In article , John
Rumm writes
Paul C. Dickie wrote:
Any outfit that plainly shows the utter contempt for customer "good
will" recently displayed by Screwfux does not deserve to retain any
customers at all.
Huh?
Please translate that from the Neanderthal dialect.
OK for the hard of thinking....

One hardly *needs* to think particularly hard to realise that Screwfux
have now screwed up in a rather serious way.

Why do you feel they have shown contempt for customer "good will"?

Good lord man, it's perfectly simple.

All I see is a company that was forced into relocating their warehouse,

Who "forced" them to do that?

The answer is that *nobody* forced these changes on the company. Even
if they had been somehow compelled to move the warehouse -- whether by
the local council, some Whitehall department, nameless officials from
Brussels or Thargian Freemasons from the Planet -- there is still no
reason why the warehouse and call centre have to be at the same
location. They do not even need to be on the same continent.

and have made a bit of balls up in the process.

Yes, in exactly the same way that a wench may be slightly pregnant.

Since this is probably the first time they have tried a relocation on
this scale, perhaps a few mistakes are inevitable.

Are you a professional apologist or merely a "gifted" amateur?

Maybe you get everything right first time?

I am someone who believes in the maxim that one should measure twice and
cut only once. Had the move been properly planned, the cock-ups would
not have occurred, for the old system would have been left up and
running until the new system was working at least as well.

I'd rather they'd not taken down the old system until the new system was
fully operational.
The "system" to which you refer is a large warehouse full of stuff, and
lots of people trained to take it from the warehouse and post it to you.

Gosh! Really? Fancy that...

The only way they would be able to maintain both "systems" in parallel
would be with a complete duplicate warehouse at the new location. I
doubt this would make good business sense, or be economically sound
management.

That's the trouble with bean-counters: they expect savings to commence
from day one. No, it would *not* be "economically sound management" in
those terms, but it would have ensured that there would not have been
the serious problems that they've experienced. As a result, Screwfux
will now have to advertise more extensively again and will have to offer
discounts and deals in the hope of winning back the customers they've
lost -- and just how much "good business sense" do you suppose *that*
makes, bearing in mind that the cock-ups were entirely avoidable?

I'd rather they provided the sort of service they once did -- and for
which folk would unhesitatingly recommend them -- than to try to "fix" a
system that hadn't actually broken.
They had run out of capacity at their original location, the local
council refused permission to extend. That sounds "broken" to me.

Even were that so, it still indicates a lack of imagination. Why should
they have *all* of their products in only *one* location? Why not have
more than one depot? Come to that, why not despatch some items directly
from a B&Q stock warehouse?

May heaven (and sprinklers) forfend that their new warehouse should
suffer a catastrophic fire but, if that were to happen, they'd be out of
business for weeks if not for months. If their depots were distributed
up and down the land, however, they'd hardly be affected at all.

As for whether or not that makes "good business sense", that's pretty
much the way that the stationary and office supplies firm Viking Direct
operates at the moment; if one orders before noon, one can usually get
the goods delivered that afternoon.

--
Paul