Friday, October 29, 2010

the ups and downs.......

I often take my role as President of Box Brothers, a bit to seriously--some people might say.
I cannot dispute that, really, as if I am guilty of anything, it is caring to much and not being
as selfish as I could be and as more other people are. I do not know why I am not like so many others, who are more selfish and self centered, but depending on how you look at it, I am either at a disadvantage or in a higher position.

Today, it did not really matter. I tried to take on a difficult customer, who we could have walked
away from, but chose not to. In hindsight, maybe I should have let that one get away, as they say, as I will be dealing with the aftermath for some time.

I think it is important to set the right example and to not back away cause it is easy or convenient, but to meet the challenge, head on. Sounds good, but the truth is somewhere out there and I am in it for the duration now.....

The shipment was delivered short, and there was some damage, and the wild thing about this is
that we have not had many, if any claims of this type all year. Normally, this would not be earth shattering news, but this customer is not only tough, but wants you to pay her to ship her goods, if you get my drift.

Fate has a way of showing up when you need it the least.....but I am proud to say that we will get this one done, and we will learn from it. I have the infrastructure to get it done and to get it done right, but when you have a customer who does not want to pay and you have any service failure, you have the right ingredients for a calamity, or a conflagration, depending upon your perspective.

Is it to much to ask for a little reasonableness? We shipped a metal item with UPS, and they returned it without the box and bent in half. We never got an explanation and then they blamed
us for the damage as they said it had non sufficient packaging.....this type of thing we can deal with, as the damage speaks for itself and we did package it or they would not have picked it up.

That is bureaucracy, or an example of how the service is passed off as routine, when in fact it is,
otherwise. In our case, how you communicate and try to be reasonable with someone who is not
able to be reasonable, is another matter. While my immediate situation is different, it is nothing
that a good firm can deal with, and I do hope that we can learn from this experience , so we can
avoid it in the future, but things do happen, and no one got hurt or sick and tv's can be easily replaced, but stress, that is another story.

Life goes on.

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