Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

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nbg
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by nbg »

I have never paid up front for a service.

Perhaps that just means most of the brands I own, excluding CW, don’t follow “industry standard”.....

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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by Mikkei4 »

KevinB wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 3:27 am
Somersett wrote: Thu Jun 13, 2019 6:44 pm By the end of this sorry saga ( four months plus ) the Customer Service Manager would neither take my phone calls nor respond to my requests that he contact me. He was always conveniently in a meeting when I called and requests for him to call me back were ignored.
If I were Mike or Chris and saw this I'd stand in the manager's office as they called you to apologize than ask for the phone and apologize for the company. They lost your watch! An apology and something tangible to make it up to you should be the first thing they do. Yes ultimately you got it back, but the entire situation needs so much smoothing over.

At this point I think a day or two of time spent from management calling every customer in the support queue and asking for feedback would be the first thing I'd recommend. The customers will never forget it and the feedback is priceless. In the end all the ads in Waterloo won't outpace a reputation for poor service. I don't think they are there yet, but this needs to get righted and quickly. They can have this fixed by the end of June, but this needs all hands on deck and management in daily digging out.
IMO CW are at a bit off a watershed - Unless the current glut of errors, lost watches, poor emails, poor CS attitude and lack of direct customer contact is fixed and CW make it known it have been fixed there will continue to be that element of doubt whether to buy another CW watch, whether to have it serviced and whether to encourage new buyers by writing positive reviews.

Despite Mike France stating that all communication with customers is up to date it obviously isn't.

That Scott Callaway won't take or make telephone calls is unacceptable for the Customer Services Manager in charge of a failing department. I emailed him earlier this year and got nothing in return. Maybe he/they were really busy but that's no excuse.

I wish I could get to the forthcoming London GTG - Sadly I can envisage all the good news of the Mk3 release and forthcoming releases being overtaken by what has largely become the subject of this Forum recently, i.e. poor CS in all its aspects.
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by H0rati0 »

I do hope some people who have been following these threads make it to the GTG and create some serious waves.

Sending a watch back to the wrong customer and then taking three months to get it back? What the hell was going on?

And that is not the first time we have heard that. :headbash:
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by scooter »

Rolex trusted me to pay my service bill of £780 after it was serviced back in 2015 as I'm sure most companies do.

Why should a company think that the bill won't be paid? They have your watch after all and would not return it without full settlement.

Perhaps others could comment on other brands payment procedures to see if we can establish what the Industry standard is.

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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by H0rati0 »

scooter wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 10:11 am Rolex trusted me to pay my service bill of £780 after it was serviced back in 2015 as I'm sure most companies do.

Why should a company think that the bill won't be paid? They have your watch after all and would not return until the bill is settled.

Perhaps others could comment on other brands payment procedures to see if we can see what the Industry standard is.

scooter
I too have never paid for work or a service up front. They have your watch - no more security or trust required.

Perhaps in CW's case they need paying up front because arguing about payment after they've lost it is probably a loser.
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by Thermexman »

When I sent my C600 in for service & a repair, I got an email on 04/04, confirming receipt and stating that it would go to the workshop for inspection.

On 17/04 I received another email, outlining the workshop technician's findings, complete with the costings. It stated that work would proceed once payment was received. I gave my paypal details immediately and received an invoice to pay on the 19/04. I duly paid and the watch was returned on 24/05.

I just accepted this as normal? I trusted them. I don't have an issue with this.

I guess that I'd feel different if my watch never arrived back home!
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by Bungle-ator »

^^^^^I would be quite happy to proceed in that manner as well Taxman.

I'll be honest and say that I found the email I received very odd and it took me a while to process it. I'm not currently treating it as a real response/quote. Katrina even asks me to pay for a battery :shock:

This is the email:

Hi Scott,



I have had the watch passed back to me by the head technician and he has stated that the watch just needs a mechanical repair.



The cost to repair the watch will be £365.00 plus returns postage of £7.95



To pay for the battery you can either call in with your card details or supply me with a PayPal email address.



The current repair time frame is 7-8 weeks.



Kind regards,





Katrina van Geene

Customer Service Advisor
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by H0rati0 »

Bungle-ator wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:20 am

I have had the watch passed back to me by the head technician and he has stated that the watch just needs a mechanical repair.



The cost to repair the watch will be £365.00 plus returns postage of £7.95



To pay for the battery you can either call in with your card details or supply me with a PayPal email address.



The current repair time frame is 7-8 weeks.



