We'd like to remind Forumites to please avoid political debate on the Forum... Read More »
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!
Really cheap food...however
Options
Comments
-
What? Somebody dare to go against the goodwill tide? I thought EVERYBODY assumed Dan was a god and would willingly have his children. You'll get no sympathy on this thread pal!sellercheckuk wrote: »Dan,
BUT what I DO have a problem with is your lack of proactive follow up.
i.e. I sent you a message last Sunday 24th to ask for progress explaining that I want to be sure to be able to be around to receive a delivery by DHL.
On Monday 26th this week you replied by email saying that "Your order should be shipped within the next couple of days. As its shipped you will get an email from DHL".
Guess what, I have NOT had either an email or an attempted delivery by DHL.
I have also NOT had any update communication from you or your colleagues.
I understand that you might not want to admit defeat and your apparent optimism might be due to naievity, but communication really is the key in building and maintaining trust and loyalty from your customers new and existing.
So my sugggestion is that you prioritise the expansion of the 'sales administration and customer service' part of your business BEFORE anything else!
Good luck!0 -
sellercheckuk wrote: »Dan,
I placed an order on Saturday 17th January with the knowledge (as advised on the web site at that time) that, due to the reasons we all know about, delivery/despatch would be delayed for 7 days. I had no problem with that and still have no problem waiting another week or two.
BUT what I DO have a problem with is your lack of proactive follow up.
i.e. I sent you a message last Sunday 24th to ask for progress explaining that I want to be sure to be able to be around to receive a delivery by DHL.
On Monday 26th this week you replied by email saying that "Your order should be shipped within the next couple of days. As its shipped you will get an email from DHL".
Guess what, I have NOT had either an email or an attempted delivery by DHL.
I have also NOT had any update communication from you or your colleagues.
I understand that you might not want to admit defeat and your apparent optimism might be due to naievity, but communication really is the key in building and maintaining trust and loyalty from your customers new and existing.
So my sugggestion is that you prioritise the expansion of the 'sales administration and customer service' part of your business BEFORE anything else!
Good luck!
With all the best will in the world with such a rush saying a few days is only an estimate. the employee(s) dealing with the emails wouldn't usually do much to track down individual orders other than pass on note to stock employees, who in turn have probably dozen's of similar notes as well as having to move stock around, process orders, box and probably sort out paperwork for delivery all at the same time.
I would give them a phone call and ask for more details, Mistakes can happen, things forgotten, and companies don't usually ring back to say, "sorry not ready yet" either. The staff are new and not fully trained either, so the customer service is going to be a bit hit and miss, I'm sure if you were to speak to Dan himself he would apologize for the temporary communication problem and probably help you sort it out.
Edit. Other things can go amiss as well. Your order could be waiting with other boxes till there is enough for a lorry load, paperwork for delivery going wrong under pressure, and problems with DHL, like in the below quote:
P.S get well soon OzzyYes I am still waiting for my order 18 days tomorrow and counting, and still no sign.
Rang Dan on sat. told me he still had my parcel in the warehouse and had not sent it out because of shortages. Told me it would be with me on Tue.
Rang him on wed. after parcel did not arrive.
Said the parcel had been sent out and he would email DHL to find out what had gone wrong. Received email from DHL saying that banding on parcel had snapped and they had returned parcel to Dan.
So now waiting for parcel to be sent out again.
I would like to point out that yes Dan should have informed me that my parcel had not been sent out due to shortages and not emailed to say it had sent out.
The one thing/s that i can't knock Dan for is this is my 3rd order and the other two went like clockwork
Dan's customer service is 2nd to none.
What company can you ring the boss and get problems solved without going through hoops 1st.
Don't let my experience's with this last order put you off, just read all the positive posts on here.
...One more thing ..... I would like to point out that maybe if i had chased up Dan on this order instead of just waiting for it to be delivered maybe it would have been here by now.
I have had a lot on my mind with my cat Ozzy !!(one in pic.}something wrong with his liver and i have been backwards and forwards to the vet with him. He's got a ultrasound 1st thing on thurs.
...Sorry for going off the subject, but sh*t happens.
If you contact them again, you could find out if the order has a delivery number and track your order here: http://www.dhl.co.uk/publish/gb/en.high.html (Don't know which tracker to use I'm afraid) Will also help if there's an error on DHL's end so you can chase it up with them.
I know AF is responsible for this ultimately, and yes they need to improve customer service, but its a race to fulfill orders until they can expand, so going to be a juggling act until then.0 -
What? Somebody dare to go against the goodwill tide? I thought EVERYBODY assumed Dan was a god and would willingly have his children. You'll get no sympathy on this thread pal!
