I used to work over the christmas period for a company that makes gift hampers - wicker basket packed with wine biscuits cake and other luxury foods etc all sealed up in a cardboard box.
Anyway, most of the year's business was done over the xmas/new year with people/companies ordering these things as presents/rewards for other people, and we sent out tens of thousands of these hampers over the period. It was very hectic until mid january, and 95% of problems were with delivery, which sucked as we used couriers like parcelforce etc and there's little we could do when they screw up but the customers call us to complain about the hamper not being delivered. I was the poor sod tasked with dealing with these problems. My pet hates back then included:
Irish postcodes (the Irish, god bless 'em, don't have postcodes, once I swear the address for the hamper was more a description of what the house looked like and the "big tree" next to it)
People who get upset their friends didn't get the hamper when it turns out they didn't know their friends have jobs and don't spend the day watching bargain hunt and listening for the doorbell (they have to be in the house? You mean you can't fit a hamper through the letter box? You mean you don't deliver at night? etc)
Or their friends are on a xmas holiday that the customer actually knew about... hamper spends xmas sitting in the depot.
Dumb customers who don't think to put any kind of message on/in the box, and when you ask them about it are genuinely surprised that the recipients aren't going to know telepathically who sent it
Customers who want to send their friends hampers but don't know their address (we used quickaddress to check) and can't understand why this just isn't going to happen
Customers who want to send a giant hamper that costs hundreds of £s and a grown man struggles to lift to a tiny little P.O. Box number (scared we might misuse the 'real' address maybe?)
Man totally outraged by absence of caviar from hamper. He thought it was a big deal and ruined the hamper. I knew it was actually a tiny pot of lumpfish eggs that are to real caviar what tesco value lemonade is to the finest champagne.
Amtrak.
Anyone else remember these guys?
They used to be a fairly big courier company, then one year they accepted a lot more business orders than they had the capacity to deliver. Most of their depots up and down the country were overflowing with the backlog and we had a sh*tload of hampers that were supposed to be delivered for Christmas that weren't. And I got the customers yelling in my ear. I couldn't tell the customers anything because I couldn't find out what happened to the hamper, because Amtrak depots stopped answering their phones, even to big business customers. Worst thing was the customers were right when they got upset, it was just hard to persuade them we weren't at fault, our couriers were (still gave a lot of refunds though).
After that year, a lot of people stopped using amtrak and I heard the company went downhill, but like many people in this thread, I discovered the universal truth about the customer, i.e. that he doesn't care if it's your fault or not, he just wants to yell in someone's ear, and you're closest.
(except when they don't know because you're actually too embarrassed to tell the nice lady in switzerland that DHL seem to have accidentally sent her hamper to Johannesburg and that while it's now being re-routed, the 1kg salmon may be a bit whiffy after sitting in the warm south african climate over christmas)
nothing spectacular I know, but I felt I owed this thread something for the enjoyment it gave me, keep the stories coming!
