A few weeks ago, we posted details of a customer service issue which caused us some minor merriment. Twitter liked it too, judging by the number of RTs the post url received. However, we decided that perhaps it wasn’t that funny after all and deleted the post. It’s not even in Google’s cache so don’t waste any time looking for it

We had thought that the correspondence which led to the previous WP post was a one-off. We were wrong. It would appear that there are lots of people out there who dedicate their lives to finding fault with everything, who believe the world is conspiring against them, and that ecommerce retailers in particular are a bunch of charlatans. No matter what you the retailer does to try to help, they’re never going to be happy. In the end, regardless of the fact that you know you’ve done nothing wrong, you just have to give in.

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Order
Date:     29 Jan 2010 03:15:24 GMT
From:     x@yahoo.co.uk

Message:
Thought I’d completed the order payment through HSBC but was waiting on arrival of email acknowlegement of order before closed final HSBC window. BUT email never arrived – so when did subsequently close final HSBC window – it told me the transaction had failed and asked me to contact you …
I’d expect that once I’ve confirmed payment HSBC or you should have sent an email to acknowledge the order. HSBC needs to make its final screens clearer on this issue.

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Re: Order
Date:     Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:31:28 +0000
From:     Snorestore
To:     x@yahoo.co.uk

Good morning.

Thanks for your email.

The final page of the HSBC site asks you to click to complete your purchase and return to the merchant’s website (see fig. 1 attached). This action triggers a payment success advisory to our website, and the email confirmation is then sent automatically (fig 2.). If you close the browser, this can’t happen I’m afraid.

We’ll send you a copy of the email for your records and your order will leave us today.

Yours sincerely,

JG
Snorestore Ltd

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Re: Order
Date:     Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:48:55 +0000 (GMT)
From:     x@yahoo.co.uk
To:     Snorestore

Yes – but it also asks you to print off the final page ‘for your records’ before continuing a) not making it clear that continuing was required to complete the order (only that it would return me to your website I believe) and b) not making it clear that this was also required before it would send the confirming email. I couldnt print of the final page with the order number on it because my printer was out of ink – so either I made a note of the number or I waited, as I often successfully do with other web site orders for the confirming email.

Your knowledge of how this works isnt much use to customers who do not understand whats required because the final page doesnt make this clear and also leaves you stranded with the dilemma of not being able to print of the order – in my view probably a common occurrence.

This is an issue for HSBC surely – if it shows the order number – the implication is that the order and payment has been accepted and that an email acknowledgement will follow.

Your frankly short tempered defensive reply doesnt help… you should refer complaints like this to HSBC and if they dont respond – use another method to accept payment – I was actually hoping that you would have used PayPal for example as many websites these days give you multiple choices of how to pay.

The attachment by the way is corrupt – it asks me to select a folder but not to save to and nothing displays.

——– Original Message ——–
Subject:     Re: Order
Date:     Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:19:58 +0000
From:     Snorestore Directors
To:     x@yahoo.co.uk

Dear Mr xx

Thank you for comments which are duly noted. We have no plans to change our payment service provider and we have not had a similar complaint in the 8+ years we have been trading.

We can assure you that the attachments are not corrupt; we have tested this with emails to other recipients just now and they can see them and save them.

To help you, we have now uploaded them to our website and you can find them at:

http://www.snorestore.co.uk/fig1.jpg and

http://www.snorestore.co.uk/fig2.jpg

Yours sincerely,

GJ
Director, Snorestore Ltd

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Re: Order
Date:     Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:27:32 -0800 (PST)
From:     xd@yahoo.co.uk>
To:     Snorestore Directors

Thanks – but having seen the screen images from HSBC its still unsatisfactory and less than clear -

‘Your Completed Order’ (in bold heightened red letters – suggests the order has been ‘Completed’ – to me anyway)
but then seems to be contradicted by ‘Click Continue to complete your order and return to the merchants website. The merchant will confirm if your order has been successful.’

But could ‘Click Continue to complete’ (being generic) simply mean to close this webpage and move back to the merchants website (my interpretation) or (as you have subsequently explained) is required to actually complete the HSBC transaction. The fact that no one else has complained about this in 8 years probably means a) this particular poorly designed HSBC webpage has not been around for 8 years and b) other confused users have erred on the side of caution and clicked to continue anyway.

However – I’ve known payment sites in the past to quote the order number and ask you to continue for you then to NOT receive an acknowledgement of the same order number either by email or by returning to the original website. I didn’t know if this was going to be the case with you and also couldn’t print the order detail – hence my hope for an email acknowledging the order before I lost sight of the HSBC page. Often you get two emails, one from the payment website and a second from the vendor – but in my case I got neither.

But anyway – thanks for your help and hopefully the order will prove to be more useful.

Regards,

xx xx

= = = = =

We’ve really nothing more to say to this gentleman. We have looked him up on Google and found him on numerous retail websites which have a review facility. This leads us to believe that he is a veritable consumer champion. Or have we been hoodwinked and he’s actually a Henry Root or Colin Nugent character?

What we have learnt from this exchange is:

1. Don’t expect customers to read what’s on the screen in front of them.

2. Do expect it always to be your fault. Because it clearly is.

3. Don’t expect your customers to have ink in their printers.

4. Don’t bother to be polite because you’ll be accused of being “short-tempered” anyway.

5. Don’t bother having two different payment providers because the customer will only see one. We do indeed have two, clearly marked at the Snorestore checkout and explained here.

6. Do expect a lot of open brackets/close brackets in any correspondence of this nature.

7. Apostrophes are of course, optional.

8. Do expect the complainant to have a Yahoo email address. It’s a given.

9. Always send the follow up response from a male company director and send it from another email account, because it’s good sport to elicit a change of tone in the complainer’s responses. The fact is, I wrote all the responses. I just changed the name on the last one.