So, here’s a small rant about poor customer service, the sort that’s just baffling where all you can contemplate is “who the hell thinks this is ok?”
On the 6th of February, I ordered a large, metal, multi-drawer toolbox from Sydney Tools. As pictured here:
The cost; $1050, plus delivery. So I was all-in for around $1100. There was a bit of organising to do, as the box was ordered from the Virginia (Brisbane) store, but being delivered from the Stafford (Brisbane) store, to a location in Brisbane.
I’d previously been to look at one of them at the Kunda Park store, and take some measurements off the baseplates for the wheels. The goal being to can fabricate lower-height levelling feet, so it can be placed on uneven ground under a table.
There’s also a couple of hundred dollars invested in steel and heavy duty levelling feet to achieve that.
The day of the delivery arrived 10 days later, the 16th of February:
The bottom of the cardboard box was all mashed up, which made it hard to see (until the delivery driver had left) that the box has been smashed into by a pair of somethings. Those somethings appeared, suspiciously, to be the size and distance apart one would expect from a pair of forklift tines.
So, I called up the guy who I’d been working with at Virginia to discuss this, and he had to talk with management, and while they made a token offer of $100 refund to keep it, I declined, and said I’d like the box replaced with a new, undamaged one. To which he agreed.
We had to organise a date for the pickup and delivery of the new one, and so on the 16th of March a truck turned up again, to take the damaged box (which I had put the wheels on, as they had requested) back to Stafford, and (bafflingly in a second trip) bring a new one back.
My “new” replacement toolbox:
This one is in worse condition than the one I returned. It’s clearly a demonstrator, they’ve had out and in use on the showroom floor for a significant amount of time. There’s a sizeable dent in the stainless steel top (whose protective film was missing), both the side handles, which are supposed to be a user-fit part, have paint scraped off. On the back, there’s gouges through the powder coating all the way to the metal, which has already begun rusting. There’s scuffing through the topcoat to the red undercoat in multiple places on the sides. The caution sticker on the side has been torn, and the wheels have seen extensive use.
What sort of person thinks this is OK? Who looks at “we delivered a damaged product to a customer”, and thinks “we’ll send back a damaged, worn, distressed demonstrator as a replacement”?
Who thinks a damaged, secondhand, demonstrator product is a replacement for a warranty claim?
Seriously, at what point did “fuck the customer” become standard operating procedure?
The delivery driver hightailed it while I was on the phone to Sydney Tools to tell them that this wasn’t an acceptable replacement, which after he’d spent both deliveries complaining about the job, and trying to get us to do the actual moving of the product, demanding we climb up the waist-high hydraulic platform suspended in the air at the back of his truck, seemed a final “screw you” to me, the customer, who’d paid for all this in the first place.
Now, lest you think “this is just cosmetic” dear reader, again:
- it’s starting to rust, and
- it’s over $1000 of equipment, and
- it was bought NEW.
I didn’t buy a factory-second, or a demonstrator, or a secondhand product; I bought a new, pristine, in box product. All I want for my money, is to receive the thing I bought.