Wednesday, August 22, 2012

How to Lose Me As a Customer

Poor Customer Service is how you lose me as a customer.  This one has been a long time coming.  So, let me start from the beginning.

Two years ago, at Premier Orlando, I purchased three UV lights from Dashing Diva.  I loved the look of the lights, they were affordable and they had the way cool, slide out bottoms for use on toes.  We took them to the salon, set them up and went to work.

On day two, while Regina was working and the light was not in use, all of a sudden, we heard a POP and a big puff of smoke came out of the light.  The light was fried.  I called home office and was told that I needed to mail the light to them, they would inspect it and determine if they would send me a new one.  TWO DAYS OLD.

So, I paid to ship it to New York.  Two weeks later I get a new one.  No refund for my postage.

Three months later, Kylie's lamp quit working.  I called home office and was told pretty much since it was over 30 days I was basically shit out of luck.  I was told that I could ship it to New York (again at my expense) and they would have their "Maintenance Man" look at it and see if he could fix it.  I said hell with that.  I took it apart myself and fixed the problem, the wire going to the start button was broken.

For the past two years, I have bought replacement bulbs for the three lights every four months.  The last time I purchased bulbs was in March and the shipping was $10.95.

Imagine my surprise on July 23, when I went to order 12 bulbs and the shipping was now $24.98.  I thought, damn, did they raise their prices for shipping, so I checked their website and this is the Shipping Scale.


So, I sent them the follow email:

I just placed an order for 12 UV bulbs and a few other random items.  The total came to $119.40.  I was given the ridiculous UPS Ground shipping price of $24.98.  I just looked on your site and it shows that shipping for that total should  be $17.95, which is still ridiculous.  Can you please tell me why I am being charged $7.03 more than your shipping scale says?
I never got a response from them.  I still needed bulbs, so I ordered 16 Phillips bulbs from another manufacturer for our other light and these three. and they were shipped for FREE.  When I got the bulbs, they didn't work in the Dashing Diva lights.  They flickered like a strobe light.  These Phillips bulbs are the best on the market.  It was apparent that I had to use bulbs directly from Dashing Diva.

So, on August 8, I called.  I was told that they would look into it and get back with me.  There was NO offer to take my order over the phone and charge me the correct shipping amount.

After a week of no response, I just sucked it up and purchased three lights from another manufacturer that my Phillips bulbs will work in.  Today is two weeks since I was told someone would get back to me.

I decided to check their site out today to see if they fixed the problem.  Imagine my surprise when I saw this today.  They not only haven't fixed the problem, as you can see it has escalated.

So, Dashing Diva has lost my business due to a looooonnnnnng history of poor customer service.  BUYER BEWARE.  Check your shipping costs before you agree to purchase online from them.  Again, they have known about this for ONE MONTH!

1 comment:

darlene said...

Dashng Diva has lost a potential client, because i like to learn from others mistakes. Thanks Rhonda for a heads up on a potential issue avoided!