Hello Group,
Of course, all at Trew Audio are very sorry Steve’s rental order did not arrive as expected. After becoming aware of the problem I did some research to understand what happened and what can be done to reduce the chances of it happening again. I’ll explain what I found and let it be known what we will do to improve our average. Hopefully, this will also help future customers (no matter where they do business) know what they can do to hedge their bets as well.
The quote was accepted and the order was confirmed by Steve via email on Saturday, December 22, 2007. The order was to be shipped out the next Friday to arrive on Monday. The Trew Audio US location is closed on Saturday and Sunday, (however, the rental manager on call carries a cell phone which has it’s number announced on the rental voice mail). The US location is also closed for Christmas Eve and Christmas day (this year, Monday and Tuesday). This means that the rental department did not see the confirmation until after Christmas on Wednesday.
Still, the order should have shipped out on time.
The rental supervisor, Josh, was on vacation Christmas week, covered by his assistant, Kyle, who received Steve’s email excepting the quote on Wednesday morning (Dec 26) and set it to be processed pending payment method confirmation (typically credit card info). The shipping manager, Roman, had scheduled a vacation day for the day after Christmas (Wednesday) as well. Being a heavily used vacation period, Kyle was also scheduled to cover shipping/receiving for Roman that day. If there has ever been a traditionally slow day in our industry, it would be the day after Christmas, so these overlapping vacation days for Wednesday were approved well in advance.
The payment confirmation was FAXed by Steve on Wednesday afternoon. The FAX was delivered to the rental office immediately, but instead of being placed in the rental FAX “In Box”, it was place on the rental desk because Kyle was there at the time, though on the phone with another rental customer. While Kyle was still on the phone, the administration department delivered a stack of UPS and FedEx documents for the shipping department to audit. They were placed on the rental desk in front of Kyle because he was also in charge of shipping that day. The documents were placed directly on top of Steve’s FAX. Whoops. The FAX, which would have converted the quote in our system to a confirmed order and served as another reminder for Kyle, was now out of sight. Normally, if payment method had not been verified (or, as in this case, noticed) the rental department would have contacted the customer to ask about confirmation, but with everything going on that day, that was also overlooked.
Still, the order should have shipped out on time.
As Steve was still waiting for his package to arrive Monday afternoon, he emailed the rental department to ask for a shipping tracking number. It was then that the rental department realized there was a problem. However, it was now too late.
What Trew Audio can and will do is discuss this incident with our staff so everyone understands what happened, be more strict with our system (like the rental FAX always goes in the FAX in box, and vacation days that cause the rental and shipping departments to be run by a single assistant will no longer be approved, etc. We also plan to make emails to the rental dept. available remotely (Blackberry or equiv) for the person on call. These things will reduce the chances of similar problems happening again.
The day after Christmas we shipped out about 50 packages to happy customers, as we do most days. But even with the best efforts, stories like Steve’s can and eventually will happen again to someone, no matter where they do business. I accept responsibility for Steve not receiving his rental order, but, of course, that does nothing to change what happened. Therefore, whether business is done with Trew, Coffey, LSC, Gotham, or wherever, here are some things customers can do to protect themselves from the inevitable human and systems errors:
1) Be aware that most reputable shops send out tracking information via email when the order ships. This is Trew Audio’s policy as well. Therefore, if a shipping confirmation and tracking number are not received when the order is expected to ship, contact your dealer as soon as possible to express your concerns.
2) When the surrounding dates are likely to complicate things (Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years…) imagine humans working extra to cover for other humans being on holiday, and a more likely to be distracted. During these times, a confirmation call can be good insurance.
3) Many shops (Trew Audio included) ship orders every day that were placed only by email or our online store. Reliability has steadily improved as this practice becomes more mainstream, but when the delivery date is absolutely critical to your production (and your career), it would be prudent to draw extra attention to your order with a telephone call. This is particularly important when communicating by FAX since there is no way to know that they were actually printed at the other end.
Again, at Trew Audio the buck stops with me, and I accept the blame and apologize for Steve not receiving his rental order. Hopefully, now that the details have been brought to light, everyone involved (Trew Audio and those who read this group) can at least learn from what happened and avoid experiencing it again.
Regards to all,
Glen Trew
Topic: need 744T rental for NYE - from CA preferably. (Epilogue) (Read 3137 times)