Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 00:45:46 -0500
Reply-To: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: mirror package
In-Reply-To: <d6.a61689.2787facd@aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
At 11:36 PM 1/5/2001, Michael Jones wrote:
>experience that proper packing materials are very expensive. If they are a
>Mom & pop shop they may be trying their best to package their shipments well
>while not laying out hugh amounts of money for packaging. Their are minimum
>order requirements for the proper packaging material that could me more then
>their yearly revenue. Bubble wrap and peanuts are expensive.
I agree with your point. However these folks used (in one instance) a
total of about six sheets of newspaper in a 2x2x4 box that included among
many other things an exhaust system and -- guess what -- a side mirror (in
its original box. In fact nothing was damaged in that shipment, but I
admit to being a bit surprised. No, I lie -- a $100 front heater blower
(in its original Bosch box) was broken.
Side note, I've been getting machine tool parts and such lately packed with
inflated plastic bags -- makes great packing to fill up a volume and put a
little pressure on things so they don't shift around. I think they're just
dandy, use very little material, can be re-used, and I bet they don't even
cost a fortune.
I use Bus Depot, I'm reasonably satisfied with them, I'll continue to use
them. I wish they'd pack at least somewhat better and I've told them so
after each of my three or four orders. I along with others have found both
Bus Depot and Ken Wilford to be very slow answering emails; and I think
that both of them are making a big mistake there, especially since Ken is
also hard to reach on the phone. I urge both of them to pay serious
attention to that situation because I wish both of them the best and most
successful business possible. I am aware of some personal factors that
enter into this, but the fact is that business is business, and not
responding to customers is a real good way to make said customers go
somewhere else.
>Cut them some slack, they are obviously not making millions on servicing
>vanagon owners.
Nope. But they're running a business, which we and they both want to
succeed. Businesses succeed when they have lots of happy customers...same
thing for the theory that their customer service attitude should go to hell
whenever Ron isn't in the building. It should not, and he's doing himself
no favor by not tackling this aggressively, IMHO.
>The company I work for went to UPS and the USPS and asked them for their
>recommendations on how to ship our product. We followed their rules and still
>have product delivered broken.
Another note in passing, corrugated cardboard was one of the great
inventions of (19th?) century -- before that, the routine allowance for
breakage in shipping was about 25%.
>One more comment.
>So one item was delivered broken, How many orders were fine. The Internet is
>very a powerful media. At one company I worked for we sold 700 pieces of one
>item. One person didn't get their order. I replaced their order and credited
>their credit card so that they got the item for free. They posted slanderous
I don't see any slander here. Somebody is sitting there with a busted
mirror and a bent ear, and she shouldn't be. We're acting as a focus group
here, not even getting paid the fifty bucks, letting our beloved Ron know
the sorts of things that would make us even happier to be buying stuff from
him than we already are. Things like instruction sheets for seal kits, and
not shipping tail-light fixtures loose in the same box with a bunch of
exhaust pipes.
cheers,
david
David Beierl - Providence, RI
http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage"
'85 GL "Poor Relation"
