Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 20:44:50 -0500
Reply-To: The Bus Depot <ron@NETCARRIER.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: The Bus Depot <ron@NETCARRIER.COM>
Subject: Re: Bad Experience (rant)
In-Reply-To: <v03110700b277683edcb8@[199.174.233.187]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> If your staff is so inept that it can't handle orders while you're away,
then
> either you shouldn't go away or you should get competetant staff. That's
> the nature of owning your own business.
> I've had limited experience with Bus Depot, mainly because I can't get
> answers to my price questions. I called back in Oct, waited on hold, and
> then spent 15 or so minutes, on my phone bill, trying to help the guy on
> the phone locate a price on a part (the programable intermittant wiper
> relay). It was never found...
You know I'm running a little short of patience about this issue. A
few -not many, but a very few - people had order delays or difficulty
getting through while I was on vacation. I made every effort to straighten
the situation out, and have everything running smoothly now that I'm back.
I explained the situation. I fixed the problem. I even provided my home
email address, for anyone who did not get perfect service in the future. I
apologized. Not once but several times. Obviously this is not enough. Here
I'm still taking flack about the same, already-solved, circumstance a month
later.
Frankly what started out as a lot of fun is starting to feel pretty
thankless right about now. There isn't much else I can do besides fix the
problem, which I did. I really don't know what you expect of me. I'm tired
of taking public floggings for every minor inconvenience, like a busy
telephone line or a backordered part. Be real. This is the real world, and
not everything is perfect. I try my best. I listen to my customers. I go
out of my way to help them out. I have bent over backwards to make major
improvements, including a state-of-the-art website database, hiring more
people, adding phone lines, and generally getting almost every order out
within 24 hours at this point, still at a lower price than anybody. I have
done this by putting in 80 hour weeks and giving the Bus Depot everything I
had.
Now I'm expected to apologize for having the nerve to -gasp!- take a
vacation! I needed this time with my wife and baby, and damn it, I earned
it. And even then, I found myself asking Evon and Haley to settle for a
combination business trip/vacation, being unable to totally leave my work
behind me. Frankly I probably wouldn't have gone at all if I knew how
difficult things would be for the guys in my absence. Which would have been
a shame because I would have missed a really important time in my baby
daughter's life. But I did go. And when I came back, I discovered the
(relatively few) errors that occurred, fixed them, and even apologized.
What the hell do you want from me?
Yes, an order's going to get messed up here or there. Even going forward it
will. I'm human, and so are the people who work for me. Yes, there was a
backorder on one crankshaft that the vendor (RMMW, it turns out) did not
tell us about. Yes, while I was gone Dan or Jerry kept someone on hold
while they tried to locate the part number of a relay for another customer.
I'm sure the customer for whom they spent 15 minutes researching a $5 part
appreciated that they worked so hard for him, on a sale that would have made
them 50 cents had they found it. Of course someone else had to wait on hold
as a result. You can't please everybody.
I'm sorry for flying off the handle, but it's just been wearing a little
thin. This job is a labor of love for me, and I take it personally. This is
the first time that I've ever wondered why I was doing it. I really do my
best to take care of my customers and fellow Vanagon owners, and 99% of the
time I do it well. When I don't, it's not for lack of trying. Nobody bats
1000. Nobody's offering the Vanagon community a better alternative because
nobody's trying as hard as I am, even if not always succeeding. For every
customer who couldn't get through on the phone or whatever, 1000 others got
their order in two days at half the price they would have paid otherwise.
The number of complaints to the list have been maybe a dozen in the last
year, and almost entirely about busy signals or unanswered e-mail,
conditions which I have addressed at great effort and expense. Meanwhile
hundreds of people got great deals on parts, quickly and without incident,
every day.
I don't know what else to tell you. I'm not going to keep apologizing for a
handful of errors that occurred last month when I was on vacation. If those
few exceptions are all my work amounts to, if they matter more than all of
the work I've done to try to serve the Vanagon community, then it's a free
market so by all means vote with your wallet. Or better yet, try doing what
I do. One way or the other, I'm ready to move on from that few-week period
and start enjoying what I do again.
,
- Ron Salmon
The Bus Depot
http://www.busdepot.com
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