| not questioned the quality of your IC pipes (I just wanted to clarify that point). But the underdog cases are usually ones where every effort is being made to do the right thing and fighting an uphill battle. I've started to give up hope that you were trying to do the right thing with the rash of "Where's Ash" posts that have been popping up lately. I realize that you cannot control the actions of others, but you can influence them if you try to stay a step ahead of the situation. At the same time I believe some of this is self-inflicted too. I truly applaud your dedication and efforts to hold quality as one of your highest priorities. However, another aspect of quality is the up front customer support that is needed for any business - whether it's a fledgling business or one that's been around for many years. What escapes me is the "low hanging fruit" of proactively contacting your customers when production and/or shipment schedules are delayed. This also extends to answering emails in a timely manner. I believe 24 hours is a sign of excellent customer responsiveness although 48 hours isn't unreasonable during peak business times. As for the pity story part, I'm presenting my interpretation of how the explanations come across. Admittedly, it's been an increasingly cynical point of view. But when someone's hard-earned money is involved, I don't think you'd find much sympathy if all (or most) of the explanations point to it being someone else's fault. Even with the quality issues you encountered - a paying customer expects these issues to be worked out before the money is taken. Some things are unforeseeable but that's where the proactive communication matter comes in to play. I won't go into more detail on how to address these issues - you're smart enough to figure this out if you want the business to continue and thrive. However, I do hope that you can see how things work against you when people come on here looking for you when you drop off the radar. It just doesn't look right when you have a website that lists your contact info, and yet people are on here looking for you because they haven't received a response to a message they left with you (I'm referring mostly about cases where people cite a long period of time with no response from you and they have to resort to paging you on the forum). That's about as simple as I can state my observations on these matters. Good luck with things. Dave
 
Sig Quotes: "Your sausage scares me!" - TT-XTZ 6/13/05 "Or he's having a rough week like the rest of us and decided to take out his agressions of not being breast fed on me." BigTDogg 15:45, 09/25/03 "Pick her up from day care and take her to Dairy Queen for a snow cone." YugoBernie 1/7/04 of course those are canadian bannings and beatings, which after the conversion rate is really only a "hey! stop that!" Chris(NJ) 1/14/04 see the green "n" next to my name? what's COZ? (n/m) - 300zx88 8/11/04 |
