pick up winders obviously too busy....

fastonebaz

The only thing I got from this thread was just how many of you run your own business.  Very cool.  Why haven't I got my own business too, I ask myself? 

impmann

1st world problems and entitlement.

Got no answer on an email, pick up the phone. Not difficult, really...

Phil_aka_Pip

Shark_Eyes said:

If it was so urgent it couldn't wait 3 days then maybe you should have picked up the phone.
If they answered the email immediately but then had a long dispatch time you'd probably complain about that instead.
The joy of working with small builders is that you speak to the person building your product, unfortunately that means they're often concentrating on building rather than customer service, I know which I prefer.

IMO expecting instant or near instant replies from an outfit with 1,2 or 3 people in it is a bit much. The guys at Radford Revival were fairly prompt about answering my initial enquiries but it then took them several months to build my amplifier. This is not a criticism just a statement of fact. They did warn me that I was in a queue and that they hand-build them to order. The customer service was fine, they did update me on progress, and as @Shark_Eyes said, you have the joy of speaking to small builders who take a pride in their work and are enthusiastic about it. But a decent job takes as long as a decent job takes and nobody wants a rush job. When it comes to answering emailed enquiries you could argue that an automated "Thanks for your enquiry, we think it will take us n days to answer in person" message is the best thing, but if they don't have the technology to do that you just need to be patient.

Snags

fastonebaz said:

The only thing I got from this thread was just how many of you run your own business.  Very cool.  Why haven't I got my own business too, I ask myself? 

Because the kind-of freedom on one hand is more than balanced by the ballache and practical need to be your clients' bitch on the other

Wazmeister

Corvus said:

Well this all got pretty silly.

Seriously, in this day & age, 3-4 days to respond is just poor, whatever the reasons. It's not the customer's fault... it's down to the business. Too many comms channels? Reduce them or find a better way to manage them. This is a basic part of running a business, like it or not. Blaming customer/potential customers for slow responses is a poor frame of mind to have.

For me, this is the truth.

To the OP and Oil City, just move on then. It’s ok to be disappointed in either direction.

And to Oil City, don’t make a rash decision mate just because of the thread. It was hardly a mauling - just some keen to buy your great product quickly

Phil_aka_Pip

Snags said:

fastonebaz said:

The only thing I got from this thread was just how many of you run your own business.  Very cool.  Why haven't I got my own business too, I ask myself? 

Because the kind-of freedom on one hand is more than balanced by the ballache and practical need to be your clients' bitch on the other

Plus running your own business makes you an unpaid government tax collector, and you have to do all (or most of) the other shit that gets done for you when you work as an employee and can dedicate 100% of your working week to your craft, and you can go home at night not worrying about who's going to buy what you make or how it will be shipped because the company has other departments to do all that.

skaguitar

Wazmeister said:

Corvus said:

Well this all got pretty silly.

Seriously, in this day & age, 3-4 days to respond is just poor, whatever the reasons. It's not the customer's fault... it's down to the business. Too many comms channels? Reduce them or find a better way to manage them. This is a basic part of running a business, like it or not. Blaming customer/potential customers for slow responses is a poor frame of mind to have.

For me, this is the truth.

To the OP and Oil City, just move on then. It’s ok to be disappointed in either direction.

And to Oil City, don’t make a rash decision mate just because of the thread. It was hardly a mauling - just some keen to buy your great product quickly

I have moved on and messaged Oil City and will happily buy their product...

digitalscream

Bridgehouse said:

I think that a sense of perspective is required here. 

If the OPs enquiries were sent out on Wednesday then today is day 3. We are 2 working days in to the enquiries and a response has been sent from one company on a non-business day. That’s 48 working hours. 

Depending on the business type, that’s not unreasonable at all. 

And here’s the rub - a pickup winding business is a labour intensive highly skilled business. If a winder replied within a few hours I’d personally be a bit concerned that they weren’t concentrating on the job of crafting their products well and were distracted. I’d wonder how long it was going to take to turn up and how much attention had gone into it. 

Either way, it’s nice to see the forum hasn’t lost its ability to take a large handgun and liberally shoot itself in the foot once again by kicking another business that contributes heavily to the forum. 

Next time a business asks to join to promote their products I’ll make sure I tell them that we encourage them to take part and contribute to the forum as a whole and that they should expect to get a good kicking in the process. That should put them off sufficiently.

I can't really think of much to add here.

Here's the thing - if you need an instant response, an asynchronous contact method is probably not the one to choose. Pick up the phone instead. Otherwise, have a little patience - especially if you're dealing with small companies of one or two people. After all, once they've got your order, wouldn't you rather they were focusing on making stuff rather than answering emails?

Could things have been done better here? Sure. Ash could, for example, put a note on his site (and possibly his profile here) to the effect of, "We might take a day or two to respond to emails, we're really busy at the moment" and set expectations a little better. Equally, the OP could take the above advice about instant responses.

What could - and should - be avoided is the instant piling on that we see in this thread. Look at what's happened - we've got a small business who's long-standing member known for good customer service and making excellent pickups considering leaving the forum because a bunch of you fancied an argument. You get a few pages of self-gratification, and everybody loses.

Top work there, round of applause etc.

Thread closed.