As a business owner, there are certain situations where I’ve had to make judgement calls about things in order to please customers. Although rare, I’m sure there were times where I’ve chosen not to please a customer too. The whole “customer is always right” philosophy works for sales, but doesn’t always apply when you work in a field where you’re hired for your technical expertise. (e.g. If a client tells me he thinks a flashing polka-dot logo will help him sell his new widget invention, I may hold an exorcism)
Now there have been a couple instances lately that have peeved me. This time I’m on the receiving end as a customer. As a business person, I know where they’re coming from. But as a customer, I’m really peeved at how I was treated. I’d really like to know what people think about these situations.
Take this first instance (I’m going to really simplify the situation so I don’t bore you to death) — I had a credit card with Capital One for years. One day $600 pops into my account from nowhere. I tell them about it immediately but they insist it’s mine.
Flash forward 8 months, they discover the problem (their mistake) and they chase me down for the money. The business thing that they can do is take it back — hey, it’s not my money…so the bank can take it back. And that’s what they did.
Nothing I could do. They added the balance to the tail end of any debt I had on the card and I was charged finance charges off of the $600 that was accidentally given to me. I immediately paid everything off in full, including the extra $600, and I’ve vowed never to use the card again.
Second situation. I sent a $1000 print job to a large Mainland trade printer called 4over.com. I send them a Photoshop file that I prepped with their specifications. 2 weeks later 4 giant boxes of presentation shows up at my doorstep and in 5 seconds I notice a graphic blunder.
They investigate and tell me they don’t know what caused it but they were able to recreate the result by flattening my file. (Photoshop geek-speak where they take all the multiple layers of my design and combine them all into one). They tell me because it’s a problem in my file, they can’t do anything for me. I call another printer with this problem and they tell me this problem with my file is a rare thing they’ve only seen once before. (I’ve never seen this happen in all my years using this program). An obscure problem resulted in this situation and 4over never bothered to check the print or offer any suggestion how to fix it.
Once again, they’re doing everything by their policy — if its a problem in a file, they aren’t responsible. So now I spent $1000 for 4 boxes of landfill. (Anybody want some presentation folders for school?)
Now, in both situations, these guys are following policy and there’s nothing I can do. They prevented loss of money from their end and that’s that. But I can’t help but think, “why can’t these guys bend over backwards a little bit to help a customer?” If they offered to help out a little bit (say they offered 50% of the cost back), they might take a few hundred dollars loss on the current job, but they’d recover it with my continued business wouldn’t they?
This way they simply show me they don’t care. And that’s the end of my business with either of them.
Am I being unreasonable with my thinking here?
LoweStudio Inc was founded by me, Raphael Lowe, a Honolulu based illustrator and web designer. I presently design and manage a few dozen commercial websites, but my main focus these days is acting as the head developer for Kapiolani Community College and teaching
i’m with you 100%. i had a similar issue with a credit card recently (Bank of Hawaii no less) and have promised myself to get rid of it ASAP. as for the print house, there are many others out there who have superior customer service and reasonable rates. if your original vendor won’t treat you right, someone else will.