What are the value of repeat customers?

[ISPGeek]

Well when you treat them properly they are priceless.  Unfortunately this repeat customer hasn't been treated very well.  I just took delivery of a grand or so in new and additional hardware and realized my software was out of date and also needed upgrading so thinking it would be a painless process went ahead and first attempted to pay for the upgrade to latest version which is where I stopped since last Friday morning.  Unfortunately LOR uses some lame email identification system for licenses (but gives us no ability to update them) and when I placed my paid order it found no previous license to upgrade and here I sit in limbo ever since.   Submitted tickets, attempted to reach them by phone. no response to tickets, their phones are "down" allegedly bottom line I've already installed the new software and been stuck in demo mode ever since.  I am now 4 complete days behind in setting everything up and as of this posting have yet to receive a response of any kind from this company.   I have never received such poor service as a repeat customer and especially one that has spent the kind of money I have with these people.  Has anyone else had the same experience?   Surely I can't be alone here because they appear to be very good at it.   At this point I just want my money back for what I've spent in the last two weeks....I'm pretty much done shy of a miracle on their part....I'm literally out of time to build this display...had allocated these last few days never expecting anything as stupid as this.......Anyone doubting this story look up ticket 518796.   Curious as hell tough about other folks experience with these people.   Up until now had always highly recommended them....not anymore...nobody deserves to be treated this way.

[Don]

Busiest weekend of the year. You should see the number of tickets they got.

Check your ticket though, looks like it's been updated.

[Mr. P]

When you ordered your upgrade did you use the exact same email address as the older version you were upgrading?

[service call]

I had the same issue with an order on Friday. By Saturday afternoon they had taken care of everything. Sorry to hear of your bad experience. Sometimes things go wrong.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[LOR Staff]

FYI:

The system we have matches your order with your eMail address.   When you place a software upgrade/renewal with the correct eMail address (the one on your license) the update happens immediately.  This is why our order pages for software upgrades and renewals all say in large red letters:

Renewals:

" YOU MUST USE THE EMAIL ADDRESS ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR LICENSE WHEN YOU CHECKOUT. YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS IS THE KEY TO YOUR LICENSE!  "

Upgrades:

" IMPORTANT: You must use the same email address that you used for your original order. "

We actually provide several ways for you to change your eMail address on your license.  One is the help desk.  Another is an on-line form you can fill out.  The first Q&A in the License QA section is "If my email address has changed, how do I get my Light-O-Rama software license key resent?".  The A is:  "If the email address used when the software was originally purchased is no longer available or you have forgotten what email addressed was used, contact the Light-O-Rama help desk. "

Unfortunately, we have some customers that miss all those warnings and order with a different eMail address.  When that happens, we need to do a lot of manual work.  We need to first find the customer's order in the order system, and figure out where in the order process the upgrade/renewal failed.  Did we get an AUTH for the CC card?  Did we get a real charge on the CC card?  Did the customer use Paypal?  Did the Paypal request succeed or did it fail?   Are there other items in the order?  What happened with them?  Once all of that is understood, then we need to find the customers license in the license DB.  But we can't look that up by eMail, so we have to use the persons name.  There could be multiple licenses under that name (many names are not unique.  I don't need to bring up the 'Smith' factor).  Which one actually belongs to the user?  That takes additional research.

The only people who can really do that are in the Order's department.  I have VERY limited access to the ordering system and am not allowed to do any processing of orders.  The other main person that does tickets has no access at all.  Sometimes I can get things going.  In this case I could not.

It is of course MUCH easier for us to change your eMail address FIRST.  That is why we have those big red warnings.  That did not happen.

The op placed the order at around 11AM on Friday (I don't remember the exact time, I believe it was between 10:30 and 11 AM) with an incorrect eMail address.  He opened the ticket a few minutes later, and a few minutes after that I assigned it to the Orders desk when I realized it was beyond my access.

