Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Can you be bought? Do you want to be bought?

Back in July we had a lot of rain and I had ordered a rain gauge from Amazon. Actually, a merchant who sells through Amazon. Thanks to being a pack-rat I have all the emails.

July 5, I order the rain gauge.
July 11, It has not arrived and I email the company. No reply.
July 14, Your order has been shipped, here's the tracking number.
July 20, delivery.

This is a cool rain gauge, Look Here to see it. It's self emptying so it can rain more than the fill on a cylinder and you still know how much you got.

Anyway, One of my emails from the company says sorry, here's a discount code for your next purchase. I reply saying I'd rather have my shipping refunded instead of the discount.

In the mean time, Amazon's been bugging me about providing feedback for the merchant, and I'd ignored it for a long time, but finally last week I acquiesced and gave the merchant 2 stars out of 5. Soon after, I got a form letter thanking me for the feedback and a $25 off coupon for my next purchase.

Then someone actually read my feedback and I get another message:
Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback about your shopping experience. I am sorry that you did not have a good experience with SkyBox USA and I wanted to reach out to you because of that.

We are growing quickly as a company, and unfortunately, experiencing some growing pains along the way. Although that is not an excuse for a poor customer experience, we are spending the majority of our time right now focusing on fixing some of the issues that we are having so that future customers can have an excellent experience. With that being said, low feedback scores are very detrimental to our business. In an effort to help restore your confidence in us, I would like to offer you a $10 gift card at one of the following merchants if you would remove your feedback from Amazon (you have up to 60 days to remove it).

  • Target

  • Wal-Mart

  • Starbucks


So, Can I be bought? I'd really just like to have my shipping charge returned, but they ignored that request, so I'll just ignore this one.

What do you think?

2 comments:

AM Kingsfield said...

interesting dilemma.
They are clearly offering a bribe.
It is a hassle too. I wonder if you could ask for the shipping reimbursement for bumping the 2 stars up to three?

marina said...

I'd take the $10 gift card--that should cancel out the shipping. I would see this as an apology, not a bribe. (if they offered to refund the shipping, that could also be construed as a bribe, if you want to see it that way.) Hey, they admitted they had "growing pains" and said they are trying to do better--why not believe them? (I might not order anything else from them, though.) And be sure to tell them that you will remove your bad rating AFTER the gift card arrives, not a minute before. But hey, that's just me.