Now I may have addressed this topic before – I may even have an entry under the same name; nevertheless, here I go again. Why, you ask? Because I am currently on hold to speak with a customer service agent at one of my suppliers. This is my second call to them today – well, the second one that I have put through to completion. I probably called at least 10 times only to be met with voicemail (not an autoresponder, but the outgoing voicemail message) with no way to get to a real person.

I did leave a voicemail about three hours ago with someone who promised that I am important to them and that they will get back to me very soon.

Three hours later, still no return phone call, even though I left a very specific message about why I was calling, including my job order number and my telephone number, both repeated for clarity.

Why am I calling? A job I sent them with a 1-day rush, for which my client is paying, doesn’t appear to have shipped out yesterday, as it should have. The job was submitted and paid for on Saturday via their website. I approved the proof on Monday morning. It should have shipped out yesterday, but my online status check shows it’s still in production. We are paying more for a 1 day turn because we need the finished product tomorrow….

Sorry...they just answered the phone. So it turns out that the order won’t ship out when I expected it to because I didn’t meet their deadline for proof approval. There was no indication what the deadline was to return the approval on the proof itself. That information is buried in their website and not given when the order is placed. OK, so it is there. How much information am I, the customer, supposed to sift through before I feel it is safe to place an order and get what I expect?

Am I a happy customer? Absolutely not. Will I be looking for an alternative the next time I need a similar product? Absolutely yes! Will the product arrive in time? Probably, but who knows for sure – that’s up to UPS.

Thanks for letting me vent!