Scott
Grafton,#2UPDATE Employee
Tue, October 07, 2008
National AV Supply is a Vermont-based catalog and internet merchant that has served institutional customers in the education, government and business community for over 30 years. Historically, nearly half of our business comes from repeat customers. We take effort and pride in maintaining high customer satisfaction levels because our business and our jobs depend on it. On average, we process approximately 10,000 orders annually from a merchandise selection of over 5,000 items. While the majority of our inventory is shipped from our Distribution Centers in the northeast, certain product are shipped directly from the manufacturer (drop-shipped in industry parlance) to minimize handling and the potential for damage-in-shipment. This is a standard practice in our industry. In early June of 2006, National AV was acquired by another company, Vcom IMC, located in NJ which resulted in a number of systems, procedural, staffing and policy changes that had a short-term negative impact on our service and support levels. It appears that, unfortunately, Tonya's order was placed shortly following the Company's takeover, which explains the poor follow-through and miscommunication about restocking fees on our part for which we absolutely apologize. Based on an investigation of the customer's order, we have concluded the following about the transaction: 1.Order # 521938 (reference internet order # 50-5011685) was placed on our website at 3:50 pm on Thursday June 22nd, 2006 for three display easels. 2.The customer specified a shipping method of UPS Ground. 3.The customer did not specify a specific date the merchandise was needed by (June 28th). There is a location on the online ordering form for special instructions which is typically where customers let us know if an order is to have special handling or be otherwise expedited. Were we made aware that the products ordered were needed by a specific date, our standard procedure would have been to directly contact the customer by telephone or email to confirm expedited delivery timeframes, and if necessary, utilize expedited shipping methods. 4.The order was downloaded and entered into Vcom's order entry software first thing the next day - Friday June 23rd, 2006. 5.The easels which Tonya ordered were made for us by Testrite Inc. Drop-ship purchase order # 113662 was issued to Testrite on Thursday June 29th, 2006, 6 days later. It is not clear why 6 days were lost in the process of generating a drop-ship purchase order. Further, it is not clear why the customer was told the order had shipped prior to being shipped by the vendor. 6.Due to the July 3-4 holiday, the easels were drop shipped from Testrite on Wednesday July 5th, 2006 to Akron, OH 04408 and were delivered to the customer on Friday July 7th, 2006. We regret that the customer had a truly unsatisfactory shopping experience with National AV Supply and invite them to try us again. To that end, we'd gladly extend them 20% off their next order to reconsider using us as a supplier. I'm certain they'll come away with a better experience. Sincerely, Scott Heller National AV Supply