Do Your Research (aka Buyer Beware)

[bear]

I once shipped a kilt to a guy in New jersey and he sent me an email, very distressed, because the kilt was too short for him. He said it was the size he'd ordered but it was too short. He wanted to wear it to a friend's wedding.
I offered to make him another, longer one and have him ship the short kilt back to me.
"No. I'm fed up with the whole thing. Just forget it!"
I kept at him and eventually, he said he'd ship the kilt and I'd make a rush kilt and send it to him.
Well, I made the kilt and rush shipped it ... and never heard back from him, in spite of lots of calls and emails over the next year.
He got two kilts for the price of one and I'm out the cost of one kilt's worth of fabric, labour, and rush shipping.
There are times in business where you simply have to set aside your empathy and simply not give the level of service you'd like to give.
Nowadays, I only give that level of service to repeat customers or people I trust in some other way. I force myself to set aside my natural trust of people and only go on earned trust.

[Dianne B]

I force myself to set aside my natural trust of people and only go on earned trust.

Unfortunately that is far too common these days and too many people will take advantage if given the chance. Gone are the days when a man's (or woman's) word was their bond, even if they miss-spoke or made an error.

[Riverkilt]

Originally Posted by bear@bearkilts.com
"I force myself to set aside my natural trust of people and only go on earned trust."

For sure! So many things that can go wrong during an Internet transaction. That is why I ONLY do business with a few trusted kiltmakers. Call me gunshy. I've read of more than one kiltmaker who took a customers money and never delivered the kilt....let alone the sad stories of delivery delayed beyond all reasonable expectations.

So while I have empathy for any merchant (27 years in Corporate America myself with a bag of my own stories) I am also very cautious about the vendors I choose. Thank God for this board where we direct each other to the stand out vendors who provide quality and service at a fair price, and we give each other a head's up about less than efficient vendors. The later exchanges have saved me many heartaches.

As to Matt's original post intent, in many industries its common for the customer to literally sign off on a final design of something created for them so that the producer has signed proof that the client has seen and accepted the product as designed. Sadly, not possible in the kilt industry beyond maybe approving an actual swatch.

Some of you will remember the actual process of selecting the final design for our X Marks the Scot tartan and the reactions when the finished goods arrived. Really hard to nail the image in someone's mind with the actual goods. Steve Ashton did very very well during that process....and it was a long process to get it right.

I recall an old adage in sales. Something along the line of, if you don't have a few angry customers then your marketing efforts aren't as effective as they could be. Meaning, if you're doing a good job with marketing you're gonna bring in some folks that will never be easy to please.

Ron

[slohairt]

Wow, that does suck! Especially when they relied on a mislabelled picture. When I made the tartan viewers on my website, I received many pictures that simply didn't seem to match the descriptions. Many emails later, I managed to clear them up. (I hope! I still worry that some may be incorrect, so I make sure I check with the customer.)

In retrospect, it would have been nice if the mills had just decided on different terminology like 'Dark' or Light' instead of 'Modern' and 'Ancient', but too late for that, I guess!

[ronstew]

So, Matt, how did this story end? Or is it continuing?

[sirdaniel1975]

Wow, what a story. I seem to recall that many of the tartan & kilt retailers have disclaimers about the appearance of "tartans online." May not appear accurate, please order a swatch. (yeah, I know ordering a swatch on a custom woven tartan is very difficult).

As someone who also works in retail, "I Feel Your Pain!" I tend to see the extreme dark side of unhappy customers and their returns. You know; never happy, it doesn't fit (didn't you try it on in the store?), it's missing something... etc...



"Once a customer called to say they bought a digital camera and the camera was not inside. I was Electronics guy the night before, we opened the box at the camera boat, and everything was in there. We had video of me doing so, and management told the customer on the phone we where going to check the video. She called back 5 mins later to say the camera was in the box and she missed seeing it. She was trying to get two cameras for the price of one."

Back to the Tartan issue.

There is not much you can do except take the kilt back, have one done up in "Ancient Color Scheme", and try to sell the "Modern" one in the store and maybe loose $100-$200 in the process. At least you'll have a happy customer and maybe he'll come back for more purchases. Although, I'm guessing an 8 yard custom woven kilt is around $700-$800. So you might loose more like $400.

Unfortunately, you can not please everybody. Just imagine dealing with that on a higher percentage.

[MacKay71]

Some people can't even order correctly at the drive-thru of a fast food joint, let alone over the phone for such expensive item such as a custom-made custom-woven kilt. As a customer, I would want to make sure my order was right BEFORE it was even started on such an important item.