I HAD an out-of-the-blue but most welcome e-mail this week from a company I’d sent a query to back in January when I could no longer find one of their products on supermarket shelves.
“Is it too late to drop off your hamper today,” the writer asked.
I didn’t even know I was going to receive such a thing so, not only was it okay, it was a delightful surprise, too.
I’d been searching for the product – a dietary oil supplement for dogs, intended to give them soft, shiny fur – for more than a year when Chiel reader Harry Thackwray wrote to me recommending it as an efficient way of making fleas flee. “A friend suggested that we give our Penny Bob Martin’s Lustrecote; she gets half a teaspoon on her food at night,” he wrote. “We have not had fleas for six years now …. We think that the fleas do not like the oily skin and fur.”
It was a completely unexpected side-effect. I’d been looking for it because our little Tayla loves the taste.
After Harry’s experience, I was more determined than ever to find it again.
I wrote to the company immediately. A swift and friendly response assured me it would be available in Vincent – a little far from my regular shopping neighbourhood but at least I manage to get there once a month, so no problem. The hamper surprise this week, then, was a bonus, indeed – and an admirable example of what seems to be increasingly rare good customer service.
How very different from the run-in I’ve just had with probably the largest cereal makers in the country, whose website-stated values include integrity and accountability.
My query about whether a many-months- out-of-date competition on the box of cereal I’d bought could possibly herald stale contents and belie the packaging’s sell-by date resulted in a letter from the company denying it was possible (even though they hadn’t seen them, let alone tested them).
They did, however, apologise for “the distress caused on this occasion”, and expressed the hope I would “continue to enjoy” their products. Strange, especially as their letter was confrontationally headed WITHOUT PREJUDICE (their capital letters) – a quasi-legal term most often used when litigation is expected!
Mind-boggling. Perhaps they thought I was some kind of cereal offender (duh!).
Talking of customer service, watch out for what seems like a new way to delude us into thinking we’re getting a good deal at the supermarket. I can’t say for sure that it’s designed to deceive but from the size of the shelf label price for some Cheddar cheese in my local supermarket relative to the print size of the amount I’d be getting if I bought it, I find it hard to believe otherwise. The bold, black typeface used for the price gives the impression it’s advertising the price per kilo but, no, in smaller, thinner, non-bold type is the weight – 850g. It almost caught me out; after all, who peers at the smaller print on shelf labels, especially when they’re like the price-per-kilo labels used to be, and the incorporated words WINNING PRICE! are written in huge letters (in eye-catching white-on-red, to boot)? Designed to mislead at the very least, I’d say.
Today’s Chiel is Stevie Godson. E-mail her at
What price good service?
“Is it too late to drop off your hamper today,” the writer asked.
I didn’t even know I was going to receive such a thing so, not only was it okay, it was a delightful surprise, too.
I’d been searching for the product – a dietary oil supplement for dogs, intended to give them soft, shiny fur – for more than a year when Chiel reader Harry Thackwray wrote to me recommending it as an efficient way of making fleas flee. “A friend suggested that we give our Penny Bob Martin’s Lustrecote; she gets half a teaspoon on her food at night,” he wrote. “We have not had fleas for six years now …. We think that the fleas do not like the oily skin and fur.”
It was a completely unexpected side-effect. I’d been looking for it because our little Tayla loves the taste.
After Harry’s experience, I was more determined than ever to find it again.
I wrote to the company immediately. A swift and friendly response assured me it would be available in Vincent – a little far from my regular shopping neighbourhood but at least I manage to get there once a month, so no problem. The hamper surprise this week, then, was a bonus, indeed – and an admirable example of what seems to be increasingly rare good customer service.
How very different from the run-in I’ve just had with probably the largest cereal makers in the country, whose website-stated values include integrity and accountability.
My query about whether a many-months- out-of-date competition on the box of cereal I’d bought could possibly herald stale contents and belie the packaging’s sell-by date resulted in a letter from the company denying it was possible (even though they hadn’t seen them, let alone tested them).
They did, however, apologise for “the distress caused on this occasion”, and expressed the hope I would “continue to enjoy” their products. Strange, especially as their letter was confrontationally headed WITHOUT PREJUDICE (their capital letters) – a quasi-legal term most often used when litigation is expected!
Mind-boggling. Perhaps they thought I was some kind of cereal offender (duh!).
Talking of customer service, watch out for what seems like a new way to delude us into thinking we’re getting a good deal at the supermarket. I can’t say for sure that it’s designed to deceive but from the size of the shelf label price for some Cheddar cheese in my local supermarket relative to the print size of the amount I’d be getting if I bought it, I find it hard to believe otherwise. The bold, black typeface used for the price gives the impression it’s advertising the price per kilo but, no, in smaller, thinner, non-bold type is the weight – 850g. It almost caught me out; after all, who peers at the smaller print on shelf labels, especially when they’re like the price-per-kilo labels used to be, and the incorporated words WINNING PRICE! are written in huge letters (in eye-catching white-on-red, to boot)? Designed to mislead at the very least, I’d say.
Today’s Chiel is Stevie Godson. E-mail her at
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