Rare Book Monthly
Articles - February - 2009 Issue
Dealing With Customer Service On Line
In the next few days, I went to my ABE account and found orders for about thirty books, half of which I didn't have in my inventory and hadn't had for months. What the heck?! My cool, calm facade was beginning to crack a bit. I wasn't yelling yet, but I was borderline. The next day, I purged my old inventory, sent along my new file (I turn it over at least thrice a week), and noticed that they had me down for almost three times as many books in stock as I actually had for sale. I emailed them again, told them that they had books in my inventory that hadn't been in my store for months and that had long ago and far away been deleted. Their left-hand agent said that I really should purge my inventory before I sent in a new file. Huh?
I went to their web site to upload and when I hit the purge button, it went to the page and said, 'A book purge has already been requested and will be processed with your next file upload.' This was the same note I got the week BEFORE when I requested a purge, so their system was not purging my books and when I sent them a new file it was just putting it on top of the old file so I had triplicates of every book and all the sold books were back online. I said @$#-&f-%-^*$#%. I was getting mad now. I always purge before loading a new inventory file. I've been sending these files for years.
So finally, after raising my voice on the phone and peppering them with emails, they said that if I didn't straighten my inventory out soon, they would have to drop me from their site. I said that as far as I was concerned, if this was what they called "customer service" they could take it and ... well, you know. After that threat, I actually got an email from a very polite representative saying that they had finally turned it over to their technical department. Finally!
Next day an automated message told me that they had not purged my books when I asked them to as I had reduced my inventory by more than 25% of the current online inventory and, if the book purge and replacement file was intentional, to please reply so they could process my request to reduce my book count. After letting out a piercing scream that sent my dog skittering under the desk, I emailed them back and said that if I said purge and replace four times in a row, I meant purge and replace, dammit.
The next morning I had three new orders, but they still were not coming to my email, I had to go in and check the website every morning, which I did anyway. I emailed again - don't even try to phone them! The answer came back three days later - amazing: It seems that their system had not picked up my purges or my new inventory files, but of course, since I am technologically challenged, I just assumed, as did they, that it was my fault. But, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, it wasn't! At this point, ABE and I have parted company.
The bad news is that the U.S. Post Office is raising its rates, yet again, in May. Here we go again! More later, we're off to Costa Rica and will have more news next month. Saludos.