Kind regards,





Katrina van Geene

Customer Service Advisor
£365 is a chunk in CW terms, that sounds like a whole new SH21 movement. The battery is a nice touch. 8)
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by baldrick »

Essex Paul wrote:
Bahnstormer_vRS wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 8:12 am
Essex Paul wrote:^^^^ Sounds iffy. So within 3 hours it’d been
examined by a technician and knew how much it was to fix? Whilst people wait weeks for a diagnosis?
That is extraordinary. And no you don’t pay upfront.
Are they going completely loopy now?
Like you I only own one and would like to get another. But don’t know if I can knowing the after sales care has completely imploded.
Beg to differ Paul.

CW have always operated the system, for service and repairs, of paying up front (PayPal) or authorising payment (credit / debit card) prior to carrying out the work.

Seems to be an industry standard, even Citizen do it, as mentioned in this thread.

Guy

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I stand corrected Guy, although that’s not the case for Rolex. They quote, you give the go ahead then pay when you pick it up. So not sure about industry standard.
I certainly wouldn’t pay for anything else to be repaired up front up.
Same for Longines and Omega. Quote first for approval, pay on collection.

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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by Kyledemo »

Update (well, lack of update)

I had not heard anything since Monday, and Mondays reply was “can you see if any of my colleagues’ emails landed in your junk folder?”, to which I immediately replied that no email had landed anywhere and I wanted to know the status that day.

Radio silence (imagine that), so I emailed the chain to Scott Callaway, who’s email I got from another forum thread.... not a word.

Thank you guys for the replies and “backing”. What else can I do? It’s obvious even the CSM isn’t who I need to talk to. What is the next course of action? Is there anyone you can recommend in this zoo that can actually get s**t done?
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by lisnalee »

Kyledemo wrote:Update (well, lack of update)

I had not heard anything since Monday, and Mondays reply was “can you see if any of my colleagues’ emails landed in your junk folder?”, to which I immediately replied that no email had landed anywhere and I wanted to know the status that day.

Radio silence (imagine that), so I emailed the chain to Scott Callaway, who’s email I got from another forum thread.... not a word.

Thank you guys for the replies and “backing”. What else can I do? It’s obvious even the CSM isn’t who I need to talk to. What is the next course of action? Is there anyone you can recommend in this zoo that can actually get s**t done?
Just phone them up, and keep phoning them till it's resolved.

That's what I'm doing and so far things are moving along in the right direction at a very fast pace.
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by Lavaine »

2 days, 4 pages, and radio silence from Kip. Maybe he's thrown in the towel as well?
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by jtc »

I'd be threatening escalation via outside means if it was me. That behaviour is terrible.
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by Kip »

Lavaine wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 6:22 pm 2 days, 4 pages, and radio silence from Kip. Maybe he's thrown in the towel as well?
And what would you have me say or do?

CW is well aware of these problem topics. Mike France has already issued a statement. I am certain he has discovered that not all old issues have been resolved, despite what he stated.

My own observations…
CW need to make warranty conditions clear on all fronts.

CW needs to improve the internal processing and communication systems. This is already in the works and being tested as we speak. Hopefully this will do as intended and a customer will know where the watch is at all stages.

Automatic notifications in all areas are not functioning properly regarding customer service inquiries, magazine requests and shipping.

CW needs to Improve/change final QC process to eliminate mis shipments and niggly QC issues.
Publish service rates again.

For all the seemingly doom and gloom regarding service, what we have had over the past week is one topic questioning the terms of warranty and 3 topics related to service specific issues. Within those three topics, by three different people, 4 others have mentioned specific recent issues while everyone else has been piling on with old issues and/or discussing possible solutions, venting, offering condolences. Somehow these few issues get everyone thinking that CW overall customer service is a now a disaster.

I do not believe that, despite the power of the internet, the overall issues are anywhere near as bad as many would have us believe. If it was, CW would no longer exist.

While I genuinely feel for those that have issues, and sincerely hope they are resolved quickly and in a satisfactory manor, things are not, nor cannot, be as bad as a few topics make it seem. When considering the volume of watches that CW ships, I suspect the overall (percentage wise) issues are quite small.

It is my sincere hope that CW’s new processes will resolve the common errors internally and communications will be improved, and more personal emails will come forth. This should change, moving forward with IT improvements, process improvements and internal training.

I am not inside CW. I do not know what specifics they are addressing. I do know that they watch the forum. Regardless, if you have an issue with CW, the forum cannot solve it. You must deal directly with CW. If you want to discuss/suggest, then this is the place.
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Re: Another CS nightmare (still in progress)

Post by Essex Paul »

Understand where you’re coming from Kip and that CW have promised to introduce new systems. But, for a growing company that sells 20k watches a year with all the returns and servicing, repairs etc not once has anyone mentioned expanding the workforce!
You can have the bees knees computer systems and really nice people working them but you simply can’t work through the workload they have now with just a handful of CS staff and technicians. Impossible.
I’d also understand the increase service costs as some have mentioned lately if they have taken on extra staff and you get your watch back in an acceptable time frame. :thumbup:
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