The Schiit Customer Improvement Thread

I really hate to be stereotypical, but I dealt with plenty of "spoiled brats" Singaporeans who believe they are entitled to everything. I asked some of my local friends in Jacksonville who came from Singapore and they told me it sadly a stereotype due to Singaporeans love for consumerism (since they are paying too much for a Flat).

@digitaldufferme , post the email. Not everyday you are getting a manufacture who wants to see how they screwed up with your Customer Experience.

 

I asked to see what we sent you, because I wanted to know if we deviated from the script, and/or if we have a problem with a particular representative. This information would help us improve.

I've looked into what we typically send when an order has failed verification, and it's something like this:

Several key pieces of information in your order did not match and met the profile of potentially fraudulent activity. Since the order did not pass inspection, it was canceled and all funds were returned to the purchasing credit card. Your best way to ensure trouble-free ordering and shipping with us in the future is to order using a PayPal verified account. I apologize for this inconvenience but credit card fraud costs us tens of thousands of dollars each year and we have to protect our company and our livelihoods. Please order again and use PayPal as your form of payment. Thank you.

This message has issues with clarity, most specifically in that we're contacting you because your order is ready, and that you can maintain the order with alternate payment, so I'm recommending some edits:

We're contacting you because your order is ready to ship. However, several key pieces of information in your order didn’t match, and met the profile of potentially fraudulent orders. Due to this, we have canceled this order and returned all all funds to the purchasing credit card.

We're sorry for the inconvenience, but if you want to maintain your current order, please contact us for payment via PayPal, or place a new order with PayPal specified as the form of payment, using a PayPal verified account.

Thank you for understanding our need to protect our company and our livelihoods.

However, with respect to ongoing communications, it is not practical for us to send personal emails updating on the status of every order, though we usually send a bulk email if the shipping date of backordered products shifts significantly. You can always contact [email protected] and ask for status, which they will be happy to provide as long as they know the answer. Many times they may have to hedge, because schedules from our chassis or boards suppliers are not set in stone. Freya+ was held up for top chassis for some time, for example. Hell, we had tons of Freya+ sitting in bottom chassis waiting for tops for weeks. The metal guys moved the shipment date on the tops three times. We finally got them on Friday. That's the reality of a small manufacturing business. Sorry we can't meet your standards.

 

I'd appreciate some paragraph breaks. It would make it easier to understand your walls of text. OK, I get the general gist, but more thanks to Jason than to you. You are pissed off because, having waited for parts to arrive, you are then told that your payment fails some security criteria.

I get that. It would be annoying. But maybe there is a reason: maybe they don't make the card charge until the order is ready to ship? In most cases, most customers want charges to their cards to be made as late as possible and, rightly, do not like companies taking their money and sitting on it.

@schiit might look at / comment on at what stage the security denial was made. On the other hand, they might not want to comment, because... security.

What I don't get, and might have misunderstood, @digitaldufferme, is that you then seem to be going on to suggest that all this card-security stuff was an excuse to cover not having the parts to fulfil the order. Excuse me if I didn't pick the right bits out of your text walls in the right order, and forget this paragraph. But if I have the right impression, you are saying that they were lying to you? Which is a bit stronger than simply saying that their procedures exceeded your patience. And if I got that wrong...

Whatever. I can certainly suggest a Schiit [not-a-]customer improvement: don't write walls of text.

 

Per our FAQ, we don't charge an order until it is ready to ship:

Do you charge my card immediately, or when you ship?
We won’t charge your order before we ship, though we will authorize your card when you submit your order. The hold on your funds should be dropped after 3 days if we don’t ship before then.

Fraud assessment is made as we process orders for shipment.

 

I’m going to add just my two cents on some more potential edits Jason. I find the “due to this, we have cancelled your order” right in the first paragraph to be pretty jarring. Why not mention the alternative payment option first?

We're contacting you because your order is ready to ship. However, several key pieces of information in your order didn’t match, and it has been flagged as a potentially fraudulent order.

Due to this, to maintain your current order, we are requesting that you make your payment through PayPal. Please contact us to arrange for your PayPal payment.

Alternatively you can place a new order with PayPal specified as the form of payment, using a PayPal verified account. [rlow: can the person reference their first order, to maintain their place in line in this case?]

We're sorry for the inconvenience.

In the meantime, we have canceled the original order and returned all all funds to the purchasing credit card.

We value your business, and thank you for understanding our need to protect our company from fraud. This helps us maintain our business, keeps our prices low, and ultimately benefits our customers.

 

I like this, but i'm told there are some details where we do have to cancel the order. But I'll see what we can do the soften the blow. Again, I'm not the expert at this. Best to contact Alex or Amy at [email protected]. I need to get back to designing products.

 

Pretty terrible customer service, if you ask me, for the owner to spend a bunch of time responding to a complaint and take active steps to remedy communications to make things easier in the future.

 

Yeah, the noive of some people.

 

I just noticed that the title of this post is Schiit Customer Improvement Thread...lol....awesome.

 

Stories like this make me wonder about what consumer norms seem to be.

When I’m shopping online, seller customer service doesn’t matter as long as I trust them to get me a usable product for a reasonable cost. I never write away any seller or brand for anything other than the product not meeting expectations. From what it seems, a lot more other people care about enjoying the shopping process too; I find this really weird because I’m shopping online precisely to avoid being patronised or led to decisions I didn’t intend to make, as I’ve felt many times dealing with physical stores.

I’ve had to return to sellers when they send me the wrong thing or have delays due in part to their mistakes, but I’ve had little problem writing them off when I see proper responses taken after I bring up the issue. I can only imagine that one must be ignorant of the difficulties of maintaining a supply chain or lack the empathy to try and understand others’ limits to immediately find bad intent in what is likely an unfortunate situation (not to say businesses can’t try to reduce them). If I wanted the shopping to be perfect, I’d buy everything on amazon or from massive brands since they always make it easy. I’d also understand the difficulties of when I’m not buying from them.

Guess it comes down to how some people value their own time so much that they get offended when things don’t go smoothly, even when they’ve not lost a single cent.

 

No, you have misunderstood me. In short, from start to finish the customer service discussion had to be driven by the customer. This is poor protocol. The order was cancelled without any discussion or request for further verification. This is poor protocol. Responding to a customer in a CANNED response linking his offer to potential fraudulent activity is insensitive. This is poor protocol.

 

Each of us is free to decide the level of respect they deserve as a customer. My correspondence with Schiit was courteous all along up to the point they were not.

 

you could have copied and pasted the email one billion times instead of posting a novel about how this one mild interaction gave you the vapors jesus christ

 

dude’s over here delivering a TED Talk on retail rudeness

 

I completely agree. It the the poor wording in a sensitive subject “fraudulent activity” and the cancellation without first seeking verification that is offensive. Schitt has now amended their canned response which provides both explanation and delinks the sensitive subject with the purpose of the customer. Common practice doesn’t make it right. My objective has been achieved if the future common practice includes courtesy.

 

Sense of entitlement is baffling IMO but funny

 

I chose to make a poor customer service experience public. Schitt has responded by changing their future canned response. The dude is satisfied.