customer service fatigue

[Ed Griner]

Would any body care to recommend a name of a capable and interested customer service person at Grizzly in Pa.?


Thanks/Ed

[Rob Holcomb]

I can't offer any peron to contact but I can say that when I ordered my Grizzly tools online this past spring, I received the confirmation email shortly thereafter. (I ordered the G0691 Table saw, G1035 Shaper, G1029Z Dust collector, G0453 planer, G0645 Mortising machine, a couple of mobile bases and various kits and add-ons) The email indicated that every tool was on back-order! Some only a few weeks and others several months. The only items the email said were in stock were the kits and add-ons. So I called Grizzly to cancel my order because I didn't want to wait for month's to outfit my workshop and there was no sense in buying the kits and add-ons if I didn't have the tools they went to. When I told the customer service rep. to cancel the order, he said..."wait, let me check our other warehouses". Low and behold, they had every tool in their Missouri warehouse. I told him to go ahead with the sale since it would only be a couple extra days for the tools to reach where I live (Western NY) but the whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth. Just because the Pennsylvania warehouse didn't have them in stock it was no reason to indicate they were back-ordered. I have to say that everything arrived in perfect condition and I haven't had any problems with the tools but one would think that if an online order is received that they would ship them from whichever warehouse they have them in stock instead of telling a customer to wait months for them. Would I order tools from Grizzly again? Maybe, but only because I didn't have a good experience with Steel City either (I was interested in buying one of their granite top jointers and sent an email asking a few questions about it. They never acknowledged me at all). I ended up running up to my local Home Depot and buying the Ridgid 6" jointer. It wasn't what I wanted but I had to have one to finish the work I was doing as I was on a deadline and didn't have the time to do countless hours of research to choose the best jointer for my needs and budget. Sometimes I think companies get so big and receive so many orders that they forget that all we want is to be happy in our workshops doing what we love to do, using quality tools that are accurate and long lasting and sold at prices that are reasonable. To sum this up, for every bad customer service experience someone has had, there will be others who had trouble free experiences but in general, customer service isn't what it once was. When I was a young man I remember my first job working in a grocery store. The store owner said to me that the "customer is always right" and what he meant was that I was to do whatever I could do to make that customer happy so he or she would return. Nowadays it's all about profit margins and spewing out products as fast as they can. Quality suffers, customers don't return and companies really don't care because for every customer that doesn't come back, there's five more new customers that will buy their products. It's hard for me to accept things when I have a bad customer service experience because that's not how I was taught or remember companies dealing with their customers years ago. Maybe I'm just getting older and set in my ways but it sure does feel good to bark a little :-)

[Dave Lehnert]

Would any body care to recommend a name of a capable and interested customer service person at Grizzly in Pa.?


Thanks/Ed

Shiraz Balolia is a member here on Sawmill Creek and happens to be the president and owner of Grizzly Tools.

Don't be surprised if he post in this message.

[Andrew Schlosser]

My recent Grizzly customer service experience was great. I needed to get more adjustment out of my bandsaw than I knew how to get. The Grizzly Cust Support webpage actually lists an email address, not just a form. I liked this because I could email an attachment describing my issue and what I thought I could do to correct it. Vince, my man in Cust Service, explained that I should do this and that. I didn't quite understand, so I took some different pictures and over the course of 2-3 emails, all with Vince and not a different person every time, we got the issue worked out.

Quite pleased with the whole thing, as Cust Service phone line was closed by the time I get to the shop. Thought that the email was going to be a hassle, but just the opposite.

[Scott T Smith]

The manager at Muncy is Kim Andrews. One of his top salesmen is a fellow named "Tom".

[John Keeton]

When I was a young man I remember my first job working in a grocery store. The store owner said to me that the "customer is always right" and what he meant was that I was to do whatever I could do to make that customer happy so he or she would return. Nowadays it's all about profit margins and spewing out products as fast as they can.Ron, I am sure you meant this as a comparative statement, however, they are one and the same. The goal of business has always been "about profit margins and spewing out products as fast as they can."

As you noted, many of us "older" guys have a nostalgic rememberance that at one time, it was done with great customer service. But, the goal was still the same - make a profit and sell as much as could be sold.

There are companies today that carry that to the point where quality suffers, but the market will take care of that and those companies normally fall by the wayside, or just continue to market to a segment that is satisfied with mediocrity. There will always be that market segment, as well.

Distribution centers are the key to making a profit - just ask Walmart, the king of distribution. The cost of moving a 600 lbs machine across the water, and around the country a couple of times eats in to that profit pretty quickly. Sounds like you got caught in a situation where inventories became unbalanced, and that did not work out well - for you or for Grizzly.

My experiences with Grizzly have been great. There have been several threads on this topic over the last couple of years, and while there are (and will always be) isolated incidents where things could have been handled differently, overall it seems they do a great job.

I hope this thread does not end up being a rehash of all those comments.

[Chuck Saunders]

I really can't complain, I ordered my belt/disc combo sander Thursday morning and got a call from the trucking company Friday afternoon. Picked it up at the terminal that evening. Next day free truck freight is pretty cool. OK, living in Kansas City makes Grizzly shipping from Springfield very quick but it is still cool.