Pipes and Cigars.com

[rmbittner]

Maybe I'm not reading the initial post closely enough, but I'm not sure I understand the CS failure here.
I recently had a similar situation with an order from SmokingPipes.com. One tin from a large order was the wrong blend. I called, and the CS woman asked for the name of the person who had initialed the packing slip, then she said they'd get a replacement out right away, along with a UPS shipping label. When the replacement arrived, I put the wrong tin in their box, slapped their label on it, and dropped it off at a UPS shipper. I was really pleased with the way they handled this. (They sent the replacement by 2nd Day Air, by the way.)
Was the problem that PipesandCigars wanted your tobacco back before they'd ship the replacement? If so, I do think that's a problem, because it does force you to pay for shipping a product you never wanted in the first place.
As an aside, I have to share this: I recently emailed a distant B&M store where I've shopped to see if they had Margate in stock. They did. So I called and placed an order. You know what the shop owner said next? "Do you want to give me a credit card number, or do you just want to send me a check when you get the package?"
I gave him a credit card number. . . but after I hung up, his question hit me like a brick. He was prepared to send me 3 bags of Margate, trusting that I would write him a check. Amazing. Wonderful.
And very very rare, I'm guessing.
Bob

 

[dervis]

@piperl12
Agreed, that is a great thing about this place. Hopefully all will work out I am sure it will. I cant say I am a fan of calling any customer service place. They are never at the level of dissapointment or anger that I am and naturally that ticks me off for a bit. We can agree that if the worst problem any one of us have in 2013 is a messed up tobacco shipment we are all doing pretty good.

 

[wnghanglow]

@mikephillips, the 18,000 was accurate I couldn't find any purchase records so I did base the 5% off of me personally, I go there about 20 times making my order xD and it's not taking customers for granted, there correcting there mistake. They were polite *depending on how you read the responce* and prompt in doing so. There is more they could have done but not more they needed to do, the issue is resolved.
@jharvard. I never meant to imply you had a sense of entitlement, that comment was more based on personal issues with a lower class of customers I had to deal with before my college degree, also your last post does clear up quite a bit, thanks for clarifying.

 

[peckinpahhombre]

Strongly but respectfully disagree @dervis, cost to the company to make this right was next to nothing after you subtract the cost of shipping. If a customer has a repeated habit of this they should be flagged as such in the order software. In this case JHARVARD did not order the tobacco he was sent. But somehow it becomes his responsibility to send it back. My time is valuable, people pay me for my time. I don't volunteer it to companies that make order errors. If I were JHARVARD at this point I would call them and tell them not to bother to send out what I ordered I will be taking my business elsewhere. I bet he would be amazed at how the offer to overnight his actual order would be forthwith. Customer service is a moving scale of who complains the loudest. To those that don't, expect to get crappy customer service. I will focus my time and attention dealing with companies that go above and beyond and for their trouble will remain loyal.

I have found them to be ok, just not great. My personal view is they are miles behind SP in terms of their inventory management and well behind 4noggins in terms of customer service. I have had several issues with ordering stuff online only to find out that they don't actually have it in stock. More recently they sent me 4 tins belonging to someone else. They sent me out a pre-paid postage label to send it back, but well, I set it down somewhere, got busy and just forgot about it. The wife thinks our cleaning lady tossed out the label. I finally just told them to bill me for the tins because I had lost the label (anyone want to buy 4 crappy burley blends? Do people really smoke this stuff? LOL). In any event, even if I could find the label, I was swamped with work and just couldn't be bothered getting into the packaging and delivery business. I just felt really inconvenienced by the whole experience. I felt like packaging it up and sending it back and then sending them a bill at my normal hourly rate! I am just saying that my experience with SP and 4noggins has been uniformly positive.

