VapeCrafter

[VapedCrusader]

@VapeCrafter - care to address this thread at all?

 

[BigNasty]

Cherry deary,
This is the hall of shame, just edit out the personal info and post away.

 

[VapedCrusader]

Yea i would also like to see that email you mentioned

 

[cherrycakes]

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Your Order
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2015 11:08:28 -0500

Jess,

Please pardon the fact that I have not given your order very high priority since we refunded your money to you. As you know we’ve had several problems with the local USPS branch that we’ve just recently resolved. After we took care of all of that on our end, my intention was to send you your stuff as soon as possible after it was ready, but after seeing all of the unnecessarily disparaging comments and remarks all over the internet, I’ve given less importance to getting you that last order as soon as possible, which again has already been refunded.

Let me be clear, we did send it out and you will get it very soon, but we certainly did not spend any extra money to send it overnight.

I know this is in contradiction to my last e-mail, but that was before I saw your Yelp review of us, written AFTER you received your last order stating that you never got anything from us (neglecting to mention that we had already told you that your free contest winnings were low priority for us at a time when we had far fewer employees and throughput and were struggling to keep up with regular order volume), and BEFORE you placed and PAID EXTRA FOR a second order from us when I had already offered you some completely free product anyway. This makes me question your motives here. I’m not sure why you’ve developed such an agenda of hate and abhorrence towards us when we’ve been nothing but courteous and professional towards you. Yes, I understand it’s annoying when you don’t get something that you’re expecting, but have we not clearly delineated to you the problems we were experiencing on the shipping front? Pardon my French, but it’s not like we were just sitting on our asses doing nothing about it.

I agree that we were lacking in customer service response times, especially over the holiday weeks when literally nobody was at work. And yes, we were slow to get your order ready and we faced a multitude of problems shipping, but time and time again I have been straightforward with you and tried to explain to you that we are a small company with less than 10 employees, just starting out, and we got very popular very quickly, to the point where it’s tough to keep up and maintain everything all at once. I mean, we’re literally only 5 months old and dealing with problems we never even thought were problems we’d have to deal with!

It’s not an easy thing to start a company like ours, and it’s even harder to cope with a rapidly growing customer base at the same time as rapidly multiplying problems on all fronts, many of them unpreventable and frankly unforeseeable, but we are very steadily getting over the hump and back to steady state. In fact, we received an order last night that was shipped out this morning and will arrive in the customer’s hands tomorrow! If you don’t believe me and you’d like to confirm that with the customer himself I’ll ask him if he’d mind e-mailing you about it. It’s amazing the leaps and bounds we can make when we’ve finally figured out how not to get our packages lost by the post office.

All that being said, your order is on its way and you will probably get it towards the end of the week. Enjoy your juice -- we made it with the same painstaking care and quality that we make every single order. Should you ever order from us again we’ll make no differentiation between yours and anyone else’s order, but given that in your eyes we’re the worst company in the world for sending you two entirely free orders while being transparent about the problems we were having, I doubt we will be receiving your business again anytime soon. That is a bummer for me, that we’ve let you down this much, but I can’t control your perception of us, the best I can do is control our internal processes and quality to the point where the product speaks for itself.

This e-mail is not intended to be meant as a negative in any way, just as justification for why I’ve been slow to move on your last order after stating that I would ship it overnight. Even if you do decide to take this e-mail personally (which, again, is not meant to be harmful or negative in any way), given the fact that you’ve already made several negative posts about us on VU and Reddit, as well as Yelp and probably several other review sites on the internet, I doubt you can disparage our name much more (please don’t take that as a challenge, though). All I can say to that is, you’ll see plenty more good press about us in the coming months than any further negative attention. I am confident In the fact that we’ve resolved the vast majority of problems in our systems and we will continue to manufacture the best quality and most customizable e-juice at some pretty reasonable prices.

Thank you for your interest in our service to this point and I sincerely hope you enjoy our product.

