Really cheap food...however

matt1987

Excellent, so that means everything on my order was in stock!!

relynutz

it is great that you have responded to your comments on here dan.
i have had 2 orders from you, keep up the good work !!!!

limey_2

Interesting, thanks for the update Dan, well perhaps i may hear from you soon then as i ordered on the 15th and ive been sitting patiently ever since.

sellercheckuk

#1633

Dan,

Thank you for your update which is much appreciated.
I have no doubt that this information, together with the actions you're suggesting, will go a long way towards not only reassuring your new customers that they haven't been 'left behind', but will mean you retain them as additions to your existing loyal client base.

All the best and fingers crossed! :T

sellercheckuk

p.s. By coincedence (?) this arrived in my email inbox earlier, but I haven't done anything with it yet....

From: "Google Checkout" <noreply@checkout.google.com>
Date: Sun, February 1, 2009 12:27 am

Dear ***********
Thanks for your recent purchase (17th January) from Crags Cash and Carry.
We'd really appreciate hearing about your experience. Please take a moment to tell us about it by filling in the form below. We will publish your review online so that others can learn from your experience.

ringadingding

approvedfood wrote: »

I take all the points that have been made and fully appreciate the efforts of all those who are trying to help with constructive suggestions.

Firstly I must explain why some people have “jumped the queue”: because of the pressure of numbers and the insecure nature of our supplies, we found ourselves in the position of having to contact the majority of our customers about replacements. Obviously the night shift could not phone customers, so the only way to keep them occupied was to employ them completing orders that had come in recently and for which we had the products in stock.

However, the current situation is that we have a huge, and ever-increasing number, of boxes partly filled and contacting all of these customers by phone is making the situation even worse.

This clearly requires drastic measures and what I propose to do is this:

Any order already placed before January 31st that leaves our building more than 12 days after it was placed will receive a discount of £5.25 (the postal charge for the vast majority of you).

By doing this our three shifts will be able to work swiftly through the backlog. Of course any missing items will be refunded as normal.

The fact that all items at the moment appear as “temporarily unavailable” is not because we don’t have the stock, but it was the only way I could put a stop to people making orders this weekend. Normal service will resumed as soon as possible, hopefully during this coming week.

I can assure you that, as from now, orders will be dealt with strictly in the order they were placed. Also I will update you via this thread as to where we are up to with the orders on a daily basis.

If anyone is unhappy with the arrangements, they only need to call either of the numbers on our website in order to cancel their order and receive a full refund.

As I’m sure you’ll all appreciate, I’m determined to resolve the present problems and re-establish the level of service we were able to provide before the media explosion.

Finally I must apologise for any inconvenience caused by our inability to cope with the increased demand and once again thank you for your support and encouragement.

Cheers,

Dan

Really appreciate the notification as we're one of the orders from the 16th who haven't been contacted (other than that one of our items was out of stock but that was on the 30th) or received a dispatch note. We'll just be a bit more patient

hallnaomiuk

Thanks dan, for taking the time out to reply back to this thread.

What you have said sounds very reasonalble, and has given me piece of mind - that things are being delt with.

wookie_2

keep up the good work "D" excellent customer service. Looking forward to many more orders with you guys, as you are saving my family buckets of cash in this ever depressing enviroment.

Ashen

sellercheckuk wrote: »

p.s. By coincedence (?) this arrived in my email inbox earlier, but I haven't done anything with it yet....

It is a coincidence - Google Checkout send those e-mails out to people a while after each order.

tricki1

sellercheckuk wrote: »

I have not been and am not making a 'complaint' and I really don't feel any 'frustration'.
The reason for posting was to:
a) Make a suggestion that Dan (approvedfood) might read, by a method that would not distract him (as emails and phone calls to email) would. i.e. If/when he reads this discussion it would hopefully be at a time when he's taking a break from the day to day activities.
I do not intend to phone Dan or approved food as it's my belief that they are 'snowed under' and don't have the capacity to deal with the administrative load that they already have, let alone more.
All that I'm suggesting is that within 2 weeks of order placement and acceptance of payment, approved foods 'should' be sending an email to their customers to advise the situation specific to each customer's order.
i.e. Advice of any shortages and suggested 'alternatives', if any And/Or a suggested revised order with refund amount with the option to accept within say 48 hours AN/Or a partial or full refund.
and
b) Put another viewpoint (to those from wearers of Rose tinted specs), and share my experience in case it is meaningful for others.

I have not been personally promised a phone call and the only mention of 'phoning people' was made by Dan himself and others in this discussion thread.

Fair enough, I think you have made yourself clearer now, its always tricky to offer constructive criticism without sounding like you have a chip on your shoulder, so excuse me if I read too much into your posts.

approvedfood wrote: »

I take all the points that have been made and fully appreciate the efforts of all those who are trying to help with constructive suggestions.

Firstly I must explain why some people have “jumped the queue”: because of the pressure of numbers and the insecure nature of our supplies, we found ourselves in the position of having to contact the majority of our customers about replacements. Obviously the night shift could not phone customers, so the only way to keep them occupied was to employ them completing orders that had come in recently and for which we had the products in stock.

However, the current situation is that we have a huge, and ever-increasing number, of boxes partly filled and contacting all of these customers by phone is making the situation even worse.

This clearly requires drastic measures and what I propose to do is this:

Any order already placed before January 31st that leaves our building more than 12 days after it was placed will receive a discount of £5.25 (the postal charge for the vast majority of you).

By doing this our three shifts will be able to work swiftly through the backlog. Of course any missing items will be refunded as normal.

The fact that all items at the moment appear as “temporarily unavailable” is not because we don’t have the stock, but it was the only way I could put a stop to people making orders this weekend. Normal service will resumed as soon as possible, hopefully during this coming week.

I can assure you that, as from now, orders will be dealt with strictly in the order they were placed. Also I will update you via this thread as to where we are up to with the orders on a daily basis.

If anyone is unhappy with the arrangements, they only need to call either of the numbers on our website in order to cancel their order and receive a full refund.

As I’m sure you’ll all appreciate, I’m determined to resolve the present problems and re-establish the level of service we were able to provide before the media explosion.

Finally I must apologise for any inconvenience caused by our inability to cope with the increased demand and once again thank you for your support and encouragement.

Cheers,

Dan

I had a feeling you were having to do emergency measures and have been trying in my limited way to explain to the forum why I thought some orders were getting through quicker than others. Its nice to hear it confirmed, and having you explain the reasons make it so much clearer, so thank you for taking the time to explain. refunding the whole postage as well is rather drastic, I hope it doesn't cut into your overheads too much, but it will help clear things a little and keep customers who have waited a while happy, so it seems fair, and at the very least will stop the grumbles about the delays a little

I feel that the best way for you to stop getting flooded with orders in the future is to set up the website so it will automatically not allow items out of stock to be ordered, as per in my first post. I appreciate this would require someone with technical knowledge and would have to stump up the cost of hiring someone if you cannot do it yourself or do not have someone already employed who can so so. But the benefits are enormous considering the sudden amount of new customers, so would pay for itself quickly as staff can concentrate on the actual shifting of orders. I hope that if you have something like this in the pipeline already you can get it put in place quickly.

You are doing ok considering the obstacles you are facing and the extra problems that come up no matter what you do, so thanks for the input and good luck

Edit: scratch my previous comments about the stock, just checked the website and its correctly stopping orders with 0 stock. Well done Dan.