by Claudia Bruemmer

Never has customer service been more important than on the web. That’s because consumers are just one click away from another retailer if your site does not perform.

Let me share a recent online buying experience. I went to a big retail site, which shall remain nameless, and searched for a gift for my son’s birthday. I found the perfect gift and ordered. It had to be sent to his address because I was late in ordering. So far, so good. In fact, everything went peachy keen with that transaction to the point where the gift was delivered promptly, and the recipient loved the gift.

But that’s not the end of the story. I was so impressed with the merchandise offers that I made two subsequent purchases that very same night. These purchases were for myself, and I know enough to check the shipping address, which I did. I’m pretty sure I did because I’m very anal about ordering online.

I completed that order, and then the site shows me another offer. So I bite, placing a third order. They hit the jackpot with me, I’m still impressionable in my old age. Again, I carefully change the shipping address, because this dumb shopping cart keeps defaulting to the first shipping address.

Fine, so I’m waiting for my merchandise to arrive. I wait and wonder, thinking about it now and then. Eventually, my daughter-in-law tells me the gift arrived, and she wrapped it nicely. She doesn’t tell me she subsequently got my skinny jeans and beaded top.

Then when I see her at the birthday party, she says, “Mom, I got these jeans I didn’t order, do you know anything about it?” Voila, my order, delivered to the wrong address! Well, fine, I can finally slink into those jeans. But with all the booze and beer at the party, I forget the package and drive 70 miles home without it.

Next scene: Mom asks her favorite daughter-in-law to mail the package, which she does dutifully, at the cost of 8 bucks. Well, nevermind, mom is anxious to get into those skinny jeans. The package arrives quickly. She opens the sack, and guess what? The jeans don’t fit!

You know why? That’s another long story. Mom is not savvy at ordering these new age jeans, so she went to the trouble of talking to the chat person, a male, asking if the jeans were ordered by waist size as indicated on the site. He checked and said yes, order by waist size. But the jeans fit 2 inches below the waist. While the mom is no hippo, she does have larger hips than her waist.

But that wasn’t the only problem with this order. The top had beads that were so huge that she didn’t care for it. So both the jeans and the top had to be returned. She follows instructions, and goes to check both items in the online return form. However, the form only allows a check on one of the items. So she has to go through the return process twice, individually for each item — it took a while to figure that one out.

Subsequently, she starts getting emails from the retailer regarding the return. Seems there is a shipping fee and a restocking fee for each item. The items must be returned separately with two separate prepaid shipping labels. She can return the jeans in the original bag, but she has to buy a new shipping envelope to return the top.

Turned out she paid almost 20 bucks just to see this merchandise. Do you think she will order from this retailer again?

BTW, the third shipment, a chrome rainfall showerhead, arrived at her residence, and she likes it. No man around the house to install it, but heck, a waterfall in the shower sounds great, right?

Here is her list of gripes, which she communicated in the many emails to the nice customer service people, who gave her credit for one restocking fee on future orders:

1.    Why would a shopping cart ever default to an address other than the consumer’s?
2.    Why can’t two items ordered on the same ticket be returned together?
3.    Why is there a restocking fee?
4.    Why aren’t the product descriptions more accurate?

Despite all her travails, mom may order again from this retailer because it was a good deal on the gift and the showerhead. And she has $4 credit on her next order.