(no title) (original) (raw)
When I first recieved Industrial Strength's wholesale catalouge I was impressed with their selection. When I recieved my first and subsequent orders I was impressed with the quality of their jewelry.
I was not however impressed with their customer service or business practices as a whole. I placed several orders with Industrial Strength over the course of a year. There were problems with more than half of the orders I placed with them.
Several times I recieved incorrect items, was overcharged for items that were supposed to be discounted for specials they had, and was charged for items I never recieved with no explanation as to why this happened.
I once found out that I didn't recieve a pair of plugs because they didn't come in the color I ordered, yet they failed to inform me of this, and still charged me for the items.
On several occasions when I had to call to resolve mistakes they made with my order they were very short with me, took no responsibility for their mistakes, and made it seem as if I was some sort of inconveniece to them instead of a paying wholesale customer.
It once took them two months for them to issue a credit for items I was overcharged for, then when I placed my next order they charged me for the items in spite of applying the credit that I was told would be reflected on my account. When I placed the order I clerarly stated to the person on the phone there was a credit on my account and due to this the order should come out to be free of charge. They charged me for the items anyway. Because of this, the solution I decided upon was to cancel my order.
When I called in to resolve the problem and subsequently cancelled the order they in turn cancelled my account stating that I didn't spend enough money with them to make it worth the time they have had to spend dealing with my account (time spent in total due to mistakes they made, neither of which were through any fault of my own).
I could not believe what I was hearing. Their account manager even went so far as to say their other commercial accounts spent X amount of dollars at a time with them, and my account only being a small amount spent at a time was not worth the trouble to Industrial Strength. Funny, they had no trouble accepting my money, although I had plenty of trouble attempting to get it back.
The message I recieved was loud and clear, it appears to me unless you plan to spend large amounts of cash with Industrial Strength you are of no importance to them and seen as some sort of inconvenience and liabiility. I can only imagine how a company that has this many problems with such a "small" account with "small" orders can possibly manage to retain larger accounts.
In my opinion if Industrial Strength can't be trusted to handle my "small" account with the same courtesy and respect they extend to their larger accounts then why would I ever want to entrust them with large amounts of money and orders when my company expands and is able to do so.
They have no minimum purchase amount for wholesale orders, and no where does it state in their policy that in order to retain an account with them you have to do a certain amount of business and spend a certain amount of money, yet they are willing to cancel an account with a wholesale customer because the customer didn't spend what they arbitrarilly deemed to be not enough to be worthwhile. If they only want larger accounts then they should have minimum purchase amounts, and policies regarding how much you have to purchase to be worthy of an account with them.
I find Industrial Strength's business practices appalling, and in my opinion discriminatory against small business customers. I felt that I was treated very unfairly by Industrial Strength in regards to them cancelling my account but upon further reflection, I refuse to do business with any company which appears completely money driven, with apparently no regard for their customers, or their own quality of service or lack thereof.