Poor Customer Service - AlgaeBarn

[CoralDanimal]

I tried to do this the right way, but your customer service team hasn't responded since April 24th.

I ordered a captive bread mandarin (order #88812) which arrived dead on arrival. I'm not sure if it was the packaging, but the water was definitely warm to the touch. I also paid extra for the overnight, early morning delivery shipping. I immediately reached out to your customer service with a picture of the poor dead fish. Your customer service team responded quickly offering pod points, but I can't use pod points to order another mandarin so I responded saying I'd like a refund.

Initial contact was on April 24th. I emailed again on April 27th - no response. I emailed again on April 29th - no response. I emailed again on May 3rd - still nothing. Lastly I emailed on May 7th - nothing.

I work in e-commerce so I can safe from experience this is horrible customer service. If you don't remedy this situation, I'll be reaching out to the BBB and also to AmEx to issue a chargeback on this purchase.

 

[AlgaeBarn]

I tried to do this the right way, but your customer service team hasn't responded since April 24th.

I ordered a captive bread mandarin (order #88812) which arrived dead on arrival. I'm not sure if it was the packaging, but the water was definitely warm to the touch. I also paid extra for the overnight, early morning delivery shipping. I immediately reached out to your customer service with a picture of the poor dead fish. Your customer service team responded quickly offering pod points, but I can't use pod points to order another mandarin so I responded saying I'd like a refund.

Initial contact was on April 24th. I emailed again on April 27th - no response. I emailed again on April 29th - no response. I emailed again on May 3rd - still nothing. Lastly I emailed on May 7th - nothing.

I work in e-commerce so I can safe from experience this is horrible customer service. If you don't remedy this situation, I'll be reaching out to the BBB and also to AmEx to issue a chargeback on this purchase.

Hi,

That does sound like a frustrating customer service, but ghosting you in our ticketing system is not our M.O. We hired more CS reps recently and we usually have someone responding to emails/taking calls 7 days a week (Official hours are M-F 9-5 MST).

Our last contact from you in our ticketing system was from April 24th. We offered podpoints as a potential resolution, and asked for you to follow up. That was the last we heard from you. I did a quick search in our call logs and don't see you in there either. Can you please let me know what email address you are sending it to?

We have been in talks to change our official policy on DOA Fish. Currently, we offer points but if a customer prefers a reship, then we go that route. This doesn't work for some of the cheaper fish (~$20), so we are working to make it for both parties.

 

[AlgaeBarn]

Yup, Algaebarn not the same company it was a few years ago.

We would love to hear on what we could be do better. We have a ton of process improvements projects in the pipeline, and we are all about continuous improvement. Overall, I feel that product quality, customer experiences, and customer satisfaction is through the roof compared to a few years ago.

 

[AlgaeBarn]

Top notch customer support @AlgaeBarn!

I too had heard some rumblings about quality, but from the post it seems like a company that cares and is always trying to improve. Guess I'll have to place an order at some point and see for myself

@demeyer2 - whenever things get squared away with the DOA mandarin, I'd love to hear about the resolution.

Are we perfect? Far from it, we have our issues, but we are always working towards improvement.

Live goods are extremely challenging, and we aren't in control of the process once we hand off the package to the carrier. Furthermore, due to the nature of our products, we can get more edge case variability, where one variable is just slightly off, and the product doesn't make it in the condition it should have. We rely on our customers to reach out to us if something is off, so that we can make it right. If we don't hear anything, we assume everything went well.

We realize this isn't the best strategy, and we are working on getting more proactive feedback from our customers. We plan on creating more post purchase satisfaction surveys (assuming our customers are willing to gift us this time). We made the switch to an ERP & CRM system this year, and we have been turning more and more of the systems online, but it takes time to get people in place and get the systems operational.

 

[AlgaeBarn]

I tried to do this the right way, but your customer service team hasn't responded since April 24th.

I ordered a captive bread mandarin (order #88812) which arrived dead on arrival. I'm not sure if it was the packaging, but the water was definitely warm to the touch. I also paid extra for the overnight, early morning delivery shipping. I immediately reached out to your customer service with a picture of the poor dead fish. Your customer service team responded quickly offering pod points, but I can't use pod points to order another mandarin so I responded saying I'd like a refund.

Initial contact was on April 24th. I emailed again on April 27th - no response. I emailed again on April 29th - no response. I emailed again on May 3rd - still nothing. Lastly I emailed on May 7th - nothing.

