UPDATE: Fathead corrected the situation and is taking the product back. Now I would suggest updating your website and including a warning with the product in the future. Thank you to those at Fathead for your assistance.

Nothing fires me up more than poor customer service. What gets me even more fired up though is when they aren't even reasonable!

We recently purchased two Dry Erase boards from Fathead.com at Core3 Solutions (WARNING: Read this entire blog post before you get all excited and go buy one). I would normally give you a nice, easy link to check them out, but I don't even want to help their search engine ranking at this point.

Anyway, ordering was simple and they arrived in a timely fashion. The box arrived with the Fathead, a tool to help you mount it, and a marker. Sadly the marker was dried out and one of my technicians quickly threw it in a trash can. Why save it? We have 20 other dry erase markers anyway that we could use.

We quickly hung one up in our IT Services office and used a green Expo dry erase marker to draw a sweet dinosaur head in one corner of the board. These are the dry erase markers that work on every other dry erase board in our building. When we went to erase the dinosaur head, we quickly realized that it was not going to erase - this dinosaur head was permanent! I grabbed the Expo marker, studied it for a bit to be 100% sure it said "dry erase" on it, and began to tear in to the box the Fathead came in, looking for instructions or a warning of some sort. Nothing. I then went to the website, desperately in search of a warning or instructions there. Nothing. The website even claims, "This Dry Erase Fathead has all the great benefits of other dry erase products..." At this point, I realized that perhaps only the marker that came with it would be the only "dry erase" marker you could use on the board.

Fast forward about a week to today. I finally found some time to sit down and place a call in to Fathead. Knowing this is one of Dan Gilbert's companies, I assumed the customer support would be somewhat decent, if not phenomenal. A home-grown, Detroit-based company that is up and coming is always hungry for super satisfied customers. And for most smaller companies, they typically go out of their way for their customers and would certainly understand my situation.

The first person I spoke to listened to my situation, put me on hold, and came back to tell me her supervisor would not accept the damaged Fathead back. I realized I would get nowhere with her and asked to speak to her supervisor. While on the phone with her supervisor, I quickly re-explained my situation and begged the question, "Why am I to assume this is the only 'dry erase' marker I could use?" To which the supervisor replied, "Well, I guess that is the problem with assumptions." This infuriated me further. At this point (and through the rest of the conversation), I was pretty calm, but inside my heart rate went up and my blood started to boil.

I asked the supervisor, "How hard is it to put a warning on the website, or even print a simple 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and put it in the box with a bold warning?!" She suggested they should probably do that in the future but still declined my request for a return. I asked to speak to her supervisor and was told he was walking in to a meeting. I left him a voicemail and will see where we get from here, but judging by the previous conversations, I don't think I will get far.

Which brings me to my point! Often times in the world of customer service, the customer and the supplier may not necessarily see eye to eye. What bothers me the most though and is something that we preach here every day at Core3 Solutions is that as a product or service provider, it is still our duty to listen to the customer, apologize for the misunderstanding (if one is present), and offer a reasonable solution. I will keep you updated on my status with FatHead in this blog post. Let's hope for the best!

And in the mean-time, DON'T BUY FROM FATHEAD.COM (yes, that is my opinion and I am certainly entitled to it)!

Labels: fathead dry erase sucks

I realized I haven't blogged here in a while. Other Internet attractions such as Facebook and Twitter have stolen some of the attention away, but as I started browsing some of my old blog entries from many, many years ago, I realized how much I miss blogging. Maybe it isn't the blogging itself that I miss - I think ultimately I will look back years from now and say, "Man, I wish I had blogged more during that time in my life."

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Opportunity is available for those who look the hardest.

It's been over a year since I have logged into MySpace and I just did. Wow, that was weird!

If Apple asked me, "On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with your new MacBook?" I would say 10+.

Trying our ping.fm. Pretty sweet! Setup Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, and GTalk.

I watch the Today show almost every morning. Most mornings it's only for 5 minutes or less, but I usually always catch at least a little bit. I've wondered for a while about a familiar face in the crowd. He's always there, rain or shine, almost every day of the year. This morning, I decided to finally Google him and came up with this article. His name is Lenny Boyette and I am glad I have solved that mystery!

Here's an interesting article about various websites Terms of Service that Curt sent to me yesterday. Not sure how much of this is actually enforceable (as I am not a lawyer), but still an interesting read nonetheless. I wonder what the Blogger.com TOS says since it is part of Google. For all I know, they now own both my left and right hands!