I spot a cynic
It is strange how many people have praised AF despite the major problems; perhaps its because this is a money saving board, full of people who like things cheap and hate big corporate shops, and feel Dan is a fellow traveler. Either that or they are sucking up desperately hoping it will get preferential treatment in getting orders through
I'm offering tips that might help, and not just out of kindness of heart. I do want to make another order for myself and a few others, and anything I can do to improve the service helps me as well. Enlightened self-interest I suppose, plus it exercises my mind a little
0 -
I think Kazmeister may be right, my parcel has shown the same place for 2 days, I assume it is still sat in the warehouse. When my husband phoned on Wednesday he was told that there was £8 of our £32 order not available so my husband said to just add more of what we had already ordered to make it up. Problem is I have just checked the web site and the only item we ordered that is in stock is dog biscuits lol I am now praying we do not get £8 of dog biscuits! It's now been 2 weeks since we ordered and it still hasn't been dispatched, so I would think there is by now a lot more than just £8 worth unavailable. Maybe I should cancel until there is more stock? I am not mad at Dan or his company, nobody could have foreseen what would happen with all the publicity, but I do feel a tiny bit disappointed that people who ordered much later than me still got their items.
0 -
mark1974uk wrote: »has anyone else had trouble signing up to that google payment thing, ifilled in the form but there was no submit buttn, gutted after doing a big order tol me about an hour to do me shopping then it was all in vain ;-(mark1974uk wrote: »guys if anyone could offer some advice here?
i really wanna get an order in sooo fustrating
Do you have a google account set up already? If not sign up for a free google account, as it is needed to use the checkout.
If you do have an account, then you could try using a different browser to see if that helps. Firefox and Opera are free, and if you don't like them can always uninstall them. Or you could try reinstalling your previous browser. On Firefox some addons can interfere with some sites as well, so can temporarily disable them.
PM me if you want to ask any questions, I've had problems like this before, so might be able to help.0 -
wonder what new product will be coming in, in the bnext few moonths?0
-
I have another idea I'd like to share for Dan to consider, not one that would improve stock handling so to be implemented later, but would help customers.
As items come and go so quickly its common that a customer will see something they really really want, a must have item, (does beans ring a bell) but most of the other items available they don't really want to buy just to make up the weight. Or they could be waiting for another item that is due to come into stock, but there is another item they really want and they are unsure whether to wait and possibly miss out on the item in stock now. Or do not get paid for a few days and cannot make an order at the present time, but don't want to miss out on an item that is likely to sell out fast. It is a conundrum and can impact on number of orders.
If you set it up so that customers could reserve items, with a small charge to cover the labor costs, and the item is stored for the customer until they make a proper order it would take some of the uncertainty. Customers know they aren't getting quite the bargain they would have if they ordered it now, but have security that they get an item they really want.
You might have to put a time limit on the reserve to stop your warehouse wasting space on items that sit there forever because the customer changes his mind or forgets, possibility of customer extending time of reserving item could be considered, but bit complex to implement, and I'm not sure on how it would best work with your bookkeeping or warehousing needs, so needs a bit of working out.
As I mentioned on my first suggestion, using a system of generated special offer codes (possibly using md5 hash's etc) could help this system, as you can have it set up so that it automatically adds the item with the correct price into the shopping basket when the customer inputs the code. This means it will not impact with your current system ,as it is like a normal item added to basket just with adjusted price,and the automatic weighing for postage charges will work as normal.
I know you have a discount coupon code, but as I haven't received a discount coupon yet, I do not know how your system works with that, so excuse me if I have described what you already do, I am just clarifying ways to implement my suggestion. The md5 hash is handy because if it adds together customer name,special offer(for reserving)code; and amount of items, and the resulting number will be different for different numbers of items. So if there was a database error and the customer said he reserved 10 items, but your records say different, you can check by inputting customer name,item code and 10 in this case and see if the hash is the same.
The site would have to have to be redesigned so that a registered customer when signed in can click on a button next to the item saying reserve this item. This sends them to a separate page that takes the amount of the item inputted, generates the code as per above, displays the reserve code to the customer to keep record of, and sends the details to your database so it updates amount of stock available etc.
I know you have bigger fish to fry atm, but its something to think about when you have time to redo the site.
Would others on this site like this idea?
P.S If Dan likes this or any of my other suggestions, PM me with any questions or reasons they wouldn't work well with his business plan rather than spam the thread even more
0 -
Well i am well chuffed, like my other post, ordered on 25th jan, got my dispatch email yesterday, while i was at work this morning it tracked at the Hatfield depot, and it has now arrived, all present and correct, now i cannot fault this kind of service, 5 days wow. just waiting for the other order which was place on 27th:rolleyes: well done ( A F ):T 0
-
god, your lucky - making me jelous
still waiting from the 20th
still just says order in process.... 0 -
I placed an order on the 22nd - still in progress. I then placed an order on the 27th as I wanted the soup for work, received a £5.70 refund today but it doesnt say for which products. Still in progress. So I now don't know what is happening with the first order as ive received refund for the later order. I know Dan is really busy so don't really want to add more emails to his list but I might have to.0
This discussion has been closed.
Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply
Categories
- All Categories
- 351.2K Banking & Borrowing
- 253.2K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
- 453.7K Spending & Discounts
- 244.2K Work, Benefits & Business
- 599.2K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
- 177K Life & Family
- 257.6K Travel & Transport
- 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
- 16.2K Discuss & Feedback
- 37.6K Read-Only Boards