All of that happened on the 25th - the day after a holiday and of course the busiest single day of the year for us.  Unfortunately the orders desk was already swamped with other tickets that needed attention (from Wednesday night though Friday morning), incoming orders that needed to be shipped, etc.  To be fair to everyone, we try to answer tickets and do orders in 'First In, First Out' order.  

The op did ask several times over the weekend why no one was responding to his ticket.  That is because we are closed for the weekend.  Like most businesses out there, we are open 'Normal Business Hours' which are M-F 9-5.  (As a courtesy at this time of year, we try to answer Technical Help Desk tickets during the weekends as we can get to them.  But this was not a technical question, this was a sales related issue and so it had to wait until Monday)

Today at around 2PM Orders started to work on the OPs ticket, however by this time he was already mad.  I will say that is a little slower than we like to respond - we typically want to get a ticket within 1 business day, and this one was slightly over that (by 3 hours).  But the issue was corrected.

[ItsMeBobO]

Welcome ISPGeek.  Memorable first post!     At work I used to sit by the consumer help desk.   There are 40 people answering calls at lunch hour.  That area takes 20,000 mostly complaint calls every week.   Even closer to me is the second level escalation desk.  I could hear all kinds unhappy people all day long, ok, just one side of the call.  It was pretty amazing how well the second level could keep cool and try to smooth it over. I never had to talk to a customer but would get the escalated software glitches to research which was maybe 2-4 in a thousand calls.  A common topic was how to 'reduce friction'  and hope people would notice messages.    DevMike  this post is a Kudos to you for your response which is right up there with the call center managers of the big shops as far as this observer can tell.  Great Job!

[default]

The OP presented his side of the story and tried to taint LOR as a company the doesn't care. I have found that to be the exact opposite. They saved me money in combining shipments. I ordered 2 items hours apart and instead of charging me shipping for each item individually, they combined the order and refunded my CC back the shipping for 1 of the items. Just last weekend I had 2 issues with Pixie16 strings. I posted a Help Desk ticket Sunday night, and by 8:00 am the next morning I received a "Sorry to hear this happened, we will replace both strings" message, followed by another message 15 minutes later with a tracking number of the replacement strings. That doesn't sound like a Company that doesn't care to me. If your new to LOR, don't let this persons hissy fit bother you. LOR will take care of you.

Alan...

Edited November 30, 2016 by default

[kzaas]

I think a lesson learned here is do not wait until showtime to upgrade software especially so close to the weekend. In Light O Rama's defense, they have the best customer service I have ever experienced. I have had several licensing issues in the past since I am always reloading my computers for one reason or another which uses up license seats. I contacts the help desk by email and they usually have the problem taken care of within 24 hours. I have had hardware issues and they have taken care of me with no questions asked. So please don't let this one bad experience ruin your relationship with this great company, I don't think you will be disappointed.

[robigd]

6 hours ago, default said:

The OP presented his side of the story and tried to taint LOR as a company the doesn't care. I have found that to be the exact opposite. They saved me money in combining shipments. I ordered 2 items hours apart and instead of charging me shipping for each item individually, they combined the order and refunded my CC back the shipping for 1 of the items. Just last weekend I had 2 issues with Pixie16 strings. I posted a Help Desk ticket Sunday night, and by 8:00 am the next morning I received a "Sorry to hear this happened, we will replace both strings" message, followed by another message 15 minutes later with a tracking number of the replacement strings. That doesn't sound like a Company that doesn't care to me. If your new to LOR, don't let this persons hissy fit bother you. LOR will take care of you.

Alan...

I respectfully disagree that the OP was trying to "taint LOR" nor understand why you are attacking him. I had a similar issue recently with the help desk where I was never proactively told that a batch of pixie boards were bad and would be delayed. It took me emailing them to inquire about my order to be told this information. They also took multiple days to respond to a help desk ticket asking for a simple order status.

