There's nothing like good customer service...

...And this was nothing like good customer service!

We ordered a barbecue because the old one was rusty.

I paid extra to get it delivered at a time I knew I would be in.

The BBQ didn't turn up.

So I sat in all day and waited for nothing to arrive. It wasn't total loss as it was on the first day of the Tour de France so I sat and watched with the sound down so I wouldn't miss the doorbell that didn't ring.

We all make mistakes though. So I emailed customer service to ask what had happened.

And customer service decided to ignore me.

Two days later I rang customer service to see if everything was alright, after all they may have had a fall or something.

They were OK. But it seems that the van had broken down and although they tried to call me, mysteriously they had the wrong phone number. Odd because they had phoned me the day before the non delivery to tell me to wait in especially so that they could deliver nothing.

So I asked them to deliver and they said they couldn't for two weeks. I asked them to put this in writing and they said that they couldn't because they weren't the puttingthingsinwriting department, they were the talkingtoannoyedcustomersonthephone department. I'd have to email in.

I told them that I'd already had the benefit of being ignored by the puttingitinwriting department and they said 'yeah, we've had loads of complaints recently'.

I suppose that if you've got lots of annoyed customers then what's one more?

But to take something positive from the whole experience it just reinforced what I've learned about cocking up.

Say sorry quickly, don't make things up and make it as better as you can.

I once spoke to guy who used to own a marina. He said there was one particular company that had awful quality control but was massively loved by its customers because they had an exceptional customer service department. Buyers valued the fact that when something went wrong (which it did often) they said sorry, never argued and put it right immediately.

Aren't us customers odd?