Because I work in customer service, I am very aware of how hard it can be to help customers. I also am very aware of how customers can blame me when I can’t help them with something that someone higher up needs to handle. I get the frustration on their end when I keep saying I can’t do anything besides getting the issue sent to someone higher up. And I’m frustrated too because I hate not being able to help people.
Since I am so aware of all that, I try to not be the type of customer I hate because I know that it will not accomplish anything. But there are times where sometimes I get that way and I do hate myself for it. And the other day, I had just that issue.
I ordered something online and had the option to pay an extra $9 for same-day delivery. The other option was free delivery, but it could take up to 5 days. It was something I wanted and I decided the extra $9 was worth it. I placed the order at 1 pm and it said it was guaranteed to be delivered by 4 pm. It was going to be picked up from the store by Postmates (I didn’t realize they delivered more than food) so I wasn’t waiting on a delivery truck to show up. I watched the tracking information and saw that it went from in process to waiting to be picked up, so it seemed like everything was going as expected.
By 5 pm, it was still showing that it was waiting to be picked up and I was wondering what happened. So I reached out to the company on their online chat customer service and they confirmed that Postmates had not arrived yet to pick it up and they offered to refund the $9 I paid for same-day delivery. They then told me that if it was not delivered today and it would be updated with delivery for tomorrow and everything would be fine. I assumed this was accurate since that’s the case for anything that is delivered late.
The next day, I went online to see if my order was updated and it looked really weird. So I went back to their customer service chat system to try to get an update. And they told me that my order was canceled since it was not able to be delivered on time. I was actually so surprised by this answer that they had to explain it again to me. Basically, if you pay for same-day delivery and there is any reason why it can’t be delivered, they automatically cancel your order without notifying you. They will not attempt to have it delivered any other day and they don’t say anything. Even in the shipping options, there was no explanation saying it would automatically be canceled for me. And from being someone who is a stickler for reading all the rules and policies, this really ticked me off.
I will admit that I got very short and a bit rude with the person who was on the other end of the customer service chat. I asked if there was a way to automatically redo the order instead of waiting for the refund to be processed (which won’t be done until the end of next week or the beginning of the week after). They said there was nothing they could do and all I could do would be to place a new order. I won’t be ordering it again from that company because they couldn’t promise that it would be delivered even if I didn’t select same-day delivery. All they could tell me was that if they cannot deliver it on time they will cancel it. And they did agree that there was no way for me to know that this was the policy and that it is not anywhere on their website. But that doesn’t correct the issue.
I was hoping they would maybe offer me a small discount to try to keep me as a customer or to make up for this happening, but they didn’t. I asked if they could offer one, and they said they couldn’t and the only person would be able to do so could contact me but there is currently an 8 day wait. This is a major company that I ordered from so this was surprising, but I decided to get myself on the list to be contacted. I won’t be ordering this item from them again (and will only do orders in stores from now on), but if nothing else they should know that it is not right to cancel orders without letting a customer know or explaining the risks of choosing to have something delivered from them.
At the end of my customer service chat, I did apologize to the person who was helping me. I knew that I wasn’t being a good customer and it wasn’t their fault. And they did agree with me quite a bit that I was in the right and it was wrong that this happened. Hopefully, I redeemed myself a bit at the end of the chat and the person helping me didn’t think I was as horrible as I was acting before.
I guess every so often I am a bad customer and this is why I get bad customers at my job. It’s a way to balance things out.
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