Yours,

Kaween

 

[cherrycakes]

Have not received second order from december, had to file a claim with my bank for my refund, and got a nasty email. Wonderful customer service!

 

[cherrycakes]

If any other company took a month to deliver their order, they would be out of business. Just saying

 

[driver379]

Have not received second order from december, had to file a claim with my bank for my refund, and got a nasty email. Wonderful customer service!

Wow just wow! Thanks for the thread I think you may have saved me some money. I was planning to use these folks to test juice recipes before ordering bulk flavors. Guess I'll find someone else.

 

[VapedCrusader]

Wow.. I saw a lot of excuses.. then more excuses. and ending with excuses..

The fact that they saw your reviews and then purposely took their time sending things out is pretty low.. but then claims you are getting the same treatment as any other customer..

With the time he took to type up that entire email, he could have sent out some other orders that people were waiting on LOL

 

[VH fan]

Have not received second order from december, had to file a claim with my bank for my refund, and got a nasty email. Wonderful customer service!

I'll say , thats some excellent CS for sure , will consider giving them a shot in the future , thanks CC.

 

[Newheart301]

Why the hell is VU endorsing them ,by putting their ad up on the banner ? I guess ad money is more important than treating members to vendors that are honest ,and offer GOOD costumer service. !!!!! No worries they'll never get a dime from me.

 

[InMyImage]

One thing I personally have learned from this thread...

Don't mess with @cherrycakes !

 

[VapedCrusader]

Why the hell is VU endorsing them ,by putting their ad up on the banner ? I guess ad money is more important than treating members to vendors that are honest ,and offer GOOD costumer service. !!!!! No worries they'll never get a dime from me.

I'm sure we can tag some admins in this post to add some helpful opinions

 

[VH fan]

Why the hell is VU endorsing them ,by putting their ad up on the banner ? I guess ad money is more important than treating members to vendors that are honest ,and offer GOOD costumer service. !!!!! No worries they'll never get a dime from me.

Regardless of what anybody says , bottom line is it's always about the almighty $ , don't be fooled into thinking it's about anything else . There is no good explanation for that . Good call on your part .

I would love to see a mod with the balls to call it like it is but i wouldn't hold my breath.

 

[Demoniacal]

I have to say this to all who are bashing a company that they haven't tried, based on one person's accounting, that might be just a little skewed, was told a refund on Thursday, which, given how some CC companies work, it can take up to 2 weeks for a refund to post to your account, even if the refund is processed the same day you return something, and already bitching about a chargeback on Tuesday? Look at the other threads about this vendor, and see that only one person has had this severe of an issue with them, which started over not recieving a free order in what they thought was a prompt enough time. They have had issues, but after dealing with them myself, I will do so again. Reading the email sent to Cherrycakes, and looking at all the bashing she has done, in this thread and others, I'm surprised they were as generous as they were. Working in retail has taught me alot of things, one of them being customer service can only go so far with customers who want the impossible, and are not understanding if there are ANY hiccups in your trying to give it to them.

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

Hey guys,

I don't get on VU much, our CTO, Robby, usually handles the posts on here, but I felt the need to speak my peace on this post in particular, so I'm just gonna lay it all out here.

When cherrycakes first ordered, we had every intention of getting her juice mixed, packed, and shipped as soon as it was ready, and in fact we did just that. Hers, along with all of the other Craft of the Month winners as well as our paying customers, at the time we made everything chronologically, with no differentiation in priority whether it was free or paid or what. We made the decision very early on that we would just charge one low standard shipping rate and ship everything USPS -- boy was that a mistake.

