Reply From P&C On Crappy Packing

[tbradsim1]

Niko e-mailed me today apologizing, they had new hires for Holiday Season and were not proplery trained as per Shipping Manager, Quality Asurement Manager should of caught it as per Niko, How about walking the floor and getting out of the Managers office, no, let untrained people do their thing, No Mr Simon send them back, instead we will ask you to see if the seals are broken and refund those, REALLY, how do you tell? Open every one, REALLY, So I send them back, guess where they will go, if you said on the stockings shelves give yourself an A+, my answer is Niko after you send me the 5 tins of Nitecap on back order that you didn"t bother to e-mail me of situation, Adios No More, and Oh, Paypal doesn"t send partial payment as you inferred as to why order was late. There are too many other good shops to put up with that kind of crap.

 

[bobpnm]

Bradley, pipe smokers are loyal, good, oft returning customers. Great customer service recognizes this and asks the customer how he/she would like it resolved? This is an example of poor customer service. Could they still make it right? -bob

 

[bobpnm]

Roth, when I was a full time cigar smoker, CI was one of my main sources of cigars. I was averaging over $100 a month with them. I don't recall packing issues. Surely the order fulfillment operations were consolidated when CI bought P&C. Some of the issues since merger just don't make any sense to me. -bob

 

[blendtobac]

I'm really sorry about what happened. I will address this tomorrow with our shipping department. This shouldn't happen, and there's no excuse for it. I will PM you when I get some answers.

I addressed the PayPal issue elsewhere, but I'll try to explain it. Our site is hosted by Yahoo, and it doesn't properly communicate with our accounting software, so any PayPal orders that have a backordered item is charged in full, and there's currently no way around it. We will be making changes shortly that will solve this issue. Any order paid by credit or debit card, though, is only charged for what actually ships.

Again, my apologies, and I will try to get to the bottom of this. I would have responded to this sooner, but I was at the CORPS Expo over the weekend and didn't monitor the boards until just now.
Russ

 

[tbradsim1]

Russ in my book you"'re a good man,shipping department is broken,you need managers that will get off their asses and work the floor.

 

[flyguy]

I purchase a lot of tobacco from P&C. I will be watching with great interest how this is resolved.

 

[petes03]

Thanks Russ, you're all right! I'll be making a big order Thursday or Friday, I'm anxious to see how it arrives. That being said, I haven't had any trouble with the packaging of my P&C orders in the past.

 

[eazye77]

Wow!
Sad to hear this. I have a package that is coming tomorrow on the 15th. I will let you guys know if I have an issue. I have never had this problem.

 

[trailspike48]

I appreciate the information. I placed an order this morning and hope it gets processed and packaged correctly. I imagine that Russ will be on top of the managers and packaging, so I'm hoping for no problems. I'm sorry you got caught in a snafu Bradley.

 

[plateauguy]

Poor Russ, with managers like this, who needs enemies?
This has been one hell of an uphill battle and while I feel for Russ, for the first time I'm glad that I'm unable to do business with P&C.

 

[Perique]

Roth succinctly summed up my thoughts on this.
Russ, as the master blender, really shouldn't have to monitor forums doing reputational damage control. It's a shame. And this coming from a loyal P&C customer who's never had a problem.

 

[inteus]

I would have thought that they and all the other site sponsors would monitor the boards/sites/social networks they sponsor and respond to any feedback they receive, good or bad. Russ is pretty awesome for responding when he can.
Anyway, I hope this gets resolved for you.

 

[weezell]

It's sad that certain others at P&C clearly care so little.

No, it's sad that the people at CI care so little! I NEVER had problems with CI's cigar end of the business...

 

[taerin]

I would have thought that they and all the other site sponsors would monitor the boards/sites/social networks they sponsor and respond to any feedback they receive

All too often companies throw their "dime in the bucket" and loose the dollars chasing after dimes. 4Noggins and P&C both have spokespeople on here, as well as Meerqueen (MeerschaumStore.com).

 

[numbersix]

Bradley - that sucks. I really want to continue to give P&C my business and I haven't had an issues, but they do seem to make more than their share of errors.
And yours is kind of inexcusable. Who would be dumb enough to do that in the first place? Does a person really need "training" to know that that is a bad idea?

 

[cynyr]

I always feel like crap when I have to explain to The Boss why people in my command screwed up, and Russ probably has fifty times the staff that I do. But he owns it like a man, and that goes a long way.

 

[piperl12]

Bradley, sorry that happened to you. It is always disappointing when people or businesses don't live up to our expectations. As a business owner I have learned that word of mouth is 90% of my business and it saves us a ton of money on advertising. Having said that I think it sounds to me like Russ is trying to do the right thing and get to the root cause of the problem. I have learned first hand how difficult it is to get young people these days that understand the value of a job and the importance of doing that job the best they can. When we hire a new apprentice they either stay and we take them under our wing to teach them or they go quickly. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground. May I humbly suggest you let Russ see what he can do before throwing out the baby with the bath water. If anyone else from P&C are watching these threads remember business rule 101 is that is much easier to keep an existing customer than try to develop a new one.

 

[dervis]

Bad packaging was received. Company was informed. Company stated any tin the customer is not happy with send back for an exchange. This seems to cause so many issues, but for me it is why P&C will have my business always. Seems cut and dry

 

[numbersix]

Company stated any tin the customer is not happy with send back for an exchange.

As Bradley mentioned, odds are good that these tins will be sold again (hell, they could even send them straight back to Bradley and say they switched them).
The issue being that a customer won't be able to truly tell - and any possible issues won't show themselves until years later.
So IMO, it's a worthless gesture - the tins must be emptied and jarred. If P&C were smart, they'd both apologize and also send a tin (or two) for free. This is the type of gesture that says, hey if we screw up, we will make it worth your while.
Sad to say it, but what they're basically saying is "if we screw up, you're going to have to do some work to get any form of compensation - and don't expect much"

 

[piperl12]

@Dervis I think if I understand correctly the frustration is with the fact there was little care taken which causes more work for Bradley more work to send it back. I can relate to that. When one of my customers accept my quote they expect the job done right the first time. If I have to fix something after the fact they appreciate it but it doesn't change the fact that they are frustrated that it had to be repaired. For the older generation they remember a time when customer service was totally different than we know today. I personally wish customer service would go back to the way it used to be. My wife had a guy at a coffee shop drive through hand her out a coffee without saying anything and not even looking at her.