Last night, I accidentally ordered a pair of pants while trying to get an estimate on shipping speed. Not only is the shipping going to take much longer than I’d hoped, I realized afterwards that I had the wrong size as well. No big deal, I thought, I’ll cancel the order.
Well, you can’t on their website. So I had to wait until this morning to call. I called them up as soon as they opened, hoping to get someone before the pants shipped out. And I did! Only, they still can’t cancel the order. They have to ship the pants across the country to me, and then I have to ship them back across the country to return them. The person I talked to even offered to print out the return label, and ship it with the pants!
Such a wasteful, broken system. I can only imagine it works the way it does to make people who have second thoughts on a purchase have to jump through additional hoops to cancel it.
Let me share a similar experience I had today.
Chewy autoshipped a flea collar for my dog that died last month. I contacted them and told them what happened, and they processed my refund immediately and told me to donate the collar to a friend or shelter when it arrives.
I live in MA and knew someone who worked for Chewy. Seems like a good company all around. Except their Return to Office was asinine (if you were within ~100mi of their Boston HQ you had to return to office. One hundred fucking miles.)
You’ll probably get flowers from them as well.
Not to distill your loss into a business lesson, but Chewy has a fantastic playbook they follow when a client’s pet dies. Expect some flowers & card from Chewy in the coming days.
They know that pet owners are incredibly likely to become pet owners again, and it’s a small write-off to convert a client into a lifetime customer.
Being good to your customers shouldn’t be some wild concept.
Right? They’ve manipulated me into giving them my business by going out of their way for me! The monsters!
Fucking manipulative assholes, gunna order some cat food from them. That’ll show them what happens when you treat a customer this way!
I’m sorry, friend. I lost my beloved dog on New Year’s unexpectedly. It’s the worst.
I’m so sorry for both of your losses. I wish I could tell you that it gets easier but so far, one year on, it hasn’t. I suppose the corollary of them being your best friend is that one day, all too soon, you’re saying goodbye to your best friend. I hope you have nice memories together to cherish. (Also I adopted another little guy in need before I was emotionally ready, and that ended up being the best decision.)
Thank you. It’s been three months, and although it hasn’t gotten much easier yet, I’ve been thinking about adopting another rescue. My last dog saved my life in multiple ways.
As soon as I read “Chewy” I knew it was going to be a much more reasonable response. Sorry you had to go through that little reminder, though.
Chewy is pretty awesome for stuff like that. Condolences for your loss.