Turnkey Music Customer Service Is Rubbish

By Mark on Thursday 3 November 2005 at 12:04

Here are two extremes, which also serve as an example of why I think small companies are best.

GOOD - Aroundabout Sound

At about 4pm last Tuesday, I order an acoustic guitar from the Clearance section of their web site, (which shows 6 large, crisp photos of the guitar, so I'm confident in my purchase). Straight away I get a confirmation email telling me what I''ve ordered and how much it has cost.

The same night, I receive an email (from a real person), telling me that they've processed my order and will be shipping it the next day.

The next day, I receive another email telling me that my order has been collected by the carriers and should be with me by the end of the week - and on Friday morning, it arrives, at the office where I work, in perfect condition. Sweet.

BAD - Turnkey

On Sunday I order a number of items from Turnkey's site. All fine, apart from the fact that I can't have my order delivered to any other address than my billing address, which I'm never at during the day. This means a long drive to some out of the way courier depot when I get home and find a 'we tried to deliver' card in my hallway.

Then I get a confirmation mail from autogen@mediatools.co.uk which just says:

“Thank you for placing your order”

and nothing else, which:

On Monday at about 4:30 I get an email from someone (a human this time) at Turnkey telling me that one of the items I'd ordered is out of stock, and that it would be 7-10 days till they can get it. Maybe. I need the stuff quicker than that, so I phone up the number at the bottom of the mail to sort it out.

The phone's answered straight away, which is a good sign. However, after a short conversation, the girl I'm speaking to says that she can't look up the order based on the Customer Number I've got in the email - she needs my web order number, which I don't have handy.

When I ask her why they sent me this number if it's no use, she says that only the web orders department can look up orders based on the Customer Number, and gives me a number to reach them. This number is the same number I just dialled to reach her.

I ring it again anyway, and lo and behold, I'm now through to someone else. The guy I'm speaking to sounds like I've interrupted his lunch, and is pretty much totally disinterested in helping - in fact, he tells me to ring web orders.

When I explain that I've just been given this number to try and sort out my order, he agrees to 'let web orders know' to remove the out of stock item and send the rest immediately. He then gives me an order reference (which is totally different to my Customer Number and the Order Number I got from my initial order), and we leave it at that.

Thursday. Still nothing has arrived, even though Turnkey state next working day delivery on their site. I ring again.

This time, the person answering the phone actually says 'Web Orders', so I know I'm in the right place (at last). He tells me that he can't look up my order because the stock system isn't working, and he'll call me back...

About an hour later, to their credit, someone does call back - it's the guy who sent me the original email about the out of stock item. He apologises and says that although someone has put a note on the order details, it makes no sense and so nothing has been done about it. He then tells me he will remove the out of stock item now and I should receive the goods tomorrow.

I'll let you know whether that actually is the case...

Basically, what's come of this is that I will never order from Turnkey again, and I will tell anyone I speak to about it not to either. To be fair, everyone I spoke to there was helpful enough, but it just seems like such a badly run/organised company that it's not worth the hassle. However, I would order from Aroundabout Sound again tomorrow, even if they were slightly more expensive than their competitors (which they weren't anyway).

The moral of the story is, look after your customers.

3 comments:

On Friday 4 November 2005 at 15:30, Mark Bell said:

Well, I just rang again, and the order STILL hasn't been sent.

Obviously the guy who I spoke to yesterday was also talking complete bollocks, and basically my hopes of actually recording something this weekend are down the shitter.

Honestly, in this day and age, it shouldn't be this hard to give someone your business.

On Tuesday 8 November 2005 at 10:47, Mark Bell said:

I got the stuff last night - it was all there (thank Christ), but there were several holes in the courier bag where some stands I'd ordered had been chucked in without securing them.

Also, the mic pop shield I ordered was absolutely nothing like the picture on the Turnkey web site - in fact, it's the same as the one I already have which I was replacing...

Frankly though, I just can't be bothered to send it back to them and put myself through the hassle of trying to find out what's going on with my refund.

On Thursday 16 February 2006 at 12:20, Mark said:

Not just me then.

Incidentally, I remember Jyoti Mishra (the writer of that article) being on Radio One as White Town when I worked in Saltash after leaving sixth form!

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