Special K's Takes a Stab at Customer Service... and Fails.

Some time back, it was decided by the powers that be to give Special K a promotion. She is in charge of accepting payments and physically mailing small merchandise orders here. Due to the very small volume of sales, you'd think this task would be pretty easy for Special K. By now you know, Fair Readers, that you would be wrong. Dead wrong.

Special K's inability to send a package without fucking something up has been a long-standing problem in the office. It was even brought to the Boss Lady's attention in a recent private meeting between her, myself, and our Accountant (in short, Special K couldn't comprehend checking a box: USPS, UPS, or Fed Ex -- she always checked USPS no matter how she sent the package, cause, uh... it was just the closest box to the right???). Boss Lady listened, but as of yet, no action has been taken.

Which leads me to today's email I received from a client, in their exasperation with Special K. All I can do is apologize on her behalf, because I just don't get it myself:

Hi Sherry,

Special K called back and she spoke to UPS and confirmed that 4 boxes were shipped and received with no damages. She said I could call UPS and speak to Holly. There is nothing that they can do from there end – the order was sent and UPS confirms delivery. I explained that I am not questioning that we received the 4 boxes or if they were damaged, but I am assuming that you possibly received the case with a shortage of one unit. Special K responded that she wouldn’t know and that she would make a note of it on the order.

She was not willing to work anything out.

Kelli

****
Hi S,

.... Another reason for my contacting you is in regards to the order we received at the end of December. We were shorted one unit of XXX. Kelli in our accounts payable department follows up with discrepancies on purchase orders. She contacted Special K about the situation; however Special k did not seem to understand the situation. Kelli was trying to tell her that not only we were shorted, but you as well! Special K explained there are 10 units in each carton; however even though the carton may say 10 if you don’t check the boxes before shipping you really don’t know. Our receivables department thought it was an odd number for a carton pack and recounted to make certain. The other point Kelli was trying to clear with Special K was about the shipping confusion. With the shortage we even weighed the merchandise received to prove we were short one. On checking the tracking numbers from the delivery notifications we realized the weight listed wasn’t even close. When we weighed the nine units to find a total weight of 18lbs; the shipping notification stated 37lbs. With this discrepancy wanted to look at our UPS bill because on the order we asked that you please use our shipper number. We looked at all of our UPS third-party billing from the time of the shipment through current and did not find the four cartons on any invoice, which makes me wonder how the shipping was charged? Someone else’s shipper number or did someone forget to use our shipper number and we still owe for the shipping. We are just trying to figure the whole thing out. I believe Special K may have taken offense to what we are trying to explain; however we are just trying to iron out any problems before our spring mailing and want things to run smoothly. Please call me if you need any further clarification and how you want to handle the situation. Thank-you and have a nice day!

-Sherry

Those poor people... good fucking luck sorting this one out.