Small Business Saturday And Customer Service
The Saturday after Thanksgiving (Nov 30 this year) is Small Business Saturday, it's something that American Express is promoting to remind people to shop at small, local businesses. Since it's also the Saturday of my Open Studio and Sale I thought it would be a great idea to get on this bandwagon.
I went on the Amex web site for this and registered, they were pretty awesome. They have artwork for me to download and will include Future Relics on a map of participating businesses. They even give $10 to anyone that registers their Amex card and shops at a participating merchant like me. I was very pleased. When I got to the end of the registration, they said they had partnered with FedEx to print 2 fliers for me for free. Sweet! Oh, but that's when the trouble started.
I filled out the form on the FedEx website and uploaded the artwork for the posters but the "send" button was broken. It didn't do anything. I called the store, they said they never got it (no surprise) but gave me the number for tech support. I called tech support, explained the issue, got transferred, explained the issue for the third time and helped the nice tech support person to understand and try to recreate the issue. To make a long story short and save you from the boring details I'll just tell you that I gave up. If time is money it would have cost much less for me to simply send the artwork to FedEx and pay for it but I'm not sure I want it that badly. The thing is, I spent almost an hour on the phone with the support guy trying to recreate the issue so they could fix it, at the end of the conversation I told him that a work around is what I really needed. I even told him what a simple solution might be (me just emailing the art rather than using the broken form). But, since he works for a large corporation he could not say "yes, just do that, it'll be okay."
I really do appreciate these large businesses trying to support the small local businesses and in doing so realized that I still love my independent, local printer.
Check out the gallery page - Future Relics Gallery by Lori Buff
I went on the Amex web site for this and registered, they were pretty awesome. They have artwork for me to download and will include Future Relics on a map of participating businesses. They even give $10 to anyone that registers their Amex card and shops at a participating merchant like me. I was very pleased. When I got to the end of the registration, they said they had partnered with FedEx to print 2 fliers for me for free. Sweet! Oh, but that's when the trouble started.
I filled out the form on the FedEx website and uploaded the artwork for the posters but the "send" button was broken. It didn't do anything. I called the store, they said they never got it (no surprise) but gave me the number for tech support. I called tech support, explained the issue, got transferred, explained the issue for the third time and helped the nice tech support person to understand and try to recreate the issue. To make a long story short and save you from the boring details I'll just tell you that I gave up. If time is money it would have cost much less for me to simply send the artwork to FedEx and pay for it but I'm not sure I want it that badly. The thing is, I spent almost an hour on the phone with the support guy trying to recreate the issue so they could fix it, at the end of the conversation I told him that a work around is what I really needed. I even told him what a simple solution might be (me just emailing the art rather than using the broken form). But, since he works for a large corporation he could not say "yes, just do that, it'll be okay."
I really do appreciate these large businesses trying to support the small local businesses and in doing so realized that I still love my independent, local printer.
Check out the gallery page - Future Relics Gallery by Lori Buff
Hi Lori
ReplyDeleteYou were much more patient than me to be on the phone that long :) Good luck with your sales
Anna
It bugs me that Amex is the sponsor of shop small saturday since they charge higher credit card fees to merchants than the other cards. Most small businesses with a merchant account don't accept Amex because of those fees.
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