Office Depot Comes Through With Stellar Customer Service, But Then Doesn't Deliver On Promise
Jake couldn't place an order for an Xbox 360 deal on Black Friday—yes, we're talking about a failed transaction from two and half months ago—but he got surprisingly helpful customer service from Office Depot. Margaret at the Office of the Chairman even gave him her personal number and promised him a raincheck of sorts in the form of a gift card for a future purchase. Her offer sounded almost too good to be true, and maybe it was, because as of February he still hasn't seen a gift card. And Margaret won't return his voicemail messages, not even to say the deal is off. Update: Office Depot saw this post, and they contacted Jake.
Here's his story:
In November when the online Black Friday deals were starting to heat up, I saw that Office Depot was running a sale on XBOX 360 bundles with BioShock for $199.99. (It was item number 0519380.)
Their current page for this item is here: http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=519380
On Friday, Nov. 21, I went on the Office Depot website and tried to order this item. Every time I tried, it told me that the item was invalid for my area, and it wouldn't allow me to put the item in my cart.
So, I called Office Depot's telesales number. There, I spoke to a girl who was very friendly. She put me on hold for about ten minutes while she tried to place the order for me. When she came back on the line, she told me that she could see the item, but she wasn't allowed to place orders for it. When I asked her what I should do, she told me there's a chance my local store manager can order it for me.
Then I called the Layton, UT Office Depot. I spoke to Matt, the manager there, and he was very friendly. I told him the item number for the XBOX 360 I was trying to buy, and that telesales had told me that he might be able to order or reserve it for me. Instead of putting me on hold, Matt looked at his in-store system with me on the line, and found that he also could see the item, but he couldn't order it. He said that he wasn't sent any to stock either, so he couldn't help me get one.
I was almost ready to give up, and I asked Matt if there was anything else I could do.
"Look", Matt said to me, "It's there on the website, so you should be able to order it, right? So why don't you just call that telesales number again, and tell them to order it for you, and if they say they can't, escalate it until whoever you're talking to can."
I was amazed to hear one of Office Depot's store managers telling me this, and I felt that he was absolutely right.
I called the telesales number again.
This time, I got Michelle. I told Michelle about the website, and about my first call to telesales, and about the store manager, and that she should take a look at the item number and if she can't order it for me, please escalate the call.
Michelle was great. She found that she was not able to order the item, and escalated me to her supervisor right away.
I waited on hold for the supervisor for about five minutes, and when she came on the line, I forgot to write down her name (oops). When I explained the situation to her, she told me that she was going to send my call to executive customer care. She said I might be on hold for a while, but to wait, because the person I would get on the phone there could help me.
I held for about fifteen minutes, and then someone answered with, "Office of the Chairman, this is Margaret."
Margaret listened to all the things I'd done to try to order the XBOX 360, and then she told me that she would have to research it.
I told her that would be fine, but I had already done all this work, and I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't hang up and then never hear from her again. So, Margaret gave me her full name and phone number.
That was Friday the 21st. I knew that I wouldn't hear from her during the weekend, so on Monday, Nov. 24, I waited all day for her call. Around 3:00 pm, I called her number and got voice mail. I left a message that I just wanted to follow up with her and was looking forward to her call.
A few minutes later, she called me back. Margaret told me that she was unable to find an XBOX 360 in any of her warehouses, and she was very sorry. Then, she said, "To make it up to you, I'd like to send you a $260 shop card. Would that be ok?"
I was so surprised that I didn't know what to say, and I think I stuttered that it would be great. I gave her my address and thanked her several times, and that was it.
And since then, I've been waiting for the promised card to show up. I figured there might be a delay, because things take time to process, so I've kept telling myself to be patient. I've tried to call Margaret a couple of times, and I've left her one or two upbeat voice mails asking if she could check on the status for me.
But Margaret hasn't called back, and now it's February.
I was really blown away by how every single interaction I had with an Office Depot employee was excellent. They were always nice, and they always tried to help. And I never expected to be offered a shopping card, but a broken (or delayed, hopefully) promise is hard to overlook.
So I'm hoping that writing this to Consumerist will get Office Depot's attention. And I'd really like to see the card come through, but failing that, just an explanation would be nice.
Thanks!
(Photo: dev null)
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Comments:
Say whatever lies you have to in order to get the customer off the phone? Yeah I know that one, its good. Works great.
Hey, OP. You might just want to go somewhere else for the 360, then count yourself lucky if they send you a GC (if they do, buy tons of games).
I got my 360 from a deal on slickdeals a couple of weeks back. All told I paid $150 for the Arcade version with a bunch of bundled games, then $30 for the hard drive upgrade from Microsoft. $180 out the door. Dell was tossing in 2 or 3 games IRRC.
I prefer Bioshock on the PC anyway.
I wonder what number she gave him? Is it 867-5309?
Perhaps the classic telemarketer CID (987) 654-3210?
I think part of the problem with this is that it was listed as a Black Friday item and he tried to order it on Nov 21. Black Friday 2008 was on November 28. Maybe that is why no one could order it?
Margaret probably got laid-off.
And why does Office Depot sell XBoxes?
I'm sorry my friend, she's no longer there. Gave away a bit too many gift cards.
be glad someone helped at least, Staples never would do anything about the keyboard set they had on their site for black Friday that would not let me order and could never get a hold of anyone to order by phone.
Staples: "We'll get these people to come to our site with the lure of hot deals, but not let customers buy them. Hopefully, they'll still buy other things. That was easy!"
[OK, I admit that I worked WAY too hard to use the Staples 'hat was easy' tagline in my joke. Sorry everybody.]
