I wished someone had posted their experience with this company as it may have saved my sister, my niece, and me from all the wasted time. Therefore, I am recording my experience here so that others could learn from my experience.
A Story of Unrelenting Horror in terms of Terrible Customer Service - Poor Internal Processes!
I have two major complaints about ABC Distributing's customer service process. Because of my experience, I will never order from them again. It isn't worth the migraine.
ONE: When I placed my first order through their website
I placed my first order from ABC Distributing in late December, 2004 for a 5 foot photo screen. I was excited to finally find this item, as I could not find it anywhere in Minneapolis.
Since this company ships the items with an invoice before receiving payment, I am fully sympathetic to their need to verify address information to minimize on-line fraud. I am a small business owner, and many of my clients use our eStore system to operate their on-line stores. Having said that, since every now and then a legitimate order may be stopped inadvertently, it is standard business practice to NOTIFY the customer when canceling an order.
My primary business address is in Texas. The item I was ordering was for my sister's home office in Minnesota. When I placed the order, there wasn't a separate billing and shipping address, so I entered my business name and cell phone number (from Texas) and my sister's Minnesota address (where the item was to be shipped.) I would be paying for the order, and if they had any questions, they should contact me rather than my sister, hence the cell phone number.
I received an immediate confirmation email letting me know that my account would be set up and I would be receiving a welcome letter in the mail. I assumed that everything was fine and promptly forgot about it. We never received the welcome letter.
Six weeks later, we started wondering just how long it would be before the item was delivered... I called up their long-distance customer service number 305-944-6971, since there was no way to contact them via email or their website. (There is an on-line customer service section, but it requires an account number, which we had never been given, and once logged in it allowed you to do some basic things EXCEPT sending any sort of feedback or communications.) Yes, I waited on hold for 10 minutes, but that's not really so bad compared to a lot of places out there, and it isn't my complaint.
When I finally spoke to their representative, she informed me that there was a problem with my address/phone number; the account had never been created and the order never actually placed. I told her that I had listed my cell phone number and she said that must have been the problem. I gave a land-line number for my sister's home office, which then would match the physical address that I was shipping the product to, and she updated the account. I told her that it would have been nice to be notified about this problem back in December when I placed the order, because I would have immediately dealt with the issue then rather than waiting 6 weeks to discover their was a problem.
At this point, I was informed that it would take 48 hours for the account to be reopened, and 72 hours for the order to be processed, and 10 days or so for the product to be delivered. I was frustrated over not being notified six weeks prior about the address problem, but relieved that the item hadn't been lost in the mail and would finally be shipped.
I called up the following Monday just to be sure that everything had gone through OK. No dice. They said there was still a problem with the address/phone number, and the order was still on hold. It's a good thing that I called, because they STILL didn't notify me by phone, by email or by snail-mail that there was a problem. If I hadn't called then, I may have ended up waiting another two weeks still in the dark.
I tried to ascertain just what it was about the address/phone number that wasn't working for them, but they couldn't tell me and I had to guess what it was that they were verifying. I explained that I was shipping to a residence and not my main office. They asked who's residence it was, and changed the "attention name" on the order from mine to that of my sister. Now, the phone number, address, and name all belonged to the same person. It would take another 72 hours for the order to be processed.
I learned my lesson, and checked in several days later to confirm. By this time, we had an on-line account that I could log in to and check the order status. It still showed "there is a problem with your address" and that the order was on hold. There was a way to change the address, but that wouldn't help me as the address was CORRECT. There was no way to indicate this from the website, and no contact us form or email address. So, I made the long distance phone call and explained my situation again from the beginning.
This time I spoke with Cody and he asked me to fax in documentation showing that my business was registered at that Minnesota address. I explained that my primary business address is in Texas and that I was shipping this to my sister's home office in Minnesota, so that wouldn't help. Cody told me I'd have to start over, create a new account on the website, and place the order again. I told him that I actually need the existing order shipped, and I'd prefer it if he could make the changes himself so that everything was proper on the order and it would go through. (I was thinking that it was a shot-in-the-dark for me to guess what might be "wrong" this time, and if they fixed it there was a greater likelihood of it being accepted than if I started over. Plus, I wanted the history of the order process maintained so that if I had to keep calling they would know just how old this problem was.)
Cody said that he understood, and he made the appropriate changes and was transferring my account directly to a department that could override the bad address flag and ship the order. I'd have to wait 72 hours before I could check and see if it worked.
If you've started to see the pattern here, when you call customer service, you don't actually speak to the department that handles the address validation, and there is no way to know if the changes are going to be enough until 72 hours have passed. Another department handles that, and you cannot speak with them directly because customer service does not know the extension for that department. (I suspect that this step is outsourced to a different company.)
(Although I didn't know this then, by this time, the original item was no longer in stock. Fortunately, it is still available in another color...)
What do you know, 72 hours later the account is still on hold. We actually receive the first communication notice from ABC - an email message stating that due to a bad address, our order has been cancelled and will be deleted soon. What?! Next call, I spoke with Andrea. First, as I went through the history from the beginning once more, Andrea kept getting confused and thinking I wanted to change the address. "No, the address is correct and has always been correct." Once we got past that concept, Andrea said that all she could do was forward it to the "List Service" department for their approval. She changed the business name from my business to my sister's name. (Don't ask me why.) I offered to pre-pay for the item if that would speed things up, but they wouldn't allow me to do that. They had their protocols and would not deviate from them.
Another 72 or so hours later... Finally, when I logged in there is no warning about a bad address. Yeah! I foolishly assumed that this meant my order would finally be shipped. A few days later, I logged in to check and see that the order was still listed as cancelled. It's the weekend, so now I must wait until Monday to be able to speak to anyone.
Since I really can't get this item anywhere else, I've been extraordinarily patient, but this will be my last attempt before giving up utterly and completely. As such, I immediately ask to speak with a supervisor when the rep comes on the phone. She takes my account number and the nature of the problem and puts me on hold. After a wait, the same woman comes back on the phone to address my issue. (NOT a supervisor.) We go through it all again, and she says that this time the problem is that they didn't un-cancel the order when I called last time, so when they finally authorized the address they didn't have an active order to process. She tries to un-cancel the order now and discovers that the item is sold out. The version in black had been available last week when my address was finally authorized, but has sold out in the last few days. I'm screwed.
I asked if they were planning on restocking the item - "No." I asked if they could tell me the supplier's information so that I could find out for myself if it was sold anywhere else - "Against our policy to disclose such information." I asked, by the way, ARE you a supervisor? "No." Then I STILL would like to talk to your supervisor.
The supervisor was very polite and sympathetic. I explained the problems I had experienced and how they could change their business processes to ease the resolution of similar problems in the future. She was nice, but they did not plan to make any changes in their customer service process. She would have happily shipped the product if they had it in stock, but otherwise there was nothing she could do.
Summary: poor customer service cycles; poor internal communication between various departments; non-existent communication by ABC when there is a problem - we didn't find out the account was on hold for over six weeks; then what should have been handled in one session took six phone calls spaced out a minimum of 72 hours apart. No single person could resolve anything over the phone but merely make a tweak and forward it to another department for approval/rejection days later.
Sorry folks, regrettably my frustrating experience did not make it any easier for the next guy. Unless of course, having read this review you decide to order from another company.
Best of luck.
-JD