[Tom Wells]

Well, the story continues. Another e-mail arrived today in response to a call which I firmly ended after they started in on "bark bark bark bark..."

This e-mail promised a full refund and reiterated the Fedex label was provided which both of us already knew.

Here's a rant I posted on some other web sites which might help explain why I have a problem.

QUOTE:

Actually I think it is simple in one way and complex in another.

Simple: they (AutoPartsWarehouse = APW) wanted to save money. They outsourced all their customer calls to India.

Complex: what they don't realize is that there are serious cultural and knowledge differences they apparently were not aware of. The most severe one explains why it took four calls for the Indians to realize they sent the wrong part. Someone who knows something about auto parts and American English would have realized that fact in the first 30 seconds. The Indians I talked to were intelligent, well spoken and totally ignorant of auto parts, both the parts themselves and the terminology. Not their fault directly....

So in saving money, the APW folks drive customers away. Not their plan, but if they had given it any thought it would have been obvious. It isn't possible to satisfactorily service an internet auto parts operation with script-readers, no matter how smart.

Another cultural difference is in the way the calls are handled. If you call in with a problem it cannot be solved in one call. It is not the Indian way of doing business. Example: I'm familiar with a (now defunct) magazine which sold subscriptions worldwide. They would get a letter from an Indian saying they would like to subscribe, requiring the recipient to respond with specific rates (which were already known) and submit the answers in duplicate or triplicate. The next letter from India would state that in some timeframe a check would be forthcoming and require acknowledgement. Then the check would arrive, requiring yet more written acknowledgements. And so it would continue until the magazine's potential profit was entirely eaten with what appeared to the American eyes as unnecessary and redundant communications.

That same process was at work with the APW's folks. The correct part could not be ordered from the first person I talked to. It had to be done as a separate transaction on a separate call. When APW found that they did not stock or even list the correct part, their system broke down even further in my view. They didn't seem to have a scripted way to handle that problem.

I don't think there's necessarily any malice involved. Mostly ignorance and maybe greed.

This is really why I wouldn't order any more parts from APW. If there's another problem, it would cost me more time and effort to get it straightened out than the difference of a significant price increase by buying from another vendor. I'll gladly pay extra to avoid this time-eating stress test

Dunno if that explains it, but I feel better now.

Tom

ENDQUOTE and rant off.

I'll post if/when the refund is posted to my credit card.

Tom