Business Tools Blog

I LOVE Costco on Saturday mornings.  Saturday is when all of the wonderful sample carts are set up.  Costco provides enough free samples to fill up your tummy for the entire day. You can start in the deli section, where rare cheeses, sausages, cold cuts, ravioli and salads are offered. Then you can dart over to the produce aisle, where a fresh banana and blueberry smoothie might be available.  Next, you can check out the freezer section where chicken wings, salmon, shrimp scampi, burritos, lasagna, egg rolls and ice cream are offered.  Finally, when you are about to check out, you pass the chips and candy where any number of tasty samples can be found.

One Saturday, I was distracted from the free samples long enough to buy a toaster.  It looked very snazzy, and unfortunately didn’t work.  I sadly trudged to the customer service counter to return my snazzy toaster.  Fran (the customer service lady) looked me in the eye and quipped, “Sandi Mays … yep, we see you in here every Saturday eating our free samples.  In fact, last week we saw you go back for seconds on that shrimp scampi.  We can’t believe that you’d have the nerve to come in here, after taking all those samples and try to return the toaster.  Take your toaster and take your business elsewhere, we never want to see you again.”

OK - the above is a TOTAL FABRICATION.  I took back the toaster and Fran quickly processed my full refund.  No hassle, no mention of how often I went back to the shrimp scampi stand.  Costco provides remarkable service.

So why did I make up the story?  Because a similar experience happened with a vendor at Zayo.  The vendor had a very specific agreement with us.  We found out that they were not providing the service that was agreed to in the contract.  So I called to request a credit.  I was sure they would apologize and offer a huge credit to compensate for their lack of service.

Boy, was I wrong!  The vendor growled at me.  (like my dog growls at the FedEx guy)  He said,

You have a lot of nerve asking for a credit.  We have been providing other free services, some that you probably aren’t even aware of.  In fact, we are probably upside down cost wise on our agreement.  If you really feel like you need a credit, you should probably take your business elsewhere.   And we want payment in full on all outstanding invoices or we will undo any work that we have done for you.

I was speechless.

• The vendor believed that the free samples could be given in lieu of the service that they agreed to provide
• In response to a request for a credit, the vendor threatened me with late fees and harming our business
• And the vendor demanded payment in full for services that hadn’t been rendered

I asked for an apology.  That set off another tirade.  Then an email, apologizing for the tirade, but not for the content of the tirade.  Their story stayed the same.

Good news for us.  The story ended last week.  Don’t worry  … we got the credit, we moved our business, and we are getting the service we wanted from a new vendor at 25% of what we had been paying the grumpy vendor.  I will never, ever do business with this company again.  And, I would never recommend them to anyone.

So, the morale of the story is:

Don’t give free samples away, unless they are really free.