Handy
MGF, Master Grumble Framer
Yesterday I ended up gathering up a certain company's poster books and throwing them in the trash!!
I was so angry. Two weeks ago, I placed and order for 16 posters. YESTERDAY I got a phone call from the owner of the company telling me that 8 of the posters I ordered were unavailable.
I said to him "Well, I'm surprised to be hearing this from you now - I ordered them 2 weeks ago. I had been expecting them to show up any day now"
Well, he got upset and started in on me about how they have 40,000 different prints and he can't spend the time to check each and every one right away and with the volume of orders he can't just jump right on that becasue it takes so much time. (usually when we order prints they will tell us as they type them into the computer if they are in stock or not.... seems like standard industry practice to me...)
Then he went on to tell me how the poster business is crumbling all around them and that it's widespread and how the companies are having to lay people off, etc, etc. Then onto how much the companies spend billions of dollars on their catalogues, etc, and do I actually think that they do that to disappoint people???
The thing is, we only NEEDED one of them for a customer, one of those 16 posters - and it was unavailable. The rest were for a window display in order to pad the order. So in my way of thinking, it wasn't worthwhile getting the remaining posters anymore. So I told him that I would like to cancel that order until I had time to check it over and re-evaluate what we were going to get.
Well, this just set him off again! He started in on me and I finally said "I'm sorry - but I'm trying to be nice about this and you are getting very angry at me. You have to understand my point of view - when we have a customer who comes in here and spends hours searching out the right print, and they order it and then 2 weeks later we get a call saying that it's unavailable - it makes us look bad to the customer. If we have a frame company who consistantly sends us bad product,or backorders all the time or discontinues without telling us ahead of time, we won't carry their product because it makes us look bad to the bottom end customer."
Well, then he basically told me that "you'll just never comprehend this "(as though I was too stupid to get it) and he told me that I may as well just throw his books away (which by this time I was planning to do) and then he hung up on me!!!
good grief! I did not get angry or yell at him or anything like that. My business partner was watching with interest and even said "you were not rude at all - you were very calm and talking normally".
It just burned my butt! Maybe the guy was having a bad day or what ever - but if he thinks that he is going to grow his business by treating customers that way he's going about it all wrong! I feel sorry for him if his business is going down the tubes - but the internet and box stores have affected us all - and we all have our problems to deal with - us included - and I definately didn't need to be made to feel stupid.
Anyways, after this I talked to another poster rep and he did confirm that there is big problems in the art poster business, but at least he was polite about it.
So, now we have 4 less books to clutter up our poster table......
I was so angry. Two weeks ago, I placed and order for 16 posters. YESTERDAY I got a phone call from the owner of the company telling me that 8 of the posters I ordered were unavailable.
I said to him "Well, I'm surprised to be hearing this from you now - I ordered them 2 weeks ago. I had been expecting them to show up any day now"
Well, he got upset and started in on me about how they have 40,000 different prints and he can't spend the time to check each and every one right away and with the volume of orders he can't just jump right on that becasue it takes so much time. (usually when we order prints they will tell us as they type them into the computer if they are in stock or not.... seems like standard industry practice to me...)
Then he went on to tell me how the poster business is crumbling all around them and that it's widespread and how the companies are having to lay people off, etc, etc. Then onto how much the companies spend billions of dollars on their catalogues, etc, and do I actually think that they do that to disappoint people???
The thing is, we only NEEDED one of them for a customer, one of those 16 posters - and it was unavailable. The rest were for a window display in order to pad the order. So in my way of thinking, it wasn't worthwhile getting the remaining posters anymore. So I told him that I would like to cancel that order until I had time to check it over and re-evaluate what we were going to get.
Well, this just set him off again! He started in on me and I finally said "I'm sorry - but I'm trying to be nice about this and you are getting very angry at me. You have to understand my point of view - when we have a customer who comes in here and spends hours searching out the right print, and they order it and then 2 weeks later we get a call saying that it's unavailable - it makes us look bad to the customer. If we have a frame company who consistantly sends us bad product,or backorders all the time or discontinues without telling us ahead of time, we won't carry their product because it makes us look bad to the bottom end customer."
Well, then he basically told me that "you'll just never comprehend this "(as though I was too stupid to get it) and he told me that I may as well just throw his books away (which by this time I was planning to do) and then he hung up on me!!!
good grief! I did not get angry or yell at him or anything like that. My business partner was watching with interest and even said "you were not rude at all - you were very calm and talking normally".
It just burned my butt! Maybe the guy was having a bad day or what ever - but if he thinks that he is going to grow his business by treating customers that way he's going about it all wrong! I feel sorry for him if his business is going down the tubes - but the internet and box stores have affected us all - and we all have our problems to deal with - us included - and I definately didn't need to be made to feel stupid.
Anyways, after this I talked to another poster rep and he did confirm that there is big problems in the art poster business, but at least he was polite about it.
So, now we have 4 less books to clutter up our poster table......
