$200,000 Lost in Three Minutes Flat.
Here’s something to give you pause.
I contacted a teddy bear company to inquire and establish an account for buying wholesale or having them dropship.
This is for the domain HopeBear.com that I had acquired. I’ve seen various types of fund raising “hope” bears sell for roughly $69.
Here’s the conversation with an online customer service rep of this “company” of which I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusion in this economic climate.
–Thank you for contacting The XXXXXXX Teddy Bear Company! Please wait while we find a Bear Counselor to review your question and assist you…
–You have been connected to Shiloh .
Shiloh : Hello, John! Please wait one moment while I review your question. (I had asked about wholesale and dropship for hopebear.com which was used to start chat but did not post)
Shiloh : Unfortunately we do not.
John: thanks
Shiloh : You’re welcome, John. Is there anything else I can help you with today?
John: Any suppliers That you could recommend to handle 10,000 plus orders
Shiloh : I apologize, but I do not know the names of any suppliers as we make and sell all of our own Teddy Bears right here.
John: k , oh well, I’m a little taken back that there is no effort to secure a large account from me 
John: Is this the policy for the company to turn down massive orders?
John: Should I send an email to the owner of xxxxxxx?
Shiloh : If you’d like, you can e-mail us at xxxxxxxxxxxxxx and it will be forwarded to the appropriate party. They may be better able to assist you.
John: thanks…
There you have it.
If I bought 10,000 plus bears at a wholesale price of 20 bucks a pop, thats 200 grand.
There was no interest from the customer service rep to even find any kind of solution to benefit her “company”.
It really doesn’t take much for an employee to kill a company now, does it?
I’m gonna go fix me ice tea now while shaking my head.
Comments are closed.
That is crazy.
If they were not able to make that amount by hand they could have contracted a company in Asia to make them and not lost your business.
Sometimes I really think American companies are not what they were 30 years ago. Too many dumb people walking around now. Truthfully, the Great Generation was the generation with the most brains and they are now all dying off.
John– I agree.
John, in all fairness, a customer service rep making $8 an hour, 1) -is probably only doing what they’ve been trained to do, and 2) -probably wouldn’t have the knowledge of why, or foresight to, take your query to the next level, be it to a manager, or even recognizing the business opportunity you were presenting. At $8 an hour, most C/S reps are probably watching their scripts and the clock!.
John– I was aware of that. Companies get what they pay for
In all fairness, a domain name does not equal a company. Maybe the customer service rep. typed in the name and saw it go to Unplain.com.
You might want to look legit before you demand respect or even attention.
John– The conversation started after 2 1/2 min. of waiting so it was quick meaning no time for the rep to research. LOL I forwarded hopebear.com to unplain.com after that convo
not all people are as educated as you about domains.
If you have a gem of a domain dont sit back after that lady didnt know what the hell she was doing. Book a ticket, fly down there with your stats and get with their vp of marketing. You are not trying to sell buy-super-cool-hope-bear.com you are selling hopebear.com. Dont make the mistake that alot of domainers make and hope and pray they get multimillion dollar offers.. no buddy aint never goona happen. thats how domains like datarecovery.com that would only get sold for 50k go for 1.5 million dollars.
You could walk away with crazy money from this deal , but to really really make that money – you
have to do some ground work and dont leave any stone unturned.
Question – have you sent press releases with your phone number out there. Have you gone to tradeshows and bought a booth.. seems like overkill but thats what it takes.
Cheers. Hope you print this comment lol.
John– Read again
I wasn’t selling the name, I was looking to buy teddy bears to resell on hopebear.com
Did you expect the customer service rep to be able to help you with such a large request, especially when you have nothing but a domain that is worth less than $200?
We all want to be big wigs, but you have to look the part first.
I personally doubt that they lost a single dime by working with you in such a manner. They probably saved money by not having to pay the employee for any more of their time.
I don’t want to sound like a jerk here, but you really have given not legitimate reason why they lost anything.
I can go to walmart, get mad at a cashier, and claim that I was planning on buying 10,000 bags of cookies, but that does not mean that Walmart got screwed.
John– I think you missed the point, the point of the above article was to show that sometimes customer service doesn’t even get started to even probe whats legit or not. I’ve gotten large $5,000+ orders from people who don’t present themselves as anything. I give them the quote, they sent the money , I processed the order, end of story. These customers didn’t have to prove anything to me except show me the money. If you don’t even do the basics of customer service than you don’t get real far throwing your buyers away… Remember the customers have the money, the choices and the power unless of course they’re dealing with Apple or Microsoft
I’m guessing that you called xxxxxxxx teddy bear company (by your use of the term “xxxxxxx”. )
While I get your frustration, I’d also guess that if you wanted to buy $200,000 worth of teddy bears you wouldn’t give up when someone who is in charge of mindless order taking doesn’t knock your socks off with their biz dev skills.
If it is XXX you are trying to contact – they have a B2B contact listed on their site:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Also – if I had a nickel for every outside person who called me at work and told me how much stuff they could sell for me, I’d be a rich man. I don’t think any of them have ever made more than 50 sales….
John– Sorry for the edit, Anyway I never gave up lol BUT the article should remind us to be careful of who we put in charge of customer service… As far as your comment: Also – if I had a nickel for every outside person who called me at work and told me how much stuff they could sell for me, I’d be a rich man. I don’t think any of them have ever made more than 50 sales…. —Never assume anything I’ve seen braggards sell out the nose and I’ve seen braggards fall on their face. Treat them all the same. If you’re worn out, and assume they haven’t made more than 50 sales , then you might want to do something else
I find this problem time and time again here in the US. Often times I am standing there with cash in hand, with the intention of giving it to another company (buying something), and for whatever reason they can’t seem to relieve me of my cash. A recent one that happened was that I was in an AT&T store wanting to buy a new cell phone for $200, but there was a problem with the computer so they couldn’t take my money, no other reason. This seems to happen to me alot, and its not always “a problem with the computer system”. Go to any 3rd world country and they will find a way to make it work.
I think the rep, you and I all know that you had no intention of buying 10,000 bears. Hence the lack of “excitement”. Dangling a fake carrot, still makes it a fake carrot.
By the way, I have 5,000 premium domain names for pennies on the dollar. Contact me to purchase today!
… What? You aren’t going to call me? Why not? I have 5,000 premium domain names for pennies on the dollar? I am taken back why everyone isn’t calling me right away! …
The point is, just because you say you have an order for 10k bears still means nothing to a phone rep.. you could say 50 or 5k – wouldn’t matter. The response would be the same!
Bro, always find out the name of the webmaster or someone in marketing, then CALL THEM ON THE PHONE to do biz.
Never call the CS numbers, cuz they are usually hired out, and located in India or Canada. They do NOT have any interest or info to help the company you can help with your domain name. You need to dig deep into the corporate mudpie to find the right froggies.
My company does this for domainers all the time.
cheers,
Stephen Douglas
http://www.Successclick.com
Successful Domain Management™
http://www.DomainRelevance.com
“Own Your Competition™”
Bottom line is: $7/hr customer service rep = Don’t care about your “big” order.