In September, we were having our orders picked up on a daily basis from our facility. 90% of them shipped but 10% of them ended up turning into orders that never made it and several customer complaints in October. We dealt with these as best we could, offering refunds, store credit, replacements, etc. It was really easy to keep up with it at the time because we had maybe 200 customers and maybe 15-20 complaints that came in. All to be expected in this kind of business, and we were happy to at least address the concerns. It was at that point that we decided it was more secure to switch from pickups to dropoffs at the post office, at least then we would be secure in knowing our boxes were at the post office and not just in a truck before being officially in the USPS system. We also decided to increase our shipping rates a tad and just ship everything USPS Priority to try to distance ourselves from the competition.

Then, we had the October Craft of the Month contest, of which cherrycakes was a winner. At this point we were shipping between 30-40 packages a week between both our retail business and our wholesale business, some volume but nothing unbearable. Because of that level of volume, certain weeks we'd only be operating two days a week and shipping out one day a week because volumes weren't huge yet and we could get away with shipping orders that came in Thursday-Tuesday on the immediately following Wednesday without it resulting in major delays. The week that we shipped out cherrycakes' order, and the other two craft of the month winners' orders, and several other retail orders, and some wholesale orders -- nothing got shipped. There was no record of any movement on the tracking numbers. So, just like that, we had several dozen complaints piling up and no idea what happened to the packages. We called USPS, they couldn't help us because they had no record of our stuff. We were SOL and had to remake orders, so that's what we did. We also contacted everybody that had to experience a delayed order and apologized profusely, offered refunds, store credits, discounts, anything we could. Again, a bad situation but nothing that isn't to be expected in this kind of business.

Then, it happened again. And again. We figured our stuff might be getting stolen rather than lost. We made the appropriate insurance claims and switched post offices to a different city a 15 minute drive away hoping that would finally fix it. Then it happened again. At this point, we got together and decided to entirely change the way we worked. We explored shipping everything FedEx or UPS but it was just too damn expensive for us to afford it for the volume we had. We changed our hours from what was a 5-day-a-week operation at that point to a 7-day-a-week operation. Our poor customer service guy Ryan didn't get a day off for two weeks straight. The customer complaints of "I never got my order" piled up and we tried as hard as we could to answer every single one. Several got lost in the shuffle and answered several days later. Things were extremely hectic. If ever anyone even hinted that they would like a refund, I made sure that refund was processed immediately but at the same time I made sure they still got what they ordered. I would rather lose a buck making someone happy than hold on to a buck and losing a customer.

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

In the midst of all this, between October and December, I issued cherrycakes a "we're sorry" coupon for 2 free 30-mL bottles. She had previously been a contest winner so she had already gotten 4 free 30-mL bottles from us, she never paid for any product nor shipping and we never asked her to. I issued her the coupon code so that she could use it and we could attempt to prove to her that we could ship very quickly. Of course, that didn't turn out to be the case, I jumped the gun with my confidence and we were still having problems by the time she placed her second order, which she did pay for and went in the queue with everyone else's orders. In the same e-mail, I also gave her my personal cell phone number and told her to contact me directly at my company e-mail address or call or text me if she ever ran into problems with us again, and I would not hesitate to find a solution for her. I was unaware by this point in time that she had already been all over the internet telling anyone who would listen that she never received anything from us, that she never received the order she made with us --- the order that was part of a giveaway that she paid nothing for, which she in fact had received by this point. I don't know why she went out of her way to do it, but when I saw all of this weeks later, it did rub me the wrong way just a tad.

She ordered on December 14th, a Sunday. We were able to have it mixed and packaged and out the door by December 19th. She received an automated tracking number notification from one of our shipping vendors, stamps.com. At this point in time, we had switched from the Chicopee post office to the Springfield post office and this was our first time dropping stuff off in Springfield, a much, much larger post office that is actually the regional hub connecting New England to the Mid-Atlantic. I actually took these in myself since it was the first time using this new place. I dropped it off, and we waited for the tracking to change, and waited, and waited.

