Joho the Blog
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September 05, 2007
Gevalia has a practically irresistible deal. For just a few dollars, they'll send you a quite nice electric coffee maker, and some coffee. They also enroll you in their automatic coffee delivery program, but you can opt out any time. So, we didn't resist. The coffeemaker is fine. The coffees that we've tried are mediocre and over-priced, imo. So, after three shipments, trying different flavors — I'm too old to do take the come-on and run, which, by the way, is how I got my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1971, and I still feel bad about it — I decided to cancel. The Gevalia Web site lets you manage your account. You can select coffees, change the delivery schedule, suspend service ... but not cancel. So, I wrote an email to the support address they list. I got a robo-reply saying they'd get back to me in 12 hours. They didn't. Two more messages later, and they still never acknowledged my email. So, I gave in and used that thing with the buttons and the speaker that you hold up to your face. What do you call those things? I got through quickly and was told that my account had already been cancelled. Two lessons for retailers on the Web: 1. Acknowledge your flipping emails, or else we'll eat up your time, money, and good will sending the same email over and over again. 2. Always always always give us a button to allow us to do the worst thing you can imagine. The alternative is that we'll end the relationship and then blog our complaints about you out loud, no matter how petty it makes us look. [Tags: marketing retail gevalia ] Posted
by D. Weinberger at September 5, 2007 05:21 PM
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Comments
I did the Gevalia thing way back in pre-internet days when you had to send them A LETTER to quit! I could not drink the coffee because it's waaayy too high on the caffeine.
Back then they were only sending out ceramic coffee canisters, but I've still got mine!
Posted by: Trudy W. Schuett | September 6, 2007 11:43 AM
I too have had problems with the gevalia costomer service department. This sounds like a great deal until you try to join thier "club"I had problems trying to sign in and after three times gave up. I called them to ask what was going on with thier service, thier reply was unsatisfactory.Best thing I could say about this company is that P.T. Barnum was right, "there's a sucker born every minute." I guess everybody likes the idea of getting something for nothing, in this case they can keep the aggrivation they have caused. I hope thier product is better thin thier service. I too am a sucker for what looks like a good deal.
Posted by: chasmanos | October 13, 2007 06:48 AM