 

[wnghanglow]

Mikephilips, please don't make this an old vs young people debate, and please don't dismiss the "younger generation" as someone who's opinions and thoughts are not just as important as yours. I always try to respect my elders but I can not respect someone who doesn't respect me. I do understand how they could have used this as a way to get a life long customer as you have said, that does not mean they are wrong for not doing so, what they did was enough. Why you don't see as much of the old time tradition of generous reimbursement for mistakes has a lot to do with the quality of customers we as a society have become. The golden rule "the customer is always right" has made customers feel tu should always get there way, even when there wrong. Customers also lie and say that an item is wrong just because it wasn't exactly how they thought it was. The policy of always taking blame and always refunding the customer even when not legally bound to means you can no longer "generously" give back to every customer. This is no particular company or individual fault but something we must take the blame for ourselves.
Note: this was a metaphorical look at Buisness in general, no longer pertaining to jharvard, also this is just my opinion but I have gone to college and have actually wrote a research paper with this general theme as basis, so I am semi-informed.

 

[numbersix]

I am a little late to the party, but I can understand your frustration.

I hold customer service to be pretty high up

I do too, but I have had my expectations lowered by so many mediocre shops. I also had a shipping issue with P&C. After waiting 3 weeks for my order (it was around the holidays and I figured they were struggling with orders), I sent them a polite email.
I never got a reply or an apology. Instead, several hours later I rec'd an automated shipping notification that my pkg had (finally) shipped. It came 4 days later (nearly a month to receive it) Lame customer service IMO.
Will I ever do business with them in the future? Probably, maybe when a sale comes around, etc. But I tend to check them last when I go looking for tobacco.

I have found them to be ok, just not great. My personal view is they are miles behind SP in terms of their inventory management and well behind 4noggins in terms of customer service.

+1 (you can add Boswell's to that list of premium resellers as well - they are tops in customer service)

 

[cortezattic]

re: PipesAndCigars.com, during the past 5 yrs. I've purchased varying amounts of 90 different products spread over 18 individual orders,

and I've never had a problem. I hope this thread doesn't skew public opinion against a fine company.

 

[numbersix]

Let's say P&C still shipped the wrong tobacco to J. Harvard, but in this parallel universe, instead of taking their time and not getting the tobacco to Mr. Harvard before he left on his trip, this time they overnighted it on their dime...
So, J. Harvard, rather than coming to this forum to vent and tell us about his problems with P&C, he comes here and starts a topic that tells about their wonderful customer service, how they handled and corrected their mistake, and went out of their way to make him happy he shopped there regardless of whatever mistake was made.

+1
This is the way a quality shop gets repeat orders and gains more business. A mistake is really an opportunity if handled correctly. If they did even half of what @mikephillips suggested, they'd have not only made JHarvard a happy customer, but may have rec'd high praise here and gained several new customers.

 

[brewshooter]

They sent you the wrong tobacco, sure, nice gesture to say go ahead and keep it as some have suggested, not out of bounds for them to send you return shipping either. She was responding to let you know it was no problem for you to return it after your trip, maybe not well worded, but way too much was read into her response. This appears to be a non-issue to me.
I am 40 years old.

 

[peckinpahhombre]

A couple of years ago when they first came out I bought a new Apple IPAD. About 2 weeks after I got it, my 6 year old son knocked it off the table and it fell to the ground. The screen was cracked. I took it into an Apple store at my local mall where I bought it and asked them to replace the screen. I can't recall what they quoted my - I think it was a couple of hundred bucks or a little under. I said fine, please repair it. A couple of days later I went in to pick it up and the guy says "Look, we know sometimes accidents just happen, and this one is on us." My jaw dropped.
Guess why I now have two apple laptops, one desk top, and I've bought the wife and kids their own IPAD?
'nuff said.
I am 43 years old (though I am told by my wife that my maturity level is much, much younger)

 

[brewshooter]

mikephillips, my age addition was meant to be a joke. :puffpipe:
You are correct. Could P&C have excelled in this situation? Yes. Did they? No. However, does it appear to me that they did anything wrong here? No, not really, a bit irritating not having the tobacco in time, inconvenient to be sure. However, I can't really see it as anything to get too worked up over.
I am reminded of this:
If little faults, proceeding on distemper,

Shall not be wink'd at, how shall we stretch our eye

When capital crimes, chew'd, swallow'd and digested,

Appear before us?
Henry V - William Shakespeare
In this instance I'm not even sure this rises to the level of a little fault. It was a mistake by the vendor and a worst case reading of a response which seems to have been misunderstood.
I am still only 40 years old. :wink:

 

[numbersix]

But believe me when I tell you, high-end customer service will ALWAYS pay, even if it doesn't net a payday like that, you will reap benefits if you go over-the-top with customer service.