By December 21st, the tracking had not moved an inch. I also had no employees in the office because everyone wanted Christmas week off. What am I gonna say, "no you have to work Christmas week or else?" no, I'm going to say "go ahead, I can pick up the slack on my own, no problem" -- so that happened, and I was alone in my lab making orders, answering what e-mails I could, etc. The following week was very similar except instead of the whole week off most people only took most of the week off. Didn't matter to me, I still worked. This was the week cherrycakes started e-mailing the customer service inbox, which I did not check very often, because I was left alone to mix orders in the lab, and wasn't thinking to even check the customer service inbox. Yes, it's my fault, but I had previously told her to please e-mail me directly or call me or text me if she ran into any problems, I told her that very specifically.

Then finally she sent every e-mail published on the company website (myself, the CTO, the COO, and the customer service inbox) an angry e-mail demanding a refund. I don't fault her for being angry one bit. It was around 9 PM on January 1st. Robby, the CTO, responded within a half hour, apologized profusely, and processed the refund. Now, for our credit card processing we use Auithorize.net, which sends a confirmation to both vendor and customer whenever anything happens on any account, so I know she received this confirmation.

I e-mailed her the next morning saying listen, I'm very sorry this happened again, it's the same USPS issue compounded by a lack of staff the last two weeks, we will take care of it, I will overnight a package to you even though we already refunded you the money, and I am sorry. At that point, one of my friends brought to my attention the Yelp review she posted of us. Completely unfounded, lacking details that make us seem like crooks, and claiming she never received anything from us but posted after I know she received her first package from us, so that made me really not care anymore, because I knew no matter what I did for her, it would never be enough, she would always complain, and we would always be at fault. She's already told the entire internet how awful we are, yet somehow we still have fans who are willing to defend us and our customer service policies and our willingness to help the customer, and to be honest and courteous and straightforward with them. So, that's when I sent that e-mail that she so kindly copied here. If anyone hasn't read it, I'd like you to read it and please point out where I was rude to her in any way, apart from telling her very kindly that yes we were sorry and yes we refunded your order so at this point we are not going out of our way to give you any further special treatment.

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

In response to that e-mail, all cherrycakes had to say was "fuck you I processed a chargeback" -- my only response, the only response I could muster at this point was to copy and paste the credit authorization confirmation showing very clearly the date and time of the refund 5 days prior, and informing her that she should contact her bank before they flag her for fraud for trying to process a chargeback after we already processed a refund.

So, with that being said, I will also say this. With the exception of cherrycakes, we have delivered every single order made on our site, even the ones we've had to refund. We've spent extra money getting lost/stolen orders to people. on some occasions multiple times. We've analyzed the issues with our shipping processes to make sure that we've covered all our bases, and at this point I am very proud to say we don't have a backlog of orders any longer than one business day.

With response to cherrycakes, time and time again I've been very straightforward with her. I will admit I haven't been the timeliest in answering e-mails but that was exactly why I told her to e-mail me directly or even call me if she had another issue, that's why I gave her my cell phone number, just in case. Instead of doing that, she badmouthed us all over the internet when we were actively trying to help, giving her free product, and clear explanations for all the problems. I never at any point was anything less than professional and courteous, down to the very last e-mail where I informed her that I would not be spending extra money to ship anything overnight to her. If you look around at some other posts on VU you will see that several people who have had similar issues with our shipping always commend us for our customer service responses, and that we always take very very good care of them in the most professional manner, and although the shipping delays and associated problems are extremely embarrassing, the fact that we've gotten through all of it is something I am extremely proud of.

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

And with all of that being said, @cherrycakes, I regret to inform you that we will not be sending you any further packages and we will not be doing business with you of any kind. A good entrepreneur knows when they need to fire a customer, and you are that squeaky wheel that still squeaks even after an entire gallon of grease. I have already deleted your customer account on our website and should you ever attempt to register another account with us it will immediately be flagged and deleted. Once again I apologize that it had to come to this. We do not legally owe you anything and have never taken a cent from you that hasn't been fully refunded. I really wish it would've gone better, I wish we still had any hope of having you as a customer, but at this point we have no other choice in the matter but to cut ties.