I realize this is the busy season, but LOR should think about staffing more people to handle the ticket load this time of year rather than expecting customers to just accept that customer service may be a crap-shoot. LOR has typically been great to deal with, but just because you haven't had an issue doesn't mean nobody else has.

Edited November 30, 2016 by robigd

[Mega Arch]

On 11/28/2016 at 2:38 PM, ISPGeek said:

....this repeat customer hasn't been treated very well..... LOR uses some lame email identification system for licenses..... Submitted tickets, attempted to reach them by phone. no response to tickets, their phones are "down" allegedly..... have yet to receive a response..... I have never received such poor service.... nobody deserves to be treated this way.

Reads tainted to me.

Just saying. 

[LOR Staff]

Be cool everyone. Sometimes expectations and perception just don't line up with reality.  Sometimes we do screw up - and when we do we admit it and try to make it right. 

Let me give you the prime example so far this season.  if you have not yet, go read this:

FYI -- the person in that story is NOT THE OP, and the actual story behind that post is even BETTER.  

We've packed and shipped his order, just as we said we would on Friday.  That would be the one business day it says on our store page for the product he ordered.  The order was boxed and was on a pallet (and probably already in the UPS trailer) exactly when we said it would be (and before Jacob opens his ticket).  The order is ON ITS WAY at this point.  I let him know the tracking number and the day it will be delivered.  Oh no.  This is not good enough.  Jacob says 'Cancel the order!!!!' and goes full on rant about how he is going to post everywhere about how crappy we are and that he is going to dispute the charge with his credit card company.  Wow.  Even though we did what we said we would do, that is not good enough.  You would think that if it was that important he would have ordered it with much faster shipping (he used GROUND), but hey.  I'm not the customer.

So now Jacob forces me into a dilemma.  This order is pretty much out of our door, and he is mad.  Hopping mad.  He is going to dispute the charge (chargebacks have repercussions for the merchant), and for how mad he is, I doubt he will return the equipment if he does get it (and so now we are out product as well).  He claims we just printed the shipping label when he opened the help desk ticket and says 'It's still in your possession so I expect you to cancel it!"

I call up to shipping and have them rip apart the pallets that are due to be sent out to find Jacob's order.  That takes a whole lot of time and just delays everyone elses orders on those pallets - because of this ONE person.  They find the box, pull it, and re-pallet everything.  I cancel his order and cancel the CC authorization.  

I guess he just didn't understand what 'ships next business day' means when you place an order around midnight.  Oh well.  

---

Three days later he re-opens THE exact same ticket and says 'Why hasn't my order shipped?'.

Honestly.  I kid you not.  

Let's recap:

1. Jacob told us how bad we were at customer service and that he was going to tell everyone.
2. Jacob said we were liars when it came to shipping his order and that we 'just printed the label'.
3. Jacob INSISTED that we cancel the order.  He told us in no uncertain terms that we were NOT going to be paid if we sent the order.  
4. We were not going to be paid, AND we were going to take a hit for a charge-back.  To protect us, we go to extra-ordinary steps to fulfill the customers wishes - stop shipment.

So we tell him "Hey...  You said cancel the order.  You said you were not going to pay us.  We took the steps needed to do exactly what you told us to do.  Why would we ship you ANYTHING?"

Jacob is of course now furious.  Even when we do exactly what he tells us to do, that is not right.  He's still expecting the order!

Let me run that again:  

1. Jacob said cancel his order.  
2. We cancelled his order.  
3. Jacob is upset that we cancelled his order.  

FYI:  In the end, Jacob placed his order for the exact same products, from the exact same company he said was crap and was never going to deal with again.  Shipping on this new order?  Ground.  It will now be one week later, not 1 day.  

Really.  You are read all that correctly.  You can't make this stuff up.

But remember -- The popular saying is "The customer is always right"... 

[B.Y.R.G.]

Not the best part of being a customer service representative dealing with those situations.  No WAY I could handle that drama so I'm sticking with my NON-customer service job!

