Truthful Tuesday

 

Welp, I made a whoopsie. It was bound to happen eventually. My stepmom and I share a Smartpak account, so I do need to pay attention to addresses when placing orders. And I DIDN'T. In my defense, my farm has always been the default, but for some reason it isn't anymore. 

My horses are mostly on meds not supplements (Al excluded...he's on all kinds of stuff) so I have to do a fair amount of scooping powders into grain, despite them all also having Smartpaks for their vitamin E, electrolytes, and their joint supplement. (Listen, I said mostly meds, not entirely!) Since I'm spending a fair amount of time scooping things not available in Smartpaks, I decided to see if it would save money to just go back to ordering individual supplements and stopping the Smartpaks. Looks like I'll be saving about $80 per month doing that, so it was a no brainer. So I did all the math to see how often I'd need the supplements auto shipped (there is a savings for that) and placed my order. It didn't ship for a few days so I went to check on it, and realized I had the wrong address on that order. It was going to go to my stepmom's Florida barn. Ugh. Of course, I noticed this at night and Smartpak no longer has their late night customer service. (The service there is definitely not what it used to be!) So I had to wait until morning to try and get it fixed. 

Now, I checked on the order first thing, and it still wasn't showing as shipped. I waited like a million years to get connected to a human, and then she told me it was already shipped and asked if I could just get someone from the barn to ship it to me. Which... how is that a solution? The cost for someone without a shipping account to send this box which was probably quite large and heavy, from Florida back to CT would be ridiculous. Not to mention, it would be like two weeks before I ever saw it by the time it delivers there, then reships up here. Plus, it's not that barn's problem. The customer service rep didn't want to offer me any other solutions, but thank goodness, I used to work in shipping, so I had a few suggestions. First, they could have it rerouted back to my correct address. So she said she'd call  me back about that. So awhile later she calls me back and says it will be almost $100 to reroute it. I'm very confused by this because the tracking shows the package sitting in Rhode Island. Very close to my address and not at all close to Florida. So I ask, well what's the charge if you just have it returned to you, refund me, and I'll re-place the order. (Honestly, she should have considered all of these options before calling me back the first time, but I'm more than happy to do her job for her since it was in fact my error.) That was only $21. So I said, okay let's do that. Now I assume she'd take the money out of my refund, but no, instead she does a separate order for that charge. Which okay, whatever. But meanwhile, I'm still waiting for this stuff to get back and refunded. What a mess! 

Listen, I know I screwed up. But I also know from working in a similar field that the customer service side of this was terrible. What if I didn't have experience in this area? Maybe my standards are too high based on previous interactions with Smartpak Customer Service. They've always been so great. I'm not mad about being charged for the mistake or anything like that, it was my error and I own it. But the lack of willingness to actually solve the problem... that's frustrating. I'm not sure if the agent was lazy, or just not trained? I dunno. But man. It was like pulling teeth, and it's not fully resolved yet. Has me contemplating switching my business to Farmvet. 

So that's today's confession. I made a booboo and then the universe punished me for it by making me do my own customer service. Ha! Hopefully it will get back to Smartpak tomorrow, and my refund will process quickly. Fingers crossed! Anyone else done something this silly?