In the on-line world bring your own service is taking it a little too far!

[pamela]

When my family moved to Australia in the early 70’s I remember one thing capturing the attention and amusement of my Dad almost immediately. It was the quintessential Aussie BBQ. Well actually it wasn’t the BBQ itself but the invitations to the BBQs.

Australia is famous for the phrase ‘BYO’ – bring your own. Generally it meant bring your own ...alcohol but often at large work related BBQs or public events, it would also mean bring your own meat. Something that we all smiled at and wondered why you would be invited to someone’s BBQ and have to bring your own meat to be cooked, particularly since after attending a few of these BBQs you realised that while you may have brought the perfect fillet or t-bone you rarely got to eat it! But one invitation struck my Dad as the most hilarious of all. It read along the lines of the following:

Welcome to the annual summer BBQ of Edith and Jerry XYZ (name withheld out of politeness).......details, logistics and timing in between .... and then the sign off: BYO Booze, Meat and ladies a plate please! This we laughed at for days and of course the entire journey to Edith and Jerry’s BBQ. It was like inviting people for a party and then asking them to bring everything! Now I know there are times with close friends where you do that, you all chip in and bring something along, but when it was the Annual Event hosted by the local well-to-dos, it really made us laugh. “Ladies a plate please”, we were surprised we didn’t have to bring our own crockery, cutlery, soft drinks and do the dishes at the end of the day.

Well, you may be wondering why I bring this up. Each Christmas I spend some time searching on line from Europe or Canada for gifts I can order for family in Australia. This past Christmas was no exception. I got on line and spent some time comparing the types of presents I could send and by when they would arrive until finally I decided to go the tried and tested route – wine for Mum and Dad and my brother.

The site I found was for a company I now call CellarDumbies. I placed two separated orders but found that the site was really only equipped for repeat, Australian resident customers. I had to set up an account and then found that the second order automatically set itself up to be delivered to the previous orders delivery address, which I didn’t want to do, even though I started with a different address than the previous order as well. I fiddled around for sometime and then felt that it was clear where I wanted the order delivered and away I went. Two orders of wine to two different addresses.

As it turned out, the second order (to my parents) was automatically attached to the first order to my brother. But i wasn’t aware of that. Anyway, that’s not my point. My point is that upon placing these two orders I received a confirmation email (no reply accepted of course) that told me the order number and what the order was but not the delivery details so i still didn’t know the delivery address was wrong, butiIn plain sight were the instructions that after ordering $550 worth of wine, I was then being told in the confirmatuion email that I (not they) needed to telephone CellarDumbies and arrange delivery. The start of the BYO service experience, BYO Service Point 1.

So, I telephoned my little old Mum in Australia from Toronto and asked her to write down the details of the Christmas present (no surprises from the wine Santa now) and then I passed on to her the telephone number for her to call and tell CellarDumbies when she could be home to accept delivery of the ow not surprise Christmas present. I did the same for my brother’s order. A week after Christmas (yes after Christmas – apparently I had placed the order a few hours after their cut off date to make the Christmas delivery) my brother emailed to tell me his 3 cases of wine had a arrived. I had only ordered one for him! Hmm... I think maybe they made a mistake I replied.

A few days later I spoke with my little old Mum who told me she had telephoned Cellardumbies prior to Christmas, they remembered that she was a repeat customer (which she already was) and that the order would be delivered. A few days after that she got a telemarketing call from Cellardumbies who asked her if she wanted to take advantage of their January special. She said usually yes, but that she was expecting a delivery from her daughter and she would wait to see what it was. “oh!” said the telemarketer “we have no record of a delivery for you” and a long conversation ensured after which my Mum concluded that she would need to follow up with me or my brother since the telemarketer was unable to help and had not offered to discover what may have happened. Mum telephoned my Brother to see if he had his wine. He did. She then telephoned me and we determined (without Cellardumbies help) that both orders had probably gone to my brother by mistake. Self Service Experience Number 2. – solve the mystery of the non-delivery one’s self.

I also emailed Cellardumbies and notified them that there had been a mistake and no order had been received by my Mother. They replied that infact there had been an order to my Mum and it had been delivered as requested to Canberra, a city some 300 Kms away from my Mums house. That was the extent of the email. Self Service Experience No. 3 – no resolution as to how to get the order to the right recipient. I then telephoned CellarDumbies from France where I now was. After 37 minutes on my cell phone we established the following:

1.I had obviously (though clearly not obvious to me) attached the wrong delivery address to the order.
2.I had not used the multiple gift function that was apparently quite visible on the website.
3.Mum had not confirmed her address on the telephone during Self Service Point 1. (But we were not able to confirm if that was an actual fact as the representative reminded me that she “was not the representative on the telephone with my Mum”.
4.They would tell my brother he had to return part of his Christmas gift (Self Service Experience No. 4 and let’s hope he hadn’t already enjoyed a few bottles!).
5.They would then send the remaining bottles to my Mum.

Clearly this didn’t work for me. It would be embarrassing to ask my brother to sort through the wine and return it. Therefore, after a 120 Euro follow up telephone call to Cellardumbies (Self Service Experience 5, I reordered the wine for my parents (leaving the 2 extra cases with my brother) and discovered they were out of stock. My $500 order became a $1200 order not including the cost of my time to conduct my own customer service activities! While there are many solutions that would have been slightly more palatable, this one was left entirely on my shoulders.

And so with that, I think of the on-line world for this particular organisation as being the equivalent of .....And ladies a plate please! Short of the actual packing of the wine to be shipped, everything else was left to me and at my cost. Quite a business model if one is after disgruntled employees needing to take calls from disgruntled customers. Will I order from them again? No. Was there anything this organisation had learned from, would follow up on, would attempt to clarify for the future. Also No. Will I tell my 10-15 people of my dissatisfaction – Yes. CellarMasters needs a little help to master the art of Service, but in the meantime i suggest you BYO when you do business with them.