Edited November 30, 2016 by B.Y.R.G.

[Mr. P]

8 minutes ago, B.Y.R.G. said:

Not the best part of being a customer service representative dealing with those situations.  No WAY I could handle that drama so I'm sticking with my NON-customer service job!

That's why I liked my job, I didn't have to like them I just had to kill them.  

[LightsWithSoul]

9 hours ago, B.Y.R.G. said:

Not the best part of being a customer service representative dealing with those situations.  No WAY I could handle that drama so I'm sticking with my NON-customer service job!

"How much is your electric bill?" "How do you make the lights flash like that?" "Do they go to any song?" "How much is your electric bill?" "How do you broadcast it on the radio?" "How much is your electric bill?" "Is your electric bill huge this month?" 

 

I don't know. Times like this it seems like Christmas decorating is a customer service job.

.......Should have taken that job at the call center.... at least I would have gotten paid for this.... LOL

[LOR Staff]

15 hours ago, B.Y.R.G. said:

Not the best part of being a customer service representative dealing with those situations.  No WAY I could handle that drama so I'm sticking with my NON-customer service job!

That's what I have .  Or at least should.  I tell the boss all the time "I must really like you guys if I am willing to put myself through all this!!"

I'm always amused at the people who say 'You should hire more people if you can't pack my order at midnight' (or whatever other thing they want).  There is a seismic shift come September/October every year.  People who used to assemble products become packers.  People who used to answer the phones get added shipping duties.  Programmers get pulled onto the phones.  I personally get pulled in 8 different directions simultaneously (I'm not complaining.  I asked for each and every duty I have).  I usually end up working 12 hour days (yes, I should be working now, but I'm so burned out that I'm taking some me time to post here :P).  But in the end, we are not Amazon.  We are not Walmart.  We are a small business.  

We make mistakes.  We ship wrong parts.  We have bugs in our code.  We don't always understand the needs of the customer.  Things sometimes do fall through the cracks.  We even accept blame for situations that may be out of our control.  But what we are not is your local cable company.  We are not a third world outsourced tech company.  We are human.  We have pride in what we do and want to make it right.

[75redman]

1 hour ago, DevMike said:

That's what I have .  Or at least should.  I tell the boss all the time "I must really like you guys if I am willing to put myself through all this!!"

I'm always amused at the people who say 'You should hire more people if you can't pack my order at midnight' (or whatever other thing they want).  There is a seismic shift come September/October every year.  People who used to assemble products become packers.  People who used to answer the phones get added shipping duties.  Programmers get pulled onto the phones.  I personally get pulled in 8 different directions simultaneously (I'm not complaining.  I asked for each and every duty I have).  I usually end up working 12 hour days (yes, I should be working now, but I'm so burned out that I'm taking some me time to post here :P).  But in the end, we are not Amazon.  We are not Walmart.  We are a small business.  

We make mistakes.  We ship wrong parts.  We have bugs in our code.  We don't always understand the needs of the customer.  Things sometimes do fall through the cracks.  We even accept blame for situations that may be out of our control.  But what we are not is your local cable company.  We are not a third world outsourced tech company.  We are human.  We have pride in what we do and want to make it right.

Mike, you and the staff do a great job and have a great product.  Keep up the good work!  I appreciate what you do.

[LOR Staff]

Thanks.  I appreciate the compliment.  

And for every Jacob out there in the world is a Mary, Jennifer, Tom, Dick or Harry that are wonderful to work with.

Just some times you have to shake your head.

I do hope the OP comes back and becomes a contributing member of the community.  However I have a bad feeling he is what I call a '1 hit wonder'.  That is they come in, post one message about how horrible they were treated (the hit), and never return.  Lashing out makes them feel better, and I guess that's my job too - to be a whipping boy.  

I used to be the same way.  Then I discovered that life is just to short to be mad - even if you have the right to be mad.  

Or was it Prozac.  

I can't remember.....

Look!  A duck!