Consumer ?Debate

[RachelEllen]

Maybe this is too silly for a debate
(Warning, I'm incapable of telling a short story)

My husband, after many, many years just graduated from college. My mom and I wanted to get him something special from our whole family as a gift. My husband has a huge sweet tooth and loves really good chocolate, but he watches how much junk he eats.

My mom knew about a small, gourmet candy company that does a lot of mail order. They have a 'candy of the month' option that you can put together from their cataloge. Just to describe what we were expecting, it took about 30 minutes on the phone to put this thing together. You select a different gift for each month that then arrives over the next year. We tried to match gifts to seasons. In September, for example, we picked a set of four apples covered with chocolate and caramel. For December, there was a box of fancy truffles with liquor. In the summer was assorted chocolate fruits. The candy contains a lot of fresh ingrediants, and to get it to you very fresh and unmelted, it's all sent UPS next day air. I'm just mentioning that, because the shipping alone was a very significant amount of money.

Anyhow, you might guess what happens next. I arrived home today to find my doorway almost completely blocked by 11 large boxes from the candy company. In the kitchen was one opened box, as I'm guessing my husband had been home in the afternoon. Yes, one years worth of chocolate of the month arrived at once.

I found it kind of funny and kind of disappointing. I called the companies customer service, but the manager had left for the day, and is supposed to call me back tomarrow.

So, the question. What should I ask for?

On one hand, we got the 'product'. There are indeed, twelve boxes of gourmet chocolate in our kitchen. On the other hand, that wasn't really the point. A large amount of what we were paying for (not to mention the substantial savings if we had had everything shipped as one large box), was a year's worth of monthly suprises. Plus, it's more chocolate than we've ever had in the house at once by about a factor of 6. Instead of really yummy, it's actually slightly nauseating. So I think we should get something back.

Any thoughts?

Rachel

 

[iNTeNSeBLue98]

I'm not sure what I would ask of them. There's no point in them taking it back, unless it's been kept cool and undamaged and they would have some use for the extraneous packages in the very near future. I would expect some sort of refund or continuation of the gift of the month as expected - perhaps free of charge or less shipping.


How dumb could they have been? Maybe it was an input error by data entry. Give them a call and complain. They'll want to fix it, as your word of mouth is sure to discourage potential customers.

 

[RachelEllen]

Well, if my husband wants to, I think I'll ask for them to send monthly gifts at no additional cost. They can certainly have thier other stuff back (10 boxes are unopened). But I doubt they'd want it. If he doesn't want too, I'd at least want to be refunded the shipping difference between 12 separate shipments and 1 big one, but I think it should be even more than that.

Rachel

p.s. I'm sure it was an input error.

p.p.s. I wonder what the poor UPS guy thought!

 

[emmagata]

My suggestion is to call the company and tell them to get it right. This is not what you arranged for and it's unacceptable. Tell them you want to have them redo the order so that it's the monthly plan which means they will have to send the order again. You don't want a years worth of chocolate all at once.

As far as the stuff they shipped you, they can either let you keep it or they can arrange to pay for it to be returned.