Complaint Review: Texas Shirt Company - Houston Texas

Who knows what's next in the glorious field of customer service? Snapping "no can do" at your customer and refusing to suggest any way that a problem can be resolved is unprofessional. Enumerating the problems you've had with a company (until you are hung up on, of course), without cursing, and without being abusive, is not. Of course, if a company engages in such sleazy business practices as this one (there are 16 complaints against them with the Better Business Bureau of Texas), no doubt the owners get a little thin-skinned. I'd hate to think how they'd respond if I'd actually been threatening or abusive, rather than just listing the course of action that a customer takes when he or she isn't provided customer service. We filed a complaint with the president of the company in writing, and it was faxed Thursday, October 7. We have yet to receive any response. Frankly, given the attitude of this company, we don't imagine this problem will be resolved. We simply advise our colleagues and associates, as well as our sister conventions, not to do business with this fly-by-night firm.

Texas Shirt Company specializes in screenprinting and embroidery of garments at the wholesale level. We strive to offer a quality product at a fair price and to be equitable with our customers. While we do take every action to ensure a complete and accurate order, exceptions do occur. This customer, Intercon Mid-Atlantic is an order where there was an unfortunate shortage. We had been offering shirt sizes in 4x and 5x that were being custom made to match Fruit of the Loom products. The vendor that makes these for us and supplies them has had difficulty in keeping stock. It is standard practice in the T-shirt industry to obtain the blanks after an order is placed, add the decoration, and call the order complete. In our particular case we offer a selection of over 43,000 items that can have decoration added in as little as 5 to 21 days. We offer customers a selection of 3 levels of service and 8 shipping methods. This particular customer chose the least expensive service level (standard) which states in the order process, on the order confirmation, and on the invoice that it typically takes 7 to 10 days, but no promise is made on when the job will go to production. The customer contacted us and asked us to run the job so it would arrive in time for their event. It was around 3 in the day and we reviewed the order and did our best to help them out. The inventory indicated the order was complete, the screens were ready, so we loaded the job onto our automatic printing equipment and ran it quickly in order to make the shipping cut off. Our quality control process involves a "pack-out" count to ensure that we ship what we actually sold. In this particular case we discovered that an employee had errantly counted the 2 size 4x shirts in. After searching for them we determined that they were not present. We checked with the vendor and learned that they weren't available and that we they did not know when more would be made. We had to make a decision to hold the order or to short the order. We shorted the order and shipped the order to the customer. Our standard practice is to enclose a bright orange form that explains why the order was shorted and what action was taken. In this case we issued a refund for the value of the shirts plus the printing. As is customary we credit the customer with the shorted shirts for the purposes of any discounts and price tiers. Our pricing changes as you do more shirts. We think it's only fair to not recalculate pricing if we have caused a shortage, so we count the missing shirts for discount purposes. Our bookeeping department processed the credit and refunded the customer for the shirts we could not supply. This was done prior to the customer asking for a credit and without any interaction from the customer. The customer received the credit memo by email from our system and called to demand an explanation for the charge. Our customer service rep, Dale, politely explained that it was a credit for missing shirts and not a charge. The call ended. The customer then called back at approximately 12:10pm and I answered the phone. The customer began to immediately demand that we print the two extra shirts. He told us how we were lousy and how he had never been shorted before. He threatened to tell everyone he knew how he thought we were a bad company. After listening to the customer vent for a few minutes I tried to explain the situation to the customer. I explained that the item wasn't available and that we were going to discontinue it to prevent this from happening in the future. He complained that we owed him two additional shirts. I explained that we had issued him a refund for the missing shirts because we could not supply them. He insists that we owe him something additional. This went on for 45 minutes before he ended the call. I'm a very reasonable person, but I frankly don't like it when folks yell, insult, scream, interrupt, and accuse when they don't get their way. While we are very sorry that we couldn't provide the shirts, we believe we did the right thing by proactively issuing a refund. We try very hard to explain the printing process to customers and we react to feedback from our customers. However, we don't tolerate bad behavior or unprofessionalism. After the man who had placed the order had called about an hour later we received a phone call. I answered the phone, as I sometimes do to help relieve the phone load. The chairperson of this organization immediately started insulting and yelling and demanding that we print these two shirts. I listened to her for at least 5 minutes before I told her that we weren't going to do it. We had issued a refund and that I had already been yelled at for 45 minutes and that the issue was closed. She then threatened to cause as much trouble as possible for us. At that point she crossed a line which is covered in our agreement with the customer. We believe that when a customer starts threatening, cussing, or yelling uncontrollably that it is no longer a good idea to talk to them on the phone. We will, as a last resort, revoke the phone privelages of that customer and require them to correspond in writing with us. The goal of this is to work out a solution, not to anger or provoke the customer. We find that when parties are able to engage in a controlled and contemplated conversation (in writing) that situations can generally be worked out. Whereas sometimes when folks are on the phone they tend to become emotional and behave badly. This customer has behaved unprofessionally and engaged in blackmail by attempting to extort two t-shirts from our company in return for not speaking poorly about us. We believe that this is an act of bad faith. The customer faxed a demand letter to our offices today demanding that we deliver two t-shirts to their conference tomorrow for free, at our expense or they would report us here (which they already have), and everywhere else they could in an attempt to extort two t-shirts from us. Our position is that the customer lost all hope of getting us to print two additional shirts for them when they started insulting, yelling, and demanding that we do it. Had they asked nicely and explained things there is a really good chance that we might have done it. But having insisted that we had to, insulting us, and then trying to have a second person grind at us about it, they simply sealed their fate and tarnished the reputation of their organization. We believe that the issue is settled. We were not able to provide the two 4-x t-shirts because there aren't any, and they won't be made any time soon. We issued a refund to ensure that we were not charging for a product we didn't provide. According to the FTC rules governing internet and mail order this is the appropriate thing to do. Thank you for taking the time to hear our side of the story. Next time you have a disagreement with a business, ask nicely before you demand and yell. If you don't get what you want, ask nicely again. Perhaps wait a few minutes, and then ask nicely again. Before you yell, cuss, demand, or insult someone, think how you would feel and what you would do if someone did that to you. Then if you do act badly, don't be surprised if the company restricts contact with you and refuses to do further business with you. We value our employees and none of them, including me the owner, deserve to be insulted, yelled at, or cussed at in the course of business. Sincerely, Texas Shirt Company