Office Depot had this program going where they would assign their major accounts a sales rep through Convergys (an outsource company for customer contact). it was a 6 month trial. It failed miserably. At the end of the 6 months, the OD reps for Convergys were told to tell their customers they were being "promoted" and would no longer service them. They all got laid off. I'm wondering if Margaret was one of those reps?
@Davan: Or yours if you're willing to pay ~500,000 dollars.
(One of the last if not -the- last 867-5309's is up on Ebay at the moment.)
"You want THE TRUTH? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"
Why wouldn't you just call back and ask to be escalated to Executive Customer Care again and explain the situation to whoever picks up this time. Hopefully, Margaret documented the call.
I'm surprised this wasnt taken care of. When I worked for OD if anything was escalated to the district manager he automatically gave you whatever you wanted. (hint for ya kids). I bet there is some kind of glitch here. Start from the beginning and escalate up again.
Office Depot are going downhill fast. My most recent experience was to try to buy a chair. The local store had one I liked, so I tried to buy it. 15 minutes at the check-out later and they reported that even though they were showing stock, they didn't have any. Other stores in the city were reporting 3 - 5 on-hand, but calls revealed they couldn't actually find them. One store said they definitely had them, but after a half-hour drive over there they couldn't locate them after all.
Next, I tried the web site, where the same chair was over $100 more expensive and adding it to your cart resulted in a message that it wasn't available (even though the main product screen said it was), so you couldn't actually buy it.
This was not an isolated incident, and quite different from my positive experiences with Office Depot from years back. It does seem that things are falling apart.
@Wombatish: Lol why would anyone want that number, just the people calling drunk or high every day would drive me insane
Well, Jake, you don't have a reference number for this, do you? Margey may have been 100% genuine in wanting to send you a gift card, but how does that work from her end? Does she reach into her drawer and pick out a blank, swipe it through the register that she keeps just to the left of her computer on her desk, stuff it in an envelope with a freshly typed personal apology, and mail it off?
No, they have a pipeline for these things. If you're not a registered customer in any form, you are a non-entity to them once they hang up the phone. At best, you're a sticky-note on the side of a computer screen that's probably already full of people with actual problems, not just inconveniences (no offense, really, but some people have already put money down). They just won't get to you because you have no visibility in the system. We'd all be the same way if we dealt with hundreds or thousands of people.
I'd say keep calling back or re-escalating if you feel someone else will honor the promise, and they might. Bar that, just write it off and move on, not that you had anything to write off in the first place. Who knows? Maybe that card will show up in the mail eventually.
Since when does OfficeDepot sell Xbox 360s?
@Xerloq: He most likely bought a 360 elsewhere at this point, but I don't believe that is why he sent this into the Consumerist. He wants Office Depot to acknowledge him as a paying customer who had a valid complaint against their website. Why advertise a 360 on black friday if your system isn't set up to sell them?? All he wanted was to place the order, pay with his own money, and complete the transaction. They couldn't deliver, and offered him a huge gift card to compensate.
I have to be honest, I find this huge gift card a little suspicious- I would expect, say, a gift card in the amount of the difference between their every day price on the 360 and the posted deal on black friday- say, $40 or whatever.
Personally, I would of refused a $260 gift card if they couldn't put my order thru. It's one thing if a transaction took place and they royally screwed up, but no transaction happened.
Office Depot is probably going out of business or into bankruptcy soon, so the gift card may well end up a moot point by now. They are closing a bunch of their stores (no bargains, naturally) including the one closest to me where my friend works. (within a mile of our nearest Circuit city, ironically.)
@Davan: I think that would make it an ideal number for a phone-sex line or some other sort of advertising.
You'd get only local calls, so I'm not sure the payoff would be worth the asking price.
@PhyllisHobbit: Not true -- the OP claims that they all were able to find it, just not order it. Also, it doesn't ring like a bait-and-switch or anything. No one told the OP to buy something else, and they all tried to get that very item for him.
It is a scummy that they would advertise an XBox that couldn't be ordered and that they didn't have in the warehouse, I agree. (I don't see how they could have sold out of them if the info from the OP is accurate and no one could order the thing to begin with).
..err, and scummy that they would promise something and then not deliver, of course.
@BathroomDuck: It's a memorable number for a company to use in jingles.. Though again, only locally.
Hi there, I'm the OP on this one.
Xerloq - You're right, I already got a 360 after this incident. You're also right about the amount of the card being the difference between the sale price and the regular price...If you hit that Office Depot link in the post, you'll see that they sell that bundle for $460 regularly, minus the $200 sale price...$260.
I didn't realize this myself until I spoke to a nice fellow at Office Depot today, who offered to overnight me the card. So I'll probably be sending an update to Chris tomorrow when I have the card in hand.
Jan - I don't know if it was really a Black Friday item. It was listed on the deal sites at the same time that a lot of other Black Friday deals were going up, but it was a deal that was expiring on Nov. 22, so yeah, not technically a Black Friday thing.
oneliketadow - Margaret still works there, but she wasn't in today. She works in the Office of the Chairman, so she's probably not a bottom-rung Convergys rep. :)
boomersix - I think I went over the district manager's head on this one. But yeah, that would have been an option.
chrisjames - I have a business account with Office Depot, so they definitely know who I am.
This was not a Black Friday deal. This was a clearance sale on the 20GB bundle that Microsoft was discontinuing.
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=0&t=1028639
I think it's more interesting that neither the customer, nor the sales people, nor a manager, nor a top-level service rep could find this advertised Black Friday sale. That's very deceptive and they should be fined a lot more than $260...