We have an insufficient way of managaging the inventory of our products. Okay, lets be honest, the person "in charge" of managing our inventory and purchasing more doesn't pay attention to it at all. Therefore, WE notify HER when we are out of something. THEN we wait THREE MONTHS for it to come back in-stock. Common sense would tell you to pay track of which teams and products sell and how many sell, therefore, you could order them BEFORE they go out of stock. It must be a hard concept to understand because my workplace hasn't figured it out yet. (I've started to keep track of lost sales due to this, and it amuses me the higher it gets... so far we've lost close to $15 K in orders due to out-of-stock product in 9 days) Plus, I know that number is much higher, since I only see a small fraction of sales.
As you can imagine, this creates some havoc around Christmas time. Therefore, our genius of a President decided to make the executive decision today to change customer's orders without notifying them or the vendor.
For Example: You ordered your a game with your NFL team on it with a football background. Our company has run out of the football background games, so we are sending you a game with a blank background.
Hmmmm, I wonder if the customers will notice? Hmmmmm, I wonder if they'll be upset?
Guess who gets to deal with the angry customers when the backlash comes? Me. I get the fun job of trying to explain why my company decided to make that shady decision and pretend like I think it's fine. I get to try to talk down the angry customers and respond to their angry emails. Does the lady who doesn't manage inventory have to talk to them? No. Does the president who made the decision to send them something different have to talk to them? No.
Who has to deal with the backlash? Me. My fellow coworkers and I are beyond pissed. It is to the point where we are AMAZED by their business practices at this point.
Sometimes I just wish the vendors and customers would take their business elsewhere, so it would force my company to become more morally sound in their practices. It's hard to swallow your opinions of what is right and wrong and just "do your job". I'm given my job orders and I should complete them, but it is becoming harder and harder to bite my tongue. It's hard to follow orders that you don't believe are right. It's hard to suffer the consequences of bad decisions when you know you could do a better job than those who are above you.
*le sigh*
Those are pretty unsound business practices! How do the clients normally do? Ask for refunds? I know I would!
ReplyDeleteSome customers call us directly and complain and wonder what happened with their order, sometimes the vendors will call us relaying the issue/complaint.
ReplyDeleteSometimes they keep the product, sometimes they keep the product if we give them more free product, and sometimes we have to send them a shipping label to send it back for a refund. Any way you put it, we are losing money.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the business has issues, but I think being morally corrupt is the worst one.
The issue ate at me enough that innocent people were being ripped off that I sent the Better Business Bureau a complaint about the issue (annonomously of course, otherwise I'd definitely be fired). I have to follow the job task I'm given to : Purposely send out incorrect orders and lie to customers/vendors directly about the issue to keep my job.
However, I can't in good conscience do nothing about it. Therefore, I directly turned their unsound business practices in to the BBB. I'm not sure if it will do any good, but at least I know that I did the right thing...even if nobody else does.