Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Christmas fiasco . . .

I rarely order things online. I like to purchase something I can hold in my hands. This year I have been venturing out. I decided to take advantage of the Canvas People Save $55 deal and order a canvas for my mom and stepdad of the kids. While I was on the site making my purchase I also decided to buy one for myself.

Because I am impatient, I checked the tracking info and waited on my package. They were both promised by Christmas and I was pleased to see that they were already headed to my town with 10 days left before the big holiday. Mine was received on the 16th of December. The tracking info on my mom's package was identical but her's did not come. I figured it would be delivered the next day. It was not. I forgot about it over the busy weekend. By Monday, I saw that my package had made a whirlwind trip around the US, through Illinois, Ohio and even Pennsylvania!

The problem I had was that the package was shipped FedEx Smartpost. That means all the shipping tracking is done by FedEx, but FedEx puts the package in the hands of the US Post Office and then they simply track it. I called FedEx, they would not help me and sent me to USPS. The USPS had no record of the package and sent me back to FedEx, who sent me to USPS. 1-800-ASK-USPS sent me to the local post office and the local post office sent me back to 1-800-ASK-USPS. You get the picture. After about an hour of this malarky, I finally tried to call Canvas People.

Here's where I got frustrated. You CANNOT talk to anyone ot the Canvas People. You can simply leave an email. I left 4 over 3 days. Each time they promised to respond within 48 hours. I still have yet to receive a response from them.

I finally spoke to someone at one of our local post offices and she tracked down the package in Michigan and it was delivered to my mom on Thursday the 23rd. All the shipping info was correct. It was simply a mistake in routing. I know this was not the Canvas People's fault, but the fact that their customer service leaves a bit to be desired leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I hate inexcessible companies!

Today I received an email asking how I liked my canvas. I still have not heard from the Customer Service Department.

The canvas was beautiful, the customer service . . . Boo!

2 comments:

Miz Kizzle said...

Dang Canvas People! Not that I ever intended to buy me some canvas, but if I did it would not be from them

Phil Marx said...

One of my personality disorders (indicating I have numerous disorders, not numerous personalities) is that I often spend way too much time vexing over things that don't matter and letting it get under my skin.

For example, in the case you cited here, after the gift was finally received that should have been the end of it. Just learn a lesson and don't deal with them again.

But I would have done all you did (and probably more) - including writing a blog post to detail it and sending them multiple e-mails.

I will say that the last e-mail you got from them would have been responded to by me with a long reply of about a thousand question marks. It wouldn't solve anything, and it would probably just further the development of my disorder, but it sure would make me feel better!