Masteraxeman said:
Once we reached the delivery of damaged body 14 weeks from order date I would think Warmoth would now consider me a priority customer. When i talked to Customer service it sounded like I was. I would think at that point it would be appropriate to put that body to the head of the line in every stage of production to deliver it back to the customer ASAP but it seams to me they just put it in the back of the line just like a new order so you now have another 8-10 weeks or more in my case to wait again. That makes no sense to me as someone who has dealt with customers my entire life. Enlighten me please.
Do you really want enlightenment or was that a rhetorical question? Because you're also implying that none of us have dealt with customers our entire lives either.
You've made broad assumptions on one company's entire operations in both this and this post:
I purchase from many different manufacturers that send the customers updates as their order moves through the stages of manufacturing this allows the customer to know exactly where they are rather than the 8 to 10 week which then becomes an expectation. This is simply done by attaching a bar code to the item or paper work that is scanned as it enters a process and update is sent automatically to the customer.
Correlation does not equal causation. You have your personal experience on how production runs operate. However, that still doesn't mean that your anecdotal experience does or can apply to all. Whether it's best-practice or not, companies are going to operate how they operate, even if it's not in the academically best manner (why there are degree programs and majors dedicated to studying supply chain, operations, process, and organizational management) or in line with how you think it should work.
As I said above, I get that you're upset. I think you're letting that frustration and anger cloud your judgment and objectivity, however.
If your re-order gets moved to the front of the line, how many other customers get their orders delayed? And by how long? Suppose there's another Masteraxeman who's waiting on a custom order and has preconceived notions on how production
should work. Does that MXM get priority over you or do you? How does that decision get made? I'm sure there's a flowchart that describes that decision-making process, but does the angry customer really give a damn about someone else's priority over theirs?
Suppose there's a collection of damaged-in-shipping orders that were called in at the same time that yours was. Do they ALL get priority head-of-line treatment? And if so, who's
really at the head of the line? Resources -- people, room to work, time, supplies, tools -- are finite. Each bump-up in turn bumps
down another project.
Or as a production facility, do you try to slide in this re-make in an appropriate place in the line-up so that it can get done
but minimize impact on every other order you're working on at that moment? Because again, moving up every complaint to the head of the line no matter what means that eventually,
every dissatisfied product will be at the head of the line, no matter how major or minor. Then there's no priority anymore when everything is a top priority, and no more making new orders because you're constantly redoing previous orders.
It's like how I constantly get high-importance e-mails from certain people in my organization; at that point, nothing is really high-importance.
I hope you understand that I'm trying to present an alternative view point to this scenario from a more emotionally detached angle. It does suck that as a first-time customer, this was your bad-luck experience. I'm sure I'd be just as disappointed and frustrated if something I'd been excited to receive for months turned out to be less than spectacular (in fact, I have been -- not specifically with WM since I've only had two orders so far, but with plenty of other things in the past).
Especially if it's my first experience with a company that so many others have experienced success with.
If you haven't already made up your mind to walk away, it could be worth trying again later and just chalking this experience up to a confluence of pure bad luck, not intentional malfeasance or incompetence on the part of WM.
