Saxoprint customer service failure

On 13 March 2009, I placed an order for 2,000 flyers from Saxoprint. The company charged £72.77 for their lowest price service. This required 7 days to print and 3-4 days to deliver. This was acceptable and within our timeframes, however what happened to this order is a complete failure in customer service.

The order should have arrived by 23 March, so when nothing arrived by 27 March I decided to email their customer service team. This is a transcript of the mind-numbing conversation that I had with them.

27 March
Hi there, According to your email, our order was shipped 8 days ago, however we
have not received any thing yet.  Could you please supply tracking details or an ETA on when we should expect to receive this?

 

According to the DHL website, you have refused the order on 25th March. Normally DHL tries a new delivery withing 2 working days.
The tracking number is 00340433921089217947.

Thank you for your comprehension.

Thanks for this update on our first order with your company.

Refused delivery seems misleading by DHL. We haven’t seen any delivery
and no one would have been in the office at 18:38 on Wednesday, if
that is when they did attempt to deliver it (time cited on tracking).

According to the transit report it’s already been two days since they
attempted to deliver. Now it looks like our consignment is waiting in
Gatwick.

I appreciate that this is with DHL but we now need these materials
urgently as we’d expected them this week! Can you please expedite this
order.

We have contacted DHL. They told us that they tried to deliver the order on the 24th and 25th March 2009. The problem is that DHL now returns the items to us and their complaints department is not available before monday. So for us there is no other possibility as to wait until monday to find a solution.

We feel sorry that we cannot help you in this case.

28 March
Thanks for your quick reply – this is much appreciated. Unfortunately
DHL is lying – they did not attempt to deliver anything on these
dates. I was here on these dates all day. In addition, no missed
delivery slips or evidence of their attempted delivery (which is
normally left by other couriers) has been left for us.

I’m really frustrated and look forward to progressing this further on Monday.

30 March
Are you able to give an update on this order, please?
Particularly a new estimated date of delivery.

 

DHL informed us that they will deliver your goods in the next days.For further information please contact DHL directly your tracing number is 00340433921089217947.

Thank you for your understanding.

 

3 April

I still haven’t had delivery of this order. This is now weeks late! 

Could you please investigate.

30 minutes later, I cracked…
Actually, ignore that. I’d like a refund. I’m going to have to get
this reprinted urgently by another printer. I simply can’t wait any
longer for this.

I’m really disappointed by the level of customer service that I’ve
received. I’ve had to chase your courier to get updates on this – this
should be your responsibility; not mine.

we are doing our best to sort this out as soon as possible. We already forwarded your email to our manager and are coming back to you as soon as possible.

 

5 April

Just following up on my earlier email. Are you able to process my refund?

 

We forwared your enquiry to our supervisor again.

We will inform you asap.

Then a hours later…

Our supervisor informed us we have to clear the matter with DHL at first before we can offer you the refund for this order.

It needs some days to clear it.

Thank you for your understanding.

… and then ….

The problem is there is another information on their website like they told us on telephone.

We need in written form that they lost the package otherwise we will not get the money back from DHL.

We have to start a claim with DHL.

After that we would refund it to you.

I emailed back…

And in the meantime, what am I supposed to do about our missing flyers?

Unfortunately you can not help us at the moment.

We have to clear it with DHL.

We will come back to you asap.

We know that you want the refund because you still not received the order.


You could always just express reprint the job? I’m very frustrated about this. Surely you can do that.

We also can offer a reprint if you wish.

Not sure if it would be express reprint (2working days) with express delivery (1working day).

We really want to sort it out at first and we also understand your situation because you are still waiting for the order.

I needed some sort of solution to the problem. I wasn’t getting it though.

please can you confirm if you are able to reprint. If you aren’t then I’m going to be forced to order again through another supplier – I don’t really want to do this.

I appreciate that you are waiting for DHL to provide information but I am in a losing situation here.

Of course it will be possible to start the reprint.

But at first you wanted the refund.

We will give this information to our supervisor.

Again, I cracked. After writing this email I had to go for a long walk to calm down.

ARGH!!! I just want the flyers. I don’t care if you print them or someone else does – I just need a definite solution to this long enduring problem.

I need you to either:
1. reprint them and say that you will and give a delivery timeframe, or
2. refund me so I can get someone else to reprint them

Please reply with your preference.

7 April – 25 days since I placed the order.

OK – I need a decision on this. What’s it going to be? 

Option 1 or 2?

I need a quick response on this so I can plan ahead.

We told you we need a bit time to sort it out with DHL. It is not possible to get the information from DHL less than 24hours.

We can not make a offer for a refund or reprint without the information from DHL.

Of course you have always the option to start a reprint somewhere else if you need the product.

And with that, I gave up…

I don’t think you understand how much inconvenience this is causing
me. I also don’t think you appreciate how appalling your customer
service has been on this.

You should be stepping up to try and fix this problem. Instead you are
shrugging off the problem.

You first knew about this incident 11 days ago. You have been
ineffective in getting any resolution.

I’m so furious that I’ve decided to publish your customer service
failure on saxoprint.wordpress.com

Please notice we are not DHL and we dispatched the order in time!

We only can talk to DHL but the problem is on DHL side and it is another company.

We talked to DHL a lot of times and we also spend a lot of times but we only can talk to them again and again.

We only can try to sort it out asap.

And this is where it ends. I’m now raising a dispute through PayPal to claim back the payment.

Thankfully I paid for this via PayPal. The chargeback process for this is very straightforward. Unlike banks that require a massive form to be completed, PayPal let you complete a form online. My only regret is that I didn’t raise a dispute earlier. It will now take 20 days for this dispute to resolve. As you can see I tried to be reasonable about this, but Saxoprint have been idle in resolving this compliant.

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