Buying an r4 card from r4i.co.uk, or Using your Terms and Conditions to redefine assumptions

It’s not often I receive such poor customer service from somewhere that I feel the need to write about it, but I just did from r4i.co.uk.

The Background

My daughter will be travelling early on Saturday morning (before the post arrives) so I wanted to get her an R4 card for her DS to make her long journey a bit easier. I decided to do this on Monday 31st May, a bank holiday in the UK.

The Order

I decided to order one from r4i.co.uk. They had good prices, and their website promised same-day dispatch and 2-4 day delivery. I ordered after midday (I’m not sure of the exact time) but I got my payment and order confirmation email at 13:48, the order should arrive on Thursday at the latest.

Taking a step back

Before I continue let’s look at the relatively simple term “same-day dispatch”. It would be all-too easy to make a rash assumption about what exactly that means, but ask yourself what it means to you. Ask yourself when you would expect a company to dispatch something you ordered at 1:48PM on Monday if they advertised “same-day dispatch”.

For my part I assumed my order would be dispatched on the same Monday I ordered it. I realise that Monday 31st May is a public holiday, but I would guess that large e-commerce outfits continue to dispatch 7 days a week, certainly if they advertise same-day dispatch. Even so, if it was dispatched on Tuesday it should still arrive on Friday, so I wasn’t worried.

The Order, part 2

I replied to the order confirmation email almost as soon as I got it asking simply:

“I just wanted to confirm that this order will be delivered before Friday.”

The next day (Tuesday 1st June) I received the reply:

“Delivery is two to five working days”

That’s not what the website said, so I emailed back immediately:

“On the checkout page (and confirmation email) it says “FREE 2-4 DAYS UK SHIPPING”, not 2-5. Your site also says “Same day dispatch”, so it should be here no later than Thursday, possibly earlier?”

I didn’t receive a response, not a good sign. Today (Wednesday 2nd June) I received an email saying that my order had been dispatched. Uh-oh, it was meant to be dispatched on Monday. This email suggests it was dispatched two days late. I called r4i.co.uk to clear this up.

Customer Service – Calling r4i.co.uk to sort it out

It took about 10 minute to get through to r4i.co.uk and when I did, and explained my situation. I was told that:

• Same-day dispatch only applies on “working days” which I assume to be Monday to Friday
• Same-day means “within 24 hours”

This blew away all the assumptions I had made about the meaning of “Same-day dispatch”. I asked some friends what they thought to get more opinions on “Same-day” in case I was making an odd assumption:

Me: “Same Day Dispatch”, what does this mean to you?
Friend 1: They get it on the road today.
Me: just to clarify, same-day being same named day, or within 24 hours?
Friend 1: Same named day, but depending on their closing hours, I’d expect it to be processed first thing the next day if I ordered late at night.

Another friend:

Me: “Same Day Dispatch”, what does this mean to you?
Friend 2: Same day dispatch means something is sent out the same day, so if it’s something I request I assume it’s shipped the same day I request it.
Me: Same-day being same named day, or within 24 hours?
Friend 2:  Same named day.

Notice that both of these friends made the same assumption that I was talking about the same thing when I said “Same day”. Think back to your assumption about what “Same-day dispatch” means. Does it align with those assumptions? I’m guessing not.

OK, back to the call. According to the person on the phone if I’d read the terms and conditions I would have discovered this for myself. I didn’t read the terms and conditions though, so it’s my fault right? But really, who reads them? Some people do. Not most people though. Not for a £12 memory card. Not when your assumptions about what “Same-day” means are solid enough to not cast doubt. The two people I spoke to apologised but refused to do anything to help me. The second of those people gave me a lecture on how I should read the terms and conditions like I should if I was buying a house or a car.

The problem

r4i.co.uk promised something and then re-defined that promise in their terms and conditions. They overrode assumptions with a lengthy legal document that few people are likely to read. It must be great to be able to boast about same-day dispatch on your website (see the screen-grab from their site on the right), but if your definition of what same-day dispatch is is different to what most other peoples definition is then isn’t that verging on lying?