 

[VH fan]

He is a real dirtbag.
I really hate these asshole "modders" who have no money whatsoever.
They get a loan to make a dozen "prototypes" then send them out to the 12 top reviewers who like them (they were fucking free, whats not to like about FREE)

Then the have a pre order thinking they will buy the parts with the first 25 customers to build 100 of the mod.
All types of shit goes wrong so they start a second round of pre orders to pay for the first 100 they fucked up on.
You see where this is going.

It is exactly like a pyramid scheme.
Eventually a couple hundred people get screwed out of their money as they make excuses until the 46th day of the 45 day PayPal period then vanish into the wind.

This is happening more and more with "modders".
I NEVER go for a pre order.
if everything works out for the modder, great. I buy one that's IN STOCK for $25 more.

A pre order from segelei or something is legit because they are a big player but I still won't do it.

Great and very insightful post Tom , wish i saw this earlier . That what bugs the shit out of me , getting a free mod and not allowing it to effect your review , not many can do it , well at least not convincingly .

Well done

 

[5150sick]

Kind of like how EVERYTHING Rip Trippers receives is "sick as tits" and "chucks the vapor"?

 

[VH fan]

Regarding Cherrycake's , she rocks , she is not an unreasonable customer , any time she has brought up an issue she had every right to be pissed, some vendors just don't have a clue about running a business , they either take the customer for granted like their doing a favor for them , have no idea how to staff their office properly so these shipping problems don't happen and so on .

Before you start a business you better make sure you have everything covered , you should anticipate and expect an overload of orders and make sure you are equipped to handle it .

These excuses that start with "we weren't expecting " just don't fly , before you even consider opening make sure YOU ARE expecting the unknowns and you better know how to deal with them when they happen because as evidenced again in this thread it's a continuing problem .

Not shipping orders promptly is often a fatal mistake because it will cost you a lot more customers than you realize , hard to believe , maybe but make no mistake , simple shipping and how fast a customer receives their order is much much more important than most vendors realize .

Your juice can be very good but if the shipping sucks you can forget it , the vendors that can get their order to the customer the quickest will have the most repeat customers, period. Does it make sense , somewhat but it's 100% true.

Vapecrafter had a great looking website and a brilliant idea , unfortunately it takes more than that and all this negative criticism (warranted i might add ) has and will continue to effect your business in a not so good way .

Sure you'll have customers but this should be a lessoned learned for others thinking about getting into business , if you fuck up early prepare to pay for a long time to come . It's really that simple .

One word of advice Vapecrafter , and this is the thing that really made me raise an eyebrow , never and i mean never post something where you admit that you purposely held back and slacked off when it came to the delivery of a customers order.

Even if they didn't have anything nice to say about their experience , you can't do that EVER, it's just a monumental mistake on your part and really gives away what and how you think , not smart .

I couldn't believe i actually read that actually .

 

[5150sick]

Damn, They could have filled 20 orders in the time it took them to email cherrycakes and respond to this thread.
LOL, J/K

 

[AmandaD]

This is the Hall of Shame, right?

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

One word of advice Vapecrafter , and this is the thing that really made me raise an eyebrow , never and i mean never post something where you admit to purposely holding back and decided to slack off when it involves getting a delivery a customer is waiting on .


I couldn't believe i actually read that actually .

Cherrycakes stopped being a customer the moment we refunded her order, at that point we had already tied up the loose end and were under absolutely 0 obligation to send anything to her. I merely offered to as a courtesy to her because I genuinely did feel bad about the terrible experience she's had with us. At the same time, though, after seeing that she clearly went out of her way to give us a bad rap, I wasn't going to spend extra money to get anything to her overnight, I don't think that's slacking by any means -- it's just not going above and beyond to try to rescue something as futile as gaining her confidence back. If I had thought there was even a chance for us to reconcile and improve our reputation with her, I wouldn't have hesitated even a moment.

