Paper Moments Understands Senior Moments, Reprints Cards For Free
In a post-birth haze, Suzanne accidentally ordered birth announcement cards from Paper Moments listing the wrong birthdate for her two-week old son. The site has a clear policy regarding customer errors: mistakes are worth a 50% discount on reprints, and nothing more. Accepting the policy as immutable, Suzanne called and left a polite message asking Paper Moments to reprint the cards with the right birthdate. The company responded with an unexpected bundle of joy.
Suzanne writes:
Right now I am so please with the customer service I got from Paper Moments that I feel compelled to recommend them to the entire internet. They really exemplify how providing great service can earn you a customer for life.I'd been searching online for cute, well-priced photo birth announcements for weeks and stumbled upon Paper Moments. Due to my lack of sleep and post-baby haze, I entered my 2 week old son's birthday wrong (I am obviously a terrible mother already). The website clearly states you are responsible for double-checking your own work and I checked the box acknowledging it.
Today when I got my announcements, I noticed my mistake. The company's website says in case of consumer error they will reprint your cards at a 50% discount - already a generous offer. I called and left a message asking to reorder with the correct birthday. An hour and a half later, a very nice woman from the company (sadly, I missed her name) called me back and offered to send me new, corrected announcements tomorrow - for no charge. She said she understood what it was like to be a new parent and wanted to give me a break. I couldn't be more pleased with this service. I can't wait for another occasion to order from a company that takes such good care of its customers and I hope you can help me recommend them to others.
Great work, Paper Moments!
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Comments:
Thats great to know. Btw, congratulations!
Suzanne has shown us all that leaving a "nice" message sometimes works. Rather than trying to bully them into doing something she didn't do, she took the opposite approach. Good for her. Better luck with the next baby, Suzanne!
Pretty effective advertising too -- I, and probably lots of you, have never heard of paper moments. Now we all have warm fuzzies for them.
Bravo! There's nothing quite like printing out 500 copies of a typo.
Three hours later Paper Moments declared bankrupcy, citing unexpected bandwidth costs for their website
I'll have to take a look at these guys for wedding invitations. I always want to give good companies my business.
Definitely bookmarking them for all future announcement needs!
I just have a question, is there any kind of fact checking that goes into these positive reviews?
I would think that any tech savvy company would realize how powerful of a tool the consumerist could be, and could send in a fake story to give themselves free publicity.
Maybe i'm just being paranoid.
Yeah, bullying doesn't get you anywhere when it comes to a company fixing your mistake. Definitely an aww.. moment! Gives me the real warm and fuzzies!
Here's a little story; I know it doesn't exactly pertain to this story but I think its worth telling.
While working in a credit card call center I once had a woman from the Boston area make a little mistake and accidentally pay her bill 1 day late. She wanted to know if we could waive the late fee and was VERY polite about it. I waived it and also forced the system to take any charges she submitted until the payment posted. She always paid in full so I didn't have a problem with doing it and she had A LOT of auto bill charges that were coming in all at once. She was genuinely shocked when I told her that her card would work immediately.
My message to her: Thank you, kind lady from Boston, for not treating me like garbage because of a minor mistake. You really made my day! I know this was awhile ago and I've since moved to another state and am out of the banking industry but customers like you were few and far between. Most customers would have blamed the problem on me, you were nice enough not to. I can't remember your name but the interaction will always be fresh in my mind.
Yeah, BEAT IT HERBAL REMEDIES! This is the story to talk about awww... moments on; not sell your snake oil!
@j-o-h-n: I just clicked over to them right this minute to look at them for my baby's pending birth announcements.
Thats great news to hear. I just found the company to do my birth announcements. For every company that opted to stick to the policies rather than give some leeway, I hope this is a great example of the benefits of it. You earn more customers this way more than making up for the loss of reprinting one set of announcements.
Btw, I always defend Facebook posters but Facebook spam is going to ruin it for us all. I hope the consumerist can block these permanently without taking away our posting option.
I completely sympathize with the OP-I swear someone sneaks into my apartment at night and puts typos into things I write.
BRING ON THE DISEMVOWELMENT!
they have that policy for things like what was written about.
if i ordered something and I MESSED IT UP, i would not expect them to send me a hand out. i should expect my product i ordered with the messed up dates that i ordered. hence my mistake. you lucked out. and ur sons birthdates? thats like forgetting a wedding anny.
@mikells43: agree. that was very selfish on her part. She should've offered to pay 50% of the damages since if was her fault.
@bnosach: From the sounds of it, she didn't ask for free reprints in the first place. She knew she had to pay and was going to anyway but the company offered her the new order for free.
That's really nice. I'm bookmarking their site to use in the future.
And here my sister needs wedding invitations. Recommending now!
Very nice. Just out of curiosity, though, are there any reasons to give a company props for doing a good job and/or giving good customer service that don't include giving away goods/services for free?
I'm just saying we shouldn't require free stuff for there to be good customer service worth talking about. Usually whenever I see a post about "great customer service" it's because they gave a customer something for free. Free stuff should not be the sine qua non of providing good customer service (though it is definitely one way of accomplishing that). To me, that implies that we're all owed free stuff by sellers and anything less is not good customer service. That can't be right.
Or am I wrong here? I would argue that merely doing one's job, without more, does not qualify as particularly good customer service, either. Ringing me up, taking my money, and saying "have a nice day" is nothing to rave about. Is some sort of freebie/discount a necessary (if not sufficient) precondition of "good customer service"?
My better half and myself are expecting our first in November, Paper Moments can expect an order from us then.
@mikells43 Wow, you're not charming. I bet you'd be the type of CSR who was rude from the get-go when someone calls in sheepishly about a mistake they made, even if they have every intention of paying for it themselves.
She never once asked for them to re-do the cards for free. They offered it to her. Why would you say no to that? Clearly, this company is doing right, considering I just saw at least 3 people here who said they will be using them.
Indeed, I've bookmarked them for future reference!
I was looking for birth announcements as directed by my wife and was having no luck at all! I am so glad that I found this page, however I could not seem to find a direct link anywhere so for all you looking for it: www.paper-moments.com. There designs are great & I even got a quick response when I sent them an email with a question. Definitely using them!
@mikells43 AND @bnosach:
Did you guys read the post at all, or were you just quick to jump in there and blame the OP without even knowing what you were talking about?
She was prepared to pay for the reprints and the company contacted HER to offer free reprints. I don't quite understand how that makes her "selfish", but apparently you do.
Oh, and shaming her for mis-typing her newborns birthday. Really classy. I'm sure you guys NEVER make an honest mistake.
@Bruce Moldovan: Going "above and beyond" and offer "free" replacements isn't necessary at all - BUT it deserves a mention. In a world cluttered with businesses - BIG businesses that want to screw their customers for fees every way to Sunday, little stories like this offer up an alternative model of increasing profit by focusing beyond raping your customer until they leave. There are long term benefits to helping out a customer, even when it's the customer's own error. But companies that don't think beyond the present quarter's profits will never see that, or care. When CEOs and staff are in it for the short-term personal gain, retaining and growing customers is for suckers.
Just doing a competent job seems so rare in CSR that it also deserves a mention, and people certainly do that here when warranted.
THIS is how you win business. I will certainly consider their service in the future because of this kind act.
Am I the only person who dislikes the term "senior moment"? I think it is insulting to old people, not all of whom suffer memory loss.
As for Suzanne, one can only wonder how senior she is, since she apparently has just given birth, and we know that senior citizens don't regularly do that.
Aww...