Add to this the “Sorry but we’re not going to help” attitude of the people I spoke to on the phone and I’m not a happy customer.

The Solution

This seems fairly simple. Don’t mislead to your customers because it makes you sound good. If your customers assumed definition of “Same-day dispatch” is different than your definition of “Same-day dispatch” then don’t claim to do it, wether you can put forward your definition in your terms and conditions or not. A relevant phrase that I heard from a marketing guy I knew once is “Managing User Expectations“.

The technical solution for r4i.co.uk is to only display the same day dispatch banner at times when it’s relevant. This is stupidly easy to do, it’s what dynamic websites like e-commerce sites are good for. The customer services solution is not to argue that it’s my fault and that I should have read the terms and conditions to discover that they re-defined a seemingly common assumption, it’s to fix it. To send a new unit out via some quicker delivery method that will arrive on time. Unless they don’t like having customers, in which case they handled the call just fine.

Takeaway

Your customers, users and clients all come to you with assumptions and expectations, you need to be careful about trampling on these. If you have to break out the phrase “you should have read the terms and conditions” then the chances are you have failed to do this and you have reached the point where you have an unhappy customer.

There’s a tiny little orchestra in your iPod shuffle

A conversation between my Wife and I as we were lying in bed listening to  California Love by 2Pac on her new iPod shuffle:

me: Is this TuPac?
her: Yes.
me: Isn’t he dead?
her: Yes, this is a recording. 

I need a dead deer or moose, STAT

Who doesn’t?

Could You Pass 8th Grade Science?

Well, could ya?

I got 88% correct, or a B+.  How embarrassing :)  Scores in the comments please! 

Scratchcard withdrawn due to withering levels of ignorance

This is hilarious:

Tina Farrell, from Levenshulme, called Camelot after failing to win with several cards.

The 23-year-old, who said she had left school without a maths GCSE, said: “On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn’t.

The best bit however comes next:

“I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher – not lower – than -8 but I’m not having it.”

Tina for president, I say.

Halloween zombie mistaken for murder victim

BERLIN (Reuters) – Passengers on a German train mistook a Halloween reveller dressed up as a gore-covered zombie for a murder victim and called the police.

The 24-year-old man fell into a drunken slumber on his way home from a Halloween party in Hamburg, police in the northern town of Bad Segeberg said on Monday.

link

Map of all the freecycle groups in the US

Just for fun I plotted all the Freecycle groups in the US on a google map (as you do). An interesting side-effect is that the map shows population density, the darker the area the greater the population. It is easy to spot the cities:

The data is fairly old, there are almost certainly more groups than this now.

Playing with Cameroid

This is a photo of me taken at cameroid.com with my iMacs built in iSight camera.

Fun! And yes, Paul, it does look like me :)

And now Carl has done one too, an improvement over the original I feel:

From the office IRC channel:

[15:16] carl: http://www.cameroid.com/9OJ-A1, me > mona lisa.
[15:16] greg: lol
[15:16] greg: is that going up on your blog?
[15:16] carl: No!

Correct, it’s going up on my blog!

Greg has also been playing, though unlike Carl and I, Greg has decided to take a photo with no comedy overlay:

Man Gets $218 Trillion Phone Bill

From the article:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) – A Malaysian man said he nearly fainted when he recieved a $218 trillion phone bill and was ordered to pay up within 10 days or face prosecution, a newspaper reported Monday.

But I think the best bit of the article is this:

It wasn’t clear whether the bill was a mistake…

Really!

Wagamamas (Manchester) 2 for 1 meal voucher

For another brief period I will almost be able to afford to eat lunch at Wagamamas:

This voucher is valid from August 7 to August 13 2007, just print it out and take it with you. Apparently a new voucher is released…

…every tuesday starting from 31 July, 2007 we will release a new voucher valid for 1 week.

via.