The Rest of the Story...
Guys: Many of you know that I am a market researcher. Our primary business is advising companies on how to gather and use customer feedback to improve their business. I just received a telephone call from Staples (who handle orders for the Amtrak posters) that was so good,
and important for anyone here wanting to order more than one poster, that I wanted to share the experience.
I've already posted the fact that their website charges equal shipping for each poster you order ($5 in my case). As a result, I only ordered one to begin with, then called them directly to order 3 more when the first one arrived and I'd confirmed that I liked it. The person who took my order was able to override the default shipping costs and only charged me $6 for shipping all three. So far, so good. Here's what happened next:
I got an email from Staples a few days after the first poster arrived asking me to complete a customer satisfaction survey. Most of you who bought them probably got the same email but, if you are like about 80% of the population, ignored it. However, I almost always fill them out, if only for competitive information. So, I filled out Staples' survey. I have a few professional quibbles with it, but it wasn't bad: short and sweet and it gave me ample opportunity to express my opinions. So, I told them I was happy with the call center representative and loved the poster, but did resent the fact that I basically paid $5 more than I needed to because of the way their website handled orders. That was two days ago.
I got a call from Staples this morning! The person told me they'd read my survey and were surprised to learn that it was charging shipping that way. They dug into it and discovered a programming glitch: the system was assuming that every poster was being shipped in a separate tube, hence the $5 charge for each. They have now fixed the programming, so if any of you want multiple surveys you will only be charged marginally for the others. (She said three posters to St. Louis now shows as $5.65 shipping.) Plus, my second ordered hadn't been processed yet because they are still on backorder, so she was removing the shipping charge from that order to make up for the original problem!
They read my survey, listened to what I had to say, did something about it - at both a personal and system level - and let me know about it! That is everything we advise clients to do, but rarely see them follow through to this level. Staples just made me a fan and, since I had shared the problems, I wanted to share the outcome too.
Now, aren't you sorry you didn't fill our their survey?