I work in e-commerce so I can safe from experience this is horrible customer service. If you don't remedy this situation, I'll be reaching out to the BBB and also to AmEx to issue a chargeback on this purchase.

Now I feel rather silly. My CS team did just report they had have had some responses not populate in our CRM/ticketing software (we switched back in March). They have informed me they are already intouch with our CRM/ticketing provider, and they are working on getting it resolved. I do sincerely apologize if the issue is on our end, its one of the rough parts of migrating systems, it takes some times to work out the kinks. If this is the case, DM me on here and we will get it fixed. We may request some help (in exchange for some goods) determining the root cause of this ticketing issue, so this never happens with anyone else.

 

[CoralDanimal]

Hi,

That does sound like a frustrating customer service, but ghosting you in our ticketing system is not our M.O. We hired more CS reps recently and we usually have someone responding to emails/taking calls 7 days a week (Official hours are M-F 9-5 MST).

Our last contact from you in our ticketing system was from April 24th. We offered podpoints as a potential resolution, and asked for you to follow up. That was the last we heard from you. I did a quick search in our call logs and don't see you in there either. Can you please let me know what email address you are sending it to?

We have been in talks to change our official policy on DOA Fish. Currently, we offer points but if a customer prefers a reship, then we go that route. This doesn't work for some of the cheaper fish (~$20), so we are working to make it for both parties.

@AlgaeBarn If that's the last you heard from me, you do have a bug with your customer service ticketing system or the [email protected] email:

You deserve the benefit of the doubt and it looks like you had an issue on your end, but hopefully you understand why I had to resort to this thread as all the emails above went directly to [email protected] with no response.

As for the DOA policy, it's one thing if you won't refund if the fish survives shipping but dies shortly after, but to have the order arrive with the fish dead due to bad packing, being offered points that can't be used to buy the same fish is an extremely disappointing customer experience. Especially as an existing customer who has spent so much money with your company.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Hi everyone, we have moved this thread to the vendor feedback forum and removed outside comments by anyone not directly involved in this transaction (per our feedback forum rules). This provides the best opportunity for the buyer and seller to communicate with one another. The only exception to this is if someone else has a link to their own feedback thread they'd like to include here (if so, please post the link but no comments).

All members are welcome to start their own separate feedback thread. In fact, if you have a comment(s) that were removed from this thread that you would like me to move into a new feedback thread for you, just let me know and I'll be glad to help with that.

 

[AlgaeBarn]

@AlgaeBarn If that's the last you heard from me, you do have a bug with your customer service ticketing system or the [email protected] email:

You deserve the benefit of the doubt and it looks like you had an issue on your end, but hopefully you understand why I had to resort to this thread as all the emails above went directly to [email protected] with no response.

As for the DOA policy, it's one thing if you won't refund if the fish survives shipping but dies shortly after, but to have the order arrive with the fish dead due to bad packing, being offered points that can't be used to buy the same fish is an extremely disappointing customer experience. Especially as an existing customer who has spent so much money with your company.

@demeyer2, we found the root of the issue with regards to the CRM. When we were setting it up, we asked about this specific scenario and they assured us it wouldnt be an issue...well it was an issue. We got a rough patch in place, and we are working towards a permanent solution. We don't ghost customers, terrible experience for both parties .

Completely agree with regards to the DOA policy comments, its a poor customer experience (especially when its not the customers fault), and we are revamping that policy.

 

[CoralDanimal]

Hey everyone. Just to follow-up here. @AlgaeBarn didn't ghost me lol they just had a bug with their CRM tool. I thought I was getting through to them, but because their reply/forwarding system wasn't routing to their CRM (this was the bug) I was basically shouting into the interweb abyss. Once I was able to get a hold of their team, they quickly remedied the issue and we worked together to make sure the CRM bug is no longer affecting replies

 

[AlgaeBarn]

Hey everyone. Just to follow-up here. @AlgaeBarn didn't ghost me lol they just had a bug with their CRM tool. I thought I was getting through to them, but because their reply/forwarding system wasn't routing to their CRM (this was the bug) I was basically shouting into the interweb abyss. Once I was able to get a hold of their team, they quickly remedied the issue and we worked together to make sure the CRM bug is no longer affecting replies

I know this is old, but happy this worked out! Shaun K.