In this season’s issue of MSQRD Magazine, we take you behind the scenes of online shopping with the article ‘Million Dollar Clicks’ and an exclusive interview with the lovely Anne Sophie Mignaux, co-founder of Caratime. Now, we all shop online and feel especially pleased and satisfied when that package arrives directly on our doorstep. But how are we left feeling when it goes wrong? Due to the lack of face-to-face customer service, it turns out, as I recently experienced first hand, that we feel worse than when having an in-store kerfuffle. Having put that extra faith in purchasing a product online, if it isn’t delivered as expected, we feel anger, frustration, and yes, even betrayal.

I had the displeasure of feeling all this and more this past week (you can include rage to the list). Upon realizing that I only had four weeks left to go in my pregnancy (turns out I had the weeks counted wrong), I realized with a sense of urgency that the time had definitely come to buy the baby a crib. A crib is an investment piece and after spending hours online, my husband and I settled on the ‘Zèbre’ crib by the Spanish company Ninetonine. We added a French bamboo mattress to the order and made the purchase via Kidslovedesign.com. Even though the crib was for sale on several sites, we figured – we love design too (the domain name spoke to us), and after having found the website easy to manipulate, and opening an account, we confirmed the order the 11th of May, and the delivery time was confirmed for the 15th of May.

I proceeded to take the 15th off work to receive the package and also organised for a friend to come by for an evening of Diet Coke, pizza, and crib building as I wanted to have everything organised prior to my husband’s return from a business trip to Dubai.

Then, everything went wrong.

The night of the 14th, at 6pm, I received an email from the delivery man informing that he would no longer be delivering the following day, his reason being that, with the numerous vacation days in the month of May, it is difficult for him to manage the deliveries. An there went my blood pressure. Through the roof.

Naturally, I immediately responded that this was entirely unacceptable. His response?  ”I prefer to tell you now (again, remember at 6pm) rather than have you wait all day tomorrow for nothing.” Why, how thoughtful of you Sir. I am so, so grateful for your consideration.

Certainly dear reader, you are probably wondering what store in the UAE would offer such horrible service – and to an expecting mother on top of that – the answer is, no store in the UAE -bienvenue à Paris.

My next recourse was naturally to contact kidslovedesign.com themselves and inform them of their disastrous logistics. Their response? At least you were warned – oh, and we will do what we can to make sure this happens to no one else, oh – and we are a small company.

I politely responded that Kidslovedesign.com would surely come up with a solution to appease my situation considering that:

-I had lost a day of work

-I had to cancel my long weekend plans and stay in Paris to receive the material on the Friday as it would be impossible to take another day off work

The response to my request for some customer satisfaction – “What more do you want???” Yes, all three question marks included.

So – here is your very own list of suggestions on how to appease a disgruntled shopper and avoid a negative review:

1 – Offer a 15% discount off the next purchase.

2- Offer to reimburse the 50 Euro delivery fee and throw in next purchase’s delivery for free (always offer a teaser to bring the buyer back, remember, unless you are making the product yourselves, the buyer can easily go to another website, it’s not like distance is an issue in the case of online shopping).

3- When you are dealing with high-end products, you are dealing with high-end customers. The least you can do is make an effort to start your emails off with Dear Madame and end with Sincerely yours. Never send a one-line response to a customer ending with three question marks.

Dear Kidslovedesign.com – we are still hoping for a happy ending.