 

[VH fan]

Kind of like how EVERYTHING Rip Trippers receives is "sick as tits" and "chucks the vapor"?

RipTrippers , unwatchable to me , does he always say "sick as tits" and "chucks the vapor" too funny , i may have to force myself to watch and if i hear him say that i'm going to bust out laughing .

 

[AmandaD]

RipTrippers , unwatchable to me , does he always say "sick as tits" and "chucks the vapor" too funny , i may have to force myself to watch and if i hear him say that i'm going to bust out laughing .

Oh he does! I can't give him more than 30 seconds at a time (if that!)

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

Also, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is. Next person that sees this and wants to test us, go ahead and order something on me. Coupon code 1KXET4RVJREC at checkout for a free 30 mL of any custom product. It is 2:05 AM Thursday morning right now. If you order something before noon today we will have it to your door by Tuesday, Wednesday at the absolute latest.

 

[VH fan]

Cherrycakes stopped being a customer the moment we refunded her order, at that point we had already tied up the loose end and were under absolutely 0 obligation to send anything to her. I merely offered to as a courtesy to her because I genuinely did feel bad about the terrible experience she's had with us. At the same time, though, after seeing that she clearly went out of her way to give us a bad rap, I wasn't going to spend extra money to get anything to her overnight, I don't think that's slacking by any means -- it's just not going above and beyond to try to rescue something as futile as gaining her confidence back. If I had thought there was even a chance for us to reconcile and improve our reputation with her, I wouldn't have hesitated even a moment.

I was responding to the remark below , best to just cut ties if you can't rectify an issue , but thats after things are settled and she gets what she expects as fast as humanly possible , what you don't do is play "you'll get your order when i decide to send it " games .

My intention was to send you your stuff as soon as possible after it was ready, but after seeing all of the unnecessarily disparaging comments and remarks all over the internet, I’ve given less importance to getting you that last order as soon as possible,

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

I was responding to the remark below , best to just cut ties if you can't rectify an issue , but thats after things are settled and she gets what she expects as fast as humanly possible , what you don't do is play "you'll get your order when i decide to send it " games .

Please note I said that AFTER I mentioned that we had already refunded the order to her and then I told her we would send a package anyway and overnight it to her. Again, we had already refunded the money, and I was only offering the courtesy because I felt bad. At that point it was no longer any order that I owed to her out of obligation, it was the product she had ordered and was refunded the money for, which I wanted to send to attempt to repair the relationship, but it was brought to my attention at that point that the relationship was beyond repair, so I gave up wanting to try.

 

[VH fan]

I understand Sir . Thanks for explaining the situation , i try to be fair , i know your in a tight spot . This whole thing is very unfortunate .

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

I agree. I wish it didn't turn out this way.

Like I've mentioned many times in this thread if I could have repaired the relationship at any point I absolutely would have. I don't like losing customers one bit. I've gone above and beyond for every single customer that has had to wait for an order because of everything that's happened with USPS. I understand companies must plan ahead for unforeseen circumstances but at the same time, I never thought people/postal workers would just steal unmarked packages out of the overnight bins or right off a counter, or that packages would get lost en masse in bulk, I just never thought that was a thing that happened. Even further when it did happen I didn't think it was a problem at every post office and perhaps endemic only to our local small-town one.

Whatever the problems were, I believe they are fixed now. We have offered store credits at or greater than amounts of their past orders to people who've had to wait longer than an acceptable wait time for an order. We've offered steep discounts to other people who didn't have to wait super long but still had to experience some processing delays on our end. We've done a lot to try to regain the trust of the community. I think we're getting there and I'm not trying to absolve ourselves of any blame, just trying to explain the situation as fully and as in-depth as I can. We've taken full responsibility for this and we're not trying to make excuses at all.