Amen to that. Good story and it's been my experience as well. That so many small mom and pops cannot grasp that simple concept is beyond me.

 

[piperl12]

I think the point that @mikephillips was trying to make regarding age was people today have come to expect bad service. They have never experianced a doctor come to your home to treat your sick feverish child at 2am because you know them. They have never experianced milk being delivered to your door, gas being put in your vehicle or your oil checked. All of the things that went along with customer service 20 years ago. Today young people are used to helping themselves. Go to Walmart and see if you can get someone to take you to the isle that an item is in. How many times has someone rung through your purchase whilst talking to another cashier never giving you the time of day except to tell you how much money they want. We now live in a generation that expects nothing because we have become programed to think that the retailer is somehow doing us a favor by selling us their goods or services. @wnghanglow I don't know how old you are but unless you have lived in those times you can write all the papers you want but don't have the life experiance to compare if you didn't live in that time. We as a society are not better for this mentality shift. In fact we pay more and get less than ever before. If our governments want to know how to fix this quit trying to reinvent the wheel. Invest in small communities and give the small businesses like P&C financial breaks so they can afford to complete and give even better service. I don't think this thread was meant to beat up on an online retailer only to remind others and express frustrations about a lost opportunity to give excellent service. My dollar doesn't stretch as far as it used to but I am damb sure going to make sure it goes to those that provide me with excellent service. Thus endeth the surmon :wink:

 

[spartan]

While I agree with you Piper that my generation is mostly made of nit-wits and yahoos.....
I disagree that my generation has come to expect bad service. Just because a company does not go above and beyond for every customer does not mean that their customer service is crappy. I believe in making the situation right, and not expecting free things due to a small mistake. I've heard more good feedback then bad from the site supporters here. Aside from MacQueen.
Too busy to throw a tin inside a prepaid lable and shove it in your mailbox for pick-up? I'm sorry but no one is that busy. I agree you shouldn't have to sacrifice 5 min out of your day to do the work for them, but griping about a few minutes to help make it right seems extraordinary.
Such a hearty discussion over $10 and a few minutes of your time eh?
I've enjoyed reading everyone's opinions on the matter.

 

[brewshooter]

Mike,
Your story is a great example of how excellent customer service can pay off. It's absolutely relevant in terms of the general issue of customer service's slow decline. On this point, no argument from me.
My argument is tailored to this specific situation and I can't really fault P&C for doing anything wrong. Could it have been handled better, yep. Did they do something "wrong" here, nope.
The OP's original concern really seems to hinge on his reading of a statement in an email, that I read completely differently than he does.
You may not agree with me on the last two points, but you don't have to, Thank God!
I remain 40 years old! :mrgreen:

 

[spartan]

+1 Brewshooter

+1 Cortezattic

 

[numbersix]

My argument is tailored to this specific situation and I can't really fault P&C for doing anything wrong. Could it have been handled better, yep. Did they do something "wrong" here, nope.

I have been under the impression that they never apologized for the mistake (am I correct about that?). For me, that's the main mistake. They never apologized for their mistake with my order a couple of months ago either. And this is not the first time I've heard this complaint with P&C.
P& C are not disreputable and I don't think they crossed any major lines here. It boils down to ordinary service vs extraordinary service. The latter does amazing things for a business, whereas the former means you have to struggle every single day to get a customer.

 

[brewshooter]

numbersix that is also something I was wondering. A quick apology is definitely all that is necessary to take poor customer service and turn it to good customer service in my mind, but I also remain pretty quick to accept a real apology and I'm also finding THAT to be less common among people these days.
I'm not sure I view this situation much differently, but I think I agree with your premise.

 

[tanless1]

That is weird - when they sent me the incorect tobacco. They let me keep it AND sent the correct tobacco asap.

That was for 4oz. How large was the descrepencie? I've got nothing but good experiences with p&c.

 

[numbersix]

He apologized and said he had credited my account for the entire purchase price ($50) and the credit would be applied to my next order. Needless to say, I've continued to do business with them.

Now that is top notch. I will be moving them up on my list of places to buy pipes.