Fathead...Fair to Assume?

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

NOTE: This blog entry has been updated with a positive conclusion at the end.  I also wrote a follow-up article, posted here.

We recently purchased two Dry Erase boards from Fathead.com (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!

UPDATE: Fathead.com made it right and is taking the product back.  Thank you Fathead!  Check out my follow-up blog entry.

Posted August 20, 2009 | Read all posts by Paul Chambers