't have.

Too many companies have been stung by credit card hacks through websites. With us when you make payment you are passed to a highly secure server run by either PayPal or SagePay, who spend millions to keep their systems secure, and do nothing else but worry about security. We let them worry about the security, and accept the fact that when they say you have paid, you have. We trust them with our banking and generally that is as secure as we can get.

But you have my money!!

By taking payment yes we have your money, but you are covered by the guarantees that your credit card/debit/bank card and Paypal offer, and by the fact we are NOT a fly by night company -we have been around for over 10 years and have a strong reputation for customer service, so if you want a refund then all you have to ask and we will give you a refund. Even if we took payment when we ship this would still occur as your order has to negate the world of deliveries, but that is another story.

You said it was in stock and now you say it isn't!

We didn't as we cannot. We run several websites, wholesale sites and also take orders over the telephone and have the odd personal visitor. We are also more importantly the manufacturer of over 90% of our products so stock levels can and do change on a minute to minute basis. Our websites do not have any system to show you what is or isn't in stock - why? because no system is infallible and I will not lie to a customer. Telling a customer it is in stock when it isn't is a lie, and too many systems these days run like this. We don't.

Nowhere on an E-Stim Systems page will you find a statement that says an item IS in stock. if you can, then please point it out to me.

We do tell you that if you need an item for a specify date then please contact us before you place the order. We will do our best to help. WE DO aim for 100% of items in stock, but with the number of items we stock and manufacture it is very hard to have everything in stock all the time.

You didn't tell me anything!!!!

Every time you place an order, or the status of your order changes, you will be sent an email from our system. This is done automatically. Because of the amount of spam emails around people run anti-spam systems, and unfortunately these systems can and do pick up legitimate emails as spam, some of the worst don't even bother to tell anyone and they just block them so the email vanishes. We have no control over these systems so if you place an order and don't receive an email from us within say 10 minutes, then have a look in your spam folder.

I'm going to tell the world how bad you are!!

Obviously that is your choice. But threatening anyone is never going to help. It would be better if you told us what the problem was and at least allowed us to fix it, especially as you feel that we caused the issue.

If we have made a mistake, and even if we didn't and someone else did, then we will always try to sort the issues out, but it is difficult when people just wish to vent their angst on our staff or me and fail to even give us basic information like an order number or name.

The END

I think I have stopped being defensive now. People seem to find that email and chat systems insulate them from being civil, forgetting that there is actually a human being on the other end, someone who's job it is to actually help our customers, and not spend all day receiving abuse.

If you want us to help, it be so much easier just to be nice.

Wayne

P.S. If you want to see the legal aspects of purchasing goods over the internet then have a look at this excellent page from the CAB