The response…
I am going to post all my corespondance with mybaglady so you may decide for yourselves if this is a company you should deal with…
Hi, just wanted to give you some feedback…
We have been away on vacation for the last number of weeks so that is the reason for the delay.
Thankfully we told the staff to wait until our return before introducing the “bags”.
Firstly, upon inspection we were surprised to find that the bags did not have any form of mylar like
lining or dead air space? I know it does not say anything about that on the web page, however, it does claim “insulated”. It also says "160 deg ".
So, I decide to be the guinea pig. We cook a medium sized, medium topping load pizza. Put it in the box and straight into the bag, seal it with the adhesive strip and drive home. Car is warmed up with heater set at 70deg.
Remember, this came right from the oven to the bag. I timed it from that point. We waited until
13 minutes had passed thinking this would be an avg length of time before a customer actually opened the bag.
First sign of a problem was the top of the box was wet. Not damp, wet. My fingers actually tore the bottom of the box pulling it out it was that wet. I was faced with a wet soggy mess. To make matters worse the pizza was most assuredly not 160 deg. Luke warm at best.
As to the “re-usable” adhesive strip… after two or three opening/closings it has lost 85% of it’s adhesiveness.
In short I now have 400 bags that do NOT function remotely close to as advertised. I would dearly love to GIVE them to my competition but due to my name being on them can not.
Please contact me ASAP at 250-893-8853 to discuss a solution.
Followed up with…
Hi, I sent you an email on Sunday. It is now Tuesday. I called your 1-800 number this morning and was told you had received my message. I asked for a return call today. I have heard nothing.
I posted a very ambiguous question on
PMQ.com this evening. Check the link below. Please note the responses. I am available on my cell 250-893-8853 from 8:00am PST tomorrow. I would really appreciate a call to discuss this.
Clive Brown
"
And now for the best part… The response
Dear Mr. Brown:
Please excuse the delay in getting back to you. As the marketing manager for Your Bag Lady, I needed to digest your email letter and respond to you in a manner that addresses what I consider the facts of the situation.
You document in detail a subjective test of one of our insulated bags out of the 400 bags that we shipped you, foil stamped with your name and phone number on it. I am answering you also by email so that we both have a written understanding of each others point of view. By the way, I see where you have posted a criticism of our company before receivng our answer.
The facts are: an independent testing laboratory with heat sensing istrumets attested to the fact that a 16" or 18" pizza put into the insulated ag and sealed, it remained hot at 160 degrees after 1/2 hour. The pizza was not crisp ut that is not an attribute that we advertisied. People would much prefer a hot pizza over a cold crisp pizza.
I believe that you had an initial expectation, not expressed in your letter, that you would be able to sell all or most of the bags. Over 10 days elapsed between your receipt of the bags by FedEx and your email letter to us, to have not offered these bags to your customers for sale and found out unfortunately, that because of the economic climate, they are not selling. Hence your interdiction that you took a few weeks vacation before you tested out our bags, and we question why you would ‘be a guneau pig’ in the first place.
Our advertising offers the option to sell them also use them in promotions. Almost all of our customers are now using the bags in promotions to get more take-out customers and increase unit sales. That is, they give the bags away free after a certain number of purchases.
I suggest that you do the same and allow your customers to do the judging rather than prejudge the quality of our bags and the material that you think should be used to create an insulated barrier. My guess is that you have less expertise and experience in moisture barrier protective materials than the professionsals in our manufacturing and testing plants.
Unfortunately your expectation of sales did not live up to the reality of the situation.
I believe that you created a self-serving experiment to prove that our bags will not do the job intended, and you ask us to take your word as to the outcome of the experiment on one bag. If you expect us to pick up the bags and issue you a credit on them, this will not happen. You have the choice to change your reality by by using the bags, and as I said, allow your customers to get the benefit of them by keeping their pizzas hot, their car seat clean, ad be able to have your name and phone number in front of them when they need to order your great pizzas.
We have sold close to 20,000 of our bags to independent and franchised za chains and have not received one single complain on any of the issues you addressed. If there is the possibility that one bag in 400 is defective, we would be happy to refund you $1.95.
I offer you the opportunity to rethink your strategy so that there is a win-win situation here and that you will reorder the bags when you need to.
Very truly yours,
Zal Puchkoff
Marketing Manager
Your Bag Lady
And finally my response…
Firstly I did not post any criticism of your product or company. If you were to actually read my post on
PMQ.com you would note I merely stated that I was awaiting a response to some feedback I had sent you. I made mention of the delayed response and asked if anybody else had had any experience with your company. I made ZERO mention of whether that feedback was positive or negative.
This was responded to by another customer of yours from Illinois, that I had had zero contact with prior to that posting. Funny thing is he volunteered the same problem without any “coaching”. You should be aware that he has now removed them from display after selling two in three weeks and having the same issues as myself.
Secondly, I find the tone of your letter speaks volumes re your companies outlook towards customer satisfaction. To suggest that any customer wants a soggy pizza does not even deserve a response.
Thirdly, re your incorrect assumption that I intended to sell the bags… I had in fact intended to give them out as part of my ongoing promotion to increase the pick-up side of my business.
Why would you assume that I wanted all my money back? Did I even suggest that? Did I anywhere suggest you “pick the bags up”? Maybe, just maybe, I was looking to have an open discussion with yourself re my problem and hopefully come to a mutual agreement we could both live with. That being the case, my next posting to pizza forums would have had a very different tone than what I am now intending to post. (Copies of all our correspondence)
The balance of your letter about “changing my reality”, insinuating I tried to sell the bags,failed and made up a story about being out of the country is so outlandish that I can not even comment.
So be it. You have made your position very clear.
I shall now go out of my way to spread my letter of complaint and your reply. I sincerely hope this is the outcome you were looking for and you are in no way feeling just a little? recalcitrant re your reply/letter of rebuke to myself?
One last thing, you may wish to explore the wonder of spell-check before sending out any further business correspondence. It tends to improve a customers impression of the author/company.
Clive Brown.
I hope that this posting has the effect that mybaglady was looking for?
