(disclaimer: rant ahead)
I normally don’t write about bad customer service stories, mostly because the online retailers I deal with are pretty good. But that changed this month when I bought a necklace for my girlfriend from Zales for Valentines Day.
I ordered on Feb 10, with Zales offering “Guaranteed Delivery for Valentines Day” with a chart on their website about how it would ship depending on what day you ordered it.
I called twice on Valentines Day after noticing that it still hadn’t shipped, once in the morning and once in the evening. They said they would have to check with their warehouse as to why it didn’t ship, why the order got lost. My girlfriend was pretty upset about not getting her gift on Valentines Day.
I called the Tuesday (2/18) and they still didn’t have a status update on why the order was lost, four days later. I called again the next day for a status update and they still didn’t have information on my order, so I cancelled it. That weekend I went out and bought my girlfriend something from Kay’s (despite their incredibly annoying commercials).
This week they shipped the order. Eight days after I called and cancelled it. Unbelievable.
This is the type of awful customer service I expected in the early 2000s when everyone had really poor e-commerce systems and bad logistics. Not in 2014. I’ve had more problems with them than I’ve had in the last 4-5 years of shopping online. Amazon, Newegg, Express all provide good customer service – shipping out orders on time, handling returns well, etc. But Zales… ugh, never again.
Update: Zales contacted me after I tweeted them this, and they contacted FedEx to recall the shipment and refund my credit card. Why can’t regular customer service reps do this?