Garden Centre & On-Line Pricing.

Having bought a plant in our local Wyvale yesterday, for £12. I was trawling through their website later and found the same plant advertised for £11.


I wasn't that bothered over a pound, but I thought they might like to know about it as it isn't very good PR to have such a disparity in prices.

So I sent them this e-mail.

Disparity in pricing Garden Centre/Web-site.
I don't want to make a song and dance about this but I've just paid £12 for one of these, Climber Sollya, in your garden centre in Altrincham and they are listed at £11 on your website. You might want to sort that out.

I've had a response from "Tommy."

Thank you for your email.

In order to investigate this for you, please can you provide us with a copy of your receipt or Garden Club number if you used one when making your purchase?

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

To be honest, I can't be assed.

It's the same with the problems I'm having with our Mele fridge.
I've got John Lewis involved and they rang me yesterday to give me an update.
My e-mailed complaint must have generated something in their system, as I got an e-mail yesterday, referencing my complaint and asking me to complete the attached survey.

I responded saying, I wasn't interested in filling in sodding forms, I just want someone to fix the problem.


i have a similar situation with e-Bay purchases. I always give positive feedback, using the same phrase, "Goods as described, received well packed, many thanks." As invariably it's correct.
For me it's "done and dusted."

But then a day or so later I'll get an e-mail asking me "how I'm enjoying my Iron sulphate? or whatever.

I just ignore them.

 

I just find it very annoying that all these companies keep wanting you to pat them on the back all the time for providing a service which is pretty much OK, not great, nothing special, just doing what is expected.

 

Know just what you mean DR. I recently changed my car breakdown service to a different company and a few days later received an email asking me to rate their service. Well how can I know how good or bad they are unless and until I break down ? That’s the issue, not how easy it is to take out a policy. Oh yes, and as I ignored their email, they sent a reminder.

 

Sometimes you get the feedback survey before you have even bought the product.

Sometimes if you call a call centre you are asked to stay on line to answer a few questions. I say I will and then hang up.

I hired a singer for my wife’s 50th birthday party. She was very good. Very entertaining. Very engaging. Kept the children entertained too. You couldn't have asked for more. She packed up a bit early for my liking and was away in a flash but that's bye the bye. About a week after the party she contacted me and asked me to post an online review .I did and I was very gracious but I didn't appreciate being coerced.

G.

 

Hi, customer feedback surveys are a big chunk of my job. It's an incredibly engaging lot of data, the ratings (1 to 5 or smileys etc) give numerical data and the meatiest part is the freetext feedback. It's a marriage made in heaven, data combined with real human being insights. OK, I'm a nerd

BUT. Surveying and feedback requests must be done right to give the customer the feeling that their feedback is genuinely valuable and is used to improve the product or service. Automated non- meaningful surveys are a reminder of the brand at best, and spam at worst.

If the responding human team has a backlog, automated surveys can come before the reply. This is annoying, and should be thought of with for example an autoresponse giving an expected time for the reply and setting the expectation that you might receive a survey before that so please just wait. Anything, but a random, faceless customer service out of a box.

And sometimes the product or service bought is so small that a survey is not justified. I bought a bag of sand and was asked (twice) to give my feedback on the service, to rate the product and afterwards they also just wanted to double check I was happy with my bag of sand and let them know if I had any issues or questions. If I get too much wine one night I just might start to bombard them with long, detailed questions of sand features and usage.

Please do fill in surveys when you can though. When they are genuinely used the insights are incredibly valuable. It's nice to know that your voice is actually heard.

And why are things cheaper online than in store? I guess one point is that you don't need to stack and tidy the shelves, you just take the item from the warehouse. Clientele is wider and there's no mopping the floors and scrubbing the loos afterwards. A great way to reduce jobs and human contact! (Sorry... I'm avid online shopper but have the inner voice nagging all the time. )

 

It's always been the case that you can get disparity between in-store and on-line.
In fact with some suppliers the on-line price can be more expensive than in-store, as you're paying for the cost of setting up and continually up-dating the website.

But in both Wyvale and in Wilko's I've never noticed it before.

The fact that Wyvale were willing to pursue my complaint rather than dismissing it with a, "different price structure" response, would indicate to me that it shouldn't happen.

I won't do surveys for anyone, they seem to drag on. I have neither the interest or time.

Even those with the " complete our survey and get your chance to win an unwanted prize!"

 

In theory at least, shopping on line should be cheaper. That’s the way it started out. Internet only companies have fewer overhead cost therefore they can charge less. All you need is storage space and an internet connection to start your own company. I’m pretty sure that’s how most of the sellers on EBay operate. It’s more complicated with a high street retailer as the consumer expects the prices to be the same in store as online. I would too.

On a similar but seperate theme. How do products made in China come with free P+P?

G.

 

Stuff made in China is often imported into the UK and held in bulk in a warehouse.
I bought a large wall mounted bathroom mirror, with a shaver socket and touch on/off control, on e-Bay at half the price of a similar one sold by John Lewis. I had a problem with it and needed to contact the supplier in China who obviously spoke very little English given the attempted helpful response. Eventually the problem was solved. The mirror had been delivered from an address in London.

 

I bought willow sticks for our pets to nibble, something like this . The seller was a Chinese company and the price was around a pound for 20, so much cheaper than any European pet supplier. P&P Free

I did feel rather silly when the small envelopes heavily stamped and stickered in Chinese arrived (in less than a week). Honestly, did I just order a handful of willow sticks to be flown across the globe to me?

The sticks were perfect, the little gritters love them, but I just can't justify to buy them again due to the ridiculous journey they have to make to reach us.

I wonder what profit the seller makes? Just the envelope, labelling and sending must have cost more than the £1 I paid for the product and delivery.

 

I believe that this customer satisfaction feedback has trickled down from the ISO standards

Years ago when I was the architect for a software system for a machine tool company so that they would pass ISO standards, the final criteria was that there be a form of customer satisfaction check box or such. I set it up that the order entry would always ask "was your last order satisfactory" if there was no return or dispute previously recorded on their last order. If they said fine, that was noted. But we never actively chased companies for input. It passed ISO standards.

And I could understand that because lots of parts were being produced for the aircraft and electrical industry but I agree that it is pure silliness to chase a consumer for their feedback on a $2 item!

 

You paid twelve quid for Sollya heterophylla! They're only £8 around here and this is the affluent south!

 

They advertise them in the gardening magazines at 2 for £9.99.