Draft of a letter I may send

[ffutures]

Should I send this, or would it be kinder not to do so:

Dear [laboratory equipment vendor]

I've received your 400-page glossy catalogue and CD-ROM today, and thought I might as well pass on my thoughts on this.

Over the years I've received catalogues from several companies who prefer to provide a separate printed price list rather than printing prices in the catalogue. In general I tend not to buy from them, because I have a VERY limited amount of time to spare preparing orders, and anything that slows the process down (such as cross-checking an item price) is inconvenient.

Your price list takes this a step further by putting the prouct codes and prices (but not the product names) into a PDF. Like most school lab technicians I'm working on the crappiest computer in the department, one that is about adequate to run basic WP software but doesn't meet the needs of serious science work and is barely capable of opening PDFs. Oddly enough I'm also trying to type on this PC. In order to use your catalogue I thus need to

1. Find the item in your catalogue and get the product code
   
2. Type the product code into Adobe's search on the PDF, hopefully without making any mistakes. Wait 30 seconds or so for it to find the price.
   
3. Compare this with the five or six other catalogues I have open on the table
   
4. Decide whether to buy from you or someone else.
   
5. If I want something from you, copy everything across to the WP program (bearing in mind that I can't see the price list and WP program simultaneously) and hope I don't make any mistakes.

I've just tried this for three items and found that on all of them you are more expensive than one or another competitor, which leads me to an alternative: use the catalogues that do give prices and assume that you aren't worth the hassle. Which I'm afraid is what is going to happen.

I should also point out that your price lists runs by the calendar year and will be obsolete when I do my final order of the financial year. All of the others are based on an April-April year.

Thanks, but no thanks.


PS: is the paper recyclable?

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Send it

[raygungothic.livejournal.com]

Why not? If you don't tell them they'll never know how badly they're getting things wrong. It seems that a general rule of customer service is that for each customer complaint there are several who are as irritated but don't let the company know - if they're aware of this rule they'll take notice, if not, good riddance!

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I say send it. It's witty, plus, it informs them of a serious problem that their company really needs to address.

(There's a typo in the 3rd paragraph though.)

[aisb23.livejournal.com]

While as a matter of business economics I can understand why some companies print seperate price lists from their catalogs, it is also poor business practice to put roadblocks in the way of a potential customer.

So yes, send the letter. If they mend there ways, they deserve to succeed. If they don't then they deserve to fail.

This is an almost classic example of the market economy at work.

[houses7177.livejournal.com]

That's fantastic. You should totally send it.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

If you send it you should spell check it first. I spotted at least two errors that software would catch.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That's why it's a first draft - and the mail software is groupwise and won't let me send things without spell check.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Yep, send it. Worst they can do is ignore it as you aren't buying from them, anyway.

[armb.livejournal.com]

> Should I send this, or would it be kinder not to do so

It would be kinder not to. You should send it.

[ggreig]

I'm hesitant to "me too"... but "me too!"

Send it.

[suewilson.livejournal.com]

I think in the spirit of "no one improves if they don't know what is wrong." You shoudl send it.
If nothing else it may give some in low down in marketing a chance to walk into the office of some anal manager and say "See I TOLD you it wasn't a good ideas!"

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Send it.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Send it. They might as well know.

[thedivinegoat.livejournal.com]

Send it.

I've been there when this type of decision is made, and they'll have been too busy getting excited because they're using a "technology" format to notice the rather obvious flaws.

And as someone above pointed out, whether they pay any heed to your complaints is a good way of finding out whether they are worth bothering with or not.

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

Send it. If they don't read it, they weren't worth ordering from in the first place; if they do, they can either pay attention to what they're doing wrong, or ignore it, and bear the responsibility for having and runnign a crap system.
Everyone should be able to find out what fubars they make :: what they do with the knowledge says whether it was worth their time being told in the first place.

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

That's m'boy!