How annoyed would you be if a distributor took your cash and lost your package (ordered in October), then placed your second order accidentally on hold (since December), and expected you to ship the goods yourself and kept on adding costs, knowing full well that you'd lost over 300 in business from lost sales.

I basically got bull from them over the past few days, instead of apologies I've had accusations, so I wondered: how much crap would you take from a company that ONLY sold items you really wanted to sell?

I've told them to take a hike tonight. I'll miss their stock, but I'm not putting up with that tosh.

I'd probably take far less than that to be honest!

Have you googled to see if anybody else has had such fantastic service from them?

They're quite new. In the USA. They're a rapidly growing company, but I hate the fact that for all my comments, they just turned it around and blamed me.

Surely, I'm not at fault...

Bizarre

/grumbles

... and how many other people have they treated this way?

They don't owe you money now do they?

Yep. They do...

We'll see what happens. Basically, they 'agreed' to continue working with me as long as - basically what followed was a huge list of conditions - I felt like I was back at school!

After losing my first package they would never have got a second order from me.

After losing my first package they would never have got a second order from me.

I agree, I'd have been looking for a new supplier last November. Sounds like you've done the right thing by telling them to take a hike.

I'll miss their stock, but I'm not putting up with that tosh.

No you won't because you cannot get it anyway.

one tip with dealing with American companies:

We may speak the same language, but we are culturally very very different.

A small example; I used to work for a US technology company which used to make regular announcements about new products and services, they'd create leaflets, place adverts but when you pushed them for a release date for the products manufacture, they'd tell you 'soon'.

In the US, there is that culture of trying stay one step ahead of your competitor (nature of free enterprise I guess) by contstantly saying 'my toys are bigger than yours'. What americans cannot understand is our cynasism. If somebody tells us something, we expect them to deliver on it..if they do not we get hacked off.

In the US there is much more a 'gee...at least you tried' attitude (flip side, of course, is they are the most litigious nation on earth!!!)

I just don't understand how any company can fob off the blame when it clearly hangs on their shoulders.

To every one of my complaints, they just attacked me back (citing my emails were vague and confusing and that there were over 70 of them -- way too many for such small orders - which is boggling because 15 alone were of the 'can I have an update on my order, please?' variety).

Even the director got involved and even when I copied and pasted my sales rep's emails, he still attacked and fobbed off all the problems.

It's baffling. It's cost me loads of money and if *my* company had caused another to incur costs, I'd be furious with myself.

I'd certainly do everything in my power to put things right.

And, Steve, there's so much truth in your message. The director actually wrote (note the sudden use of the word 'mate'):

This "bizarre series of conditions" mate is how 95% of our customers do business with us. It's amazingly efficient and simple and we have a lot of happy customers and fun relationships. I, too, am sorry that we couldn't work something out. It's seldom that issues so thoroughly trip up two groups of people with such closely similar interests.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. Perhaps in time we can try this again. Until then I wish you excitement and prosperity in all things.