Complaint Review: The Rosary Shop

I myself placed an order I wanted to cancel, and I did leave my phone number, I never got a call back. Being swamped with orders is no excuse for not replying to an email requesting an order cancellation. Get more help or close your online shop! Why do you provide a customer service phone number when you just admitted that you intentionally do not answer the phone? Why not just ask people to email you a request to call them? You don't read or answer emails either. its annoying and stressfull when something simple has to be escaleted. I'm not letting you have my 55 dollars for something I decided I don't want and you said we can cancel it! Disgusting that you write a long winded response when someone finally complains, putting them down for complaining when we have to do that to get any service from you!

Really, I do. But the reality is that, out of several thousand orders every year, thousands of phone calls and thousands of e-mails, there are going to be some people who end up being unhappy. Sometimes this is because we made a mistake. Sometimes it is because "real life" happens. Sometimes it is because the person is unreasonable. If the problem is a result of our error, we ALWAYS do whatever we can to resolve the matter (and often in the other two cases as well). About the only time we begin to hesitate is if the person is being mean or threatening. For example, I canceled someone's order last week, not because anything was really wrong with it, but just because the person was being mean and threatening. I just don't believe in providing service to mean people, and that makes some people really REALLY angry -- angry enough to post nasty notes all over the Internet to try to get some kind of revenge. If that is bad customer service, then I am guilty as charged.

With respect to this complaint, the truth is that I can't answer every phone call. Roughly 3/4 of them are time-wasting solicitation calls in the first place, so we let most calls go to voice mail. In fact, I have lost count of the number of times that someone will call about six times in a row over an hour (while we are busy with other work), leave multiple messages, then complain that they've been calling us for days and left dozens of messages (and what horrible customer service we have)! Some people believe that the world does (or should) revolve around them; if so, they might be disappointed by the response they'll get from me. In any event, I then spend a few hours -- yes, that is HOURS -- every week responding to each and every one of those messages. Unfortunately, people don't always leave a phone number, sometimes the number they leave is wrong, or sometimes they aren't home when we call and don't have a message system of their own. I also attempt to answer all e-mails, but am not always successful. I sometimes don't answer an e-mail if the answer is obvious, or if I've already answered the question. For example, if someone writes in and asks, "do you sell rosaries," or "do you carry hamsters," they don't get a personal e-mail back.

I do think it is odd, though, that someone is posting a "rip off report" when they weren't actually "ripped off." They "tried to order a rosary?" Weird. Anyone can order a rosary, 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week, right over the web site. According to them, they didn't place an order; they just didn't get a call back. If their complaint is even true -- and, unfortunately, some people do file false complaints -- they seem to believe that if someone doesn't call them back, that such a person is an evil person who is using the words "rosary" and "catholic" to take money from others. Wow. You've got to wonder if maybe such a person has some other issues going on to go to the effort to say they were "ripped off" by a company, libel them, etc., when they weren't actually harmed in any way. 

With respect to the assertion that we use words like rosary and catholic to make money, I can't speak for others, but at least in our case, nothing could be farther from the truth. The reality is that I personally left a six-figure job so that I could work from home where my wife and I together started The Rosary Shop around 1996. We have never worked harder, and made less per hour, than we have since doing so. But we are not the least bit bitter about it. We are grateful for the thousands of wonderful people and customers we've met and have been able to serve over the years, and we've come to understand that there are always going to be a few people who are going to be unhappy, no matter how hard we try. Consequently, we try to focus on those people who are reasonable, and who we can actually help.

The Rosary Shop is not Amazon.com. We don't have millions or billions of dollars worth of infrastructure and employees. We are three people who do our best with what we have to provide custom rosaries and related items to thousands of people every year. Most orders ship in a few days. Custom rosaries and custom kneelers usually in about 3 weeks. The only REAL problems we run into is when people order out of stock items or there is a shipping problem. It doesn't always go perfectly, but overall, the vast majority of orders go just fine.