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I suppose most of you know that I’ve recently created a “side site” to market my books, CD-Rs and e-books. I will admit that I much prefer writing to administration, and I’ve come up with a rather elegant system of distribution.Now occasionally, things go off the rails. Once in a while, someone orders an e-book, and then realizes that an e-book is a download, not a real book - or, one woman used her office address for delivery of a book, and the system popped out her home address. I got the book back, contacted her, and re-mailed the book. I ate the cost of re-mailing the book, which meant I lost money on the sale.
You may be wondering why I’m mentioning this. Well, if you’ve looked at the “sales page” for my book, This Endless Moment you’ll see a review of the book by Joe Vitale - a guy I respect. I subscribe to his blog feed, and today he was talking about good customer service. He’d sent for a product, gotten half of it, fired off an “irate” e-mail, and received a marvelous reply.
So, what am I on about? Yesterday, I bought a piece of software designed to make writing follow up e-mails easier. It came through what is called a “dime sale” - the price goes up (by a dime - get it?) every few minutes. The payment was processed through PayPal.
Then, nothing.
Nadda.
No link. No page forward. No e-mail confirming (other than from PayPal - who immediately sent my receipt.)
I waited 30 minutes, then fired off a slightly annoyed e-mail:
So, I ordered ****************.
I received my receipt from paypal, and NOTHING from you! No link to a download, no explanations, no redirects, and NOTHING 30 minutes later by e-mail.
The system I use for my stuff deals with everything automatically, including the downloads.
This is kind of sloppy, don’t you think?
OK. So you know I teach communication, and that was kind of direct. Still, I recognize how much effort I put into working with my clients, providing value in my books, etc. And even though the whole thing was over 11 bucks, I was a bit cheesed off.
When I get “cheesed off” e-mails (only 1 or 2 a year, thankfully) I have a breath before I reply, and try to make the situation better.
Here’s the reply I got from the obviously over-wrought marketer.
Hi Wayne,
I’m pleased everything always goes perfect for you; that must be a pleasure indeed.
I would guess however, that your system does not do dime sales.
Obviously you were SUPPOSED to be redirected, and I have no way of knowing
that didn’t work.
Here is the link you need to continue:
**********************************
Thank you so much for your generous patience and understanding.
Needless to say, I’ll not be buying from him again. He likely doesn’t care.
Read the post above to see how this should really be done!
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Zen Based, Present Living
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