. I'd check my emails and see if they were within normal ordering parameters, i.e., was I seeking something that wasn't in the catalog, or asking for a significant discount?
Chris,
None of your scenarios above are factual, these guesses would indeed be reason for a business to not help a customer, but even if they were the case, an explanation would be expected and customer service would still be a priority.
The fact is no discount was asked for. I personally talked to Dana on the telephone looking for 20 trees for a workshop within a certain price range dictated by the club hosting the workshop, he was going to see what was available and get back to me. This was after a couple inquiries by email were unanswered and after the conversation more emails went unanswered.
I ended up going to
Wigerts and have purchased 40 trees from them since. Excellent trees, excellent service, and I was made to feel my business is important. I highly recommend Wigerts, I can not say the same for Brussels, based on my own personal experience dealing with the company.
Your argument that a business must be good because they got where they are is not a solid one. AT&T has been around for ever, hell they were the best, they are huge, but none of that matters if a customer is not satisfied with service or price, people switch all the time, I did recently, not because of a cheaper price, but because of poor service.
The Memphis Road House was an excellent restaurant that we went to quite often, big place, always booming, reservations were hard to get. They certainly never got to be that popular without reason, yet some poor management decisions that led to poor service peed off one customer after another, myself included, and people just went elsewhere. Business dropped, no reservations were needed anymore, business died down and last week I saw a big banner out front that said "Under New Management"
Being big or having a record of past success is no guarantee of present customer service, business's sometimes become blinded to the very things that made them in the first place and this is usually always customer service.
There is no excuse for poor customer service and less of an excuse for accepting it. The lack of communication from Brussels on what may have been a small order to them (I seriously doubt that a 20 tree order was small) made me personally feel like my business was not important. This may be an isolated incident, maybe not, but it doesn't matter, all that matters is my (the customers) perception of the service or lack thereof at the time business is transacted. I can say that
Wilgerts was happy to take the order and they were pleasant, easy to work with, and that attitude earned them more business from me.
In closing, Tiberious came on and posted a note about his personal experience with Brussels, as is his right, I posted a note about my own personal experience with Brussels, as is my right. What resulted was a couple of customers, each doing business with Brussels, having two completely different experiences. I did not say that no one should go to Brussels, I simply said that the one time I did business with the company was less than satisfactory and that I would not recommend the company based solely on my own experience.
I do not reward poor customer service with my business.
Will