A watched pot....

[The Barry]

A watched pot never sends me my sporran!

I ordered a sporran in January, and it was expected to show up at Scotweb on Feb 3rd. It's now much past the 3rd, and the sporran is still on order!

Gah!

Every couple of days the "latest expected dispatch" date keeps bumping later and later. It's damned near March!

I'm not really that mad, I just want my pretty shiny new things.

[Squeaky McMurdo]

Maybe they had to kill the cow. It seemed to be that the mill had a hard time catching the sheep to give them haircuts to make my and my hubby's kilts.

--Chelsea McMurdo--

[Oldhiker]

Maybe it was absconded by a certain clan of highland hooligans to remain unnamed at this time??? pure speculation on my part.

[The Barry]

Maybe it was absconded by a certain clan of highland hooligans to remain unnamed at this time??? pure speculation on my part.

That's a disturbingly possible scenario. I'll have to ask the special lady friend to check in with the hooligan family network overseas.

[Nick Fiddes]

Just came across your message, and have been finding out the facts. In brief.... a somewhat embarrassing catalogue of errors! I hardly have time to go into the full story here. But basically the product you ordered had been put online in a rather daft way by a previous member of staff (hence, previous!), listed as a 'product option' when it was really a product in its own right. This shouldn't have mattered but it resulted in our sporran maker repeatedly sending us the wrong thing... Long story. Ho hum.

Just in this past week, our retail manager has been personally trying to sort it out before it gets to ridiculous proportions. He drove to our local sporran maker on a special trip to get it for you, after it was individually made by the owner's son (a very expert maker himself). So he's just showed me the result in his hands. And guess what, in his rush, it was made in sealskin (which we are not allowed to send into the US). I can only say... aargh!

This is now close of play Friday here. But we're promised it, absolutely to spec, on Monday. And it will be winging its way to you asap then. I can only hold my hands up and apologise profusely. It's a perfect example of the syndrome we've observed many times, which is that most orders pass along smoothly without any problem. But once things start to go wrong, they seem to want to keep doing so...

If it's any consolation, the result is that we lose money heavily on situations like this ourselves, due to all the time we waste trying to sort out the issues. So it's very much in our own interests too to try to get it right. I've asked the retail team to send you a special Apology Discount code for a future order, in recognition of the nuisance. Sorry again! And hope you like it when it finally gets there.... I'm keeping my fingers crossed it doesn't get kidnapped by space aliens on its way to you, or anything else goes wrong!

[The Barry]

Thank you so much for the reply. I talked to one of your customer service people earlier this week, but they did not know as much detail about the situation. Thank you for sorting this all out, I still very much look forward to receiving my order, and you'll be getting my business again.

[The Barry]

This is now close of play Friday here. But we're promised it, absolutely to spec, on Monday.

Well, that was a week ago. My order still sits in the UK, and I haven't received any emails. I emailed ScotWeb through their website earler this week, no response. The order hasn't budged according to their order tracking page.

Aaarggh! I was supposed to have this order here a couple of weeks ago. Now the St. Patrick's day parade and festivities are tomorrow, and I was really hoping to wear my new belt.

C'est la vie.

[Nick Fiddes]

Hi Barry,

Firstly, I'm afraid my last reply here was somewhat in error. The story I gave you actually applied to a different customer, with very similar issues. (I'm afraid we do have a bit of a communication issue with this particular sporran maker at the moment, which we're working to resolve on a paperwork/ordering level.) When I forwarded your complaint to the retail team for background reporting, they assumed you were this other person whose problems we were already aware of. However, by a process of deduction (I'm afraid X Marks screen names aren't always obvious!) we think we now know which order we are talking about.

But the facts of the case are in fact remarkably similar. And, believe it or not (please do believe it, because it's true) we did in fact receive your outstanding sporran in from the maker on Friday, and yes, it was again made in sealskin. (This is the communication issue I refer to above, rearing its head again... which is our problem, for which I apologise.) We have a special request for a US-legal version on rush for you now, which we'll pick up personally tomorrow morning.

Our retail manager has sent you a special discount code for future use by way of apology for the mixup. Had we known about your deadline with the first order, we'd have been making special efforts long before now. Otherwise, I'm afraid the order has been treated as part of our standard process where we know of no deadline, which is the most effective way to handle thousands of orders reliably.

I notice you also requested standard 'slow' shipping, which actually means there would have been no guarantee of delivery by your dealine in any case, as this can take an unpredictable period of anything from a week or two up to several months in our experience. However, under the circumstances, if you can contact us/me within the next 24 hours, I'd be happy to offer you a free upgrade to either Fedex or DHL (please specify which you'd prefer) to hasten its arrival.

I'm also concerned that you say you contacted us via our web site earlier this week and got no reply. I can see no record of that anywhere in our systems, and it should automatically recognise you if you've used the same email address or entered your order number. This is very concerning to me in case we have some technical bug that's losing enquiries (not good for customer service, or commercially!). I'd be very grateful if you could answer one question to help with investigation - did you receive an automated acknowledgement email when you submitted the query? If so, could you let me know the timestamp on that email?

I'm also going to ask the site admins here on X Marks if they'd let us have a 'Sticky' giving some guidance to anyone wishing to use this forum for service complaints. I do read here when I can, but it's not the quickest way to get a response. (PM-ing me is better, as I get an alert then!) Also, I'd like to request anyone contacting us via here to be sure to include an order number or some other clear identifying details to help us get the facts right.

Please, as always, feel free to contact me personally if you don't feel you're getting the service you want. Like any other business, there's always going to be hiccups with some orders, particularly for a service like ours where we're dealing in turn with fairly old fashioned artisan suppliers. But we'll always do our best to sort out issues where we can, or at least keep you in touch when we can't.

Cheers

Nick

[Downix]

Issues will arize, but a business is not determined by if it has issues, but how it handles them. I am reminded of a tale of two businessess. Both had their key product determined, after the fact, to be faulty. Business #1 immediately went to work to bury the problem, figure out how little liability they would be hit with, and to come up with cover for the issue. Business #2 immediately recalled all of the machines, affected or not, and replaced them. One of these two businessess got a stock hit immediately, but is still in business today. The other avoided the immediate stock selloff, but went bankrupt a few years later when "sweeping under the rug" was no longer able to be capped.

[The Barry]

I applaud ScotWeb for going the extra mile to get this resolved. Please do not take my minuscule amount of frustration with my jonesing process to mean that they are doing bad business.

They have been working hard to resolve this problem and have earned my continued patronage because of that effort. It is an all-too-rare occurrence in today's marketplace.