Again, if cherrycakes ever gave me one single indication that this was any kind of repairable relationship, I would have taken every possible step available to me to repair it. Instead, we're here where we are.

 

[BigNasty]

I agree. I wish it didn't turn out this way.

Like I've mentioned many times in this thread if I could have repaired the relationship at any point I absolutely would have. I don't like losing customers one bit. I've gone above and beyond for every single customer that has had to wait for an order because of everything that's happened with USPS. I understand companies must plan ahead for unforeseen circumstances but at the same time, I never thought people/postal workers would just steal unmarked packages out of the overnight bins or right off a counter, or that packages would get lost en masse in bulk, I just never thought that was a thing that happened. Even further when it did happen I didn't think it was a problem at every post office and perhaps endemic only to our local small-town one.

Whatever the problems were, I believe they are fixed now. We have offered store credits at or greater than amounts of their past orders to people who've had to wait longer than an acceptable wait time for an order. We've offered steep discounts to other people who didn't have to wait super long but still had to experience some processing delays on our end. We've done a lot to try to regain the trust of the community. I think we're getting there and I'm not trying to absolve ourselves of any blame, just trying to explain the situation as fully and as in-depth as I can. We've taken full responsibility for this and we're not trying to make excuses at all.

Again, if cherrycakes ever gave me one single indication that this was any kind of repairable relationship, I would have taken every possible step available to me to repair it. Instead, we're here where we are.

I suggest if you have a possible theft/loss issue due to the postal service is contact the regional post master.
If there is a lazy or sticky fingered mail carrier they will get caught and makes you wonder what else they are stealing.

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

We've

I suggest if you have a possible theft/loss issue due to the postal service is contact the regional post master.
If there is a lazy or sticky fingered mail carrier they will get caught and makes you wonder what else they are stealing.

We've contacted the postmaster at the local Chicopee Post Office several times about the issue. Every time they've asked for Tracking Numbers, and when we provide them, they tell us they have no record of the tracking numbers in their system so there is nothing they can do to help us other than offer a refund for the postage.

 

[BigNasty]

We've


We've contacted the postmaster at the local Chicopee Post Office several times about the issue. Every time they've asked for Tracking Numbers, and when we provide them, they tell us they have no record of the tracking numbers in their system so there is nothing they can do to help us other than offer a refund for the postage.

Kim I. Lombard looks like the local postmaster. If you get the run around there this link is direct to the mail theft complaint form.
http://faq.usps.com/adaptivedesktop/faq.jsp?ef=USPSFAQ&dest=EmailUs

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

Kim I. Lombard looks like the local postmaster. If you get the run around there this link is direct to the mail theft complaint form.
http://faq.usps.com/adaptivedesktop/faq.jsp?ef=USPSFAQ&dest=EmailUs

Thanks, I'll get on that ASAP.

 

[wllmc]

Fuck vapercraft.

 

[cherrycakes]

Regarding Cherrycake's , she rocks , she is not an unreasonable customer , any time she has brought up an issue she had every right to be pissed, some vendors just don't have a clue about running a business , they either take the customer for granted like their doing a favor for them , have no idea how to staff their office properly so these shipping problems don't happen and so on .

Before you start a business you better make sure you have everything covered , you should anticipate and expect an overload of orders and make sure you are equipped to handle it .

These excuses that start with "we weren't expecting " just don't fly , before you even consider opening make sure YOU ARE expecting the unknowns and you better know how to deal with them when they happen because as evidenced again in this thread it's a continuing problem .

Not shipping orders promptly is often a fatal mistake because it will cost you a lot more customers than you realize , hard to believe , maybe but make no mistake , simple shipping and how fast a customer receives their order is much much more important than most vendors realize .

Your juice can be very good but if the shipping sucks you can forget it , the vendors that can get their order to the customer the quickest will have the most repeat customers, period. Does it make sense , somewhat but it's 100% true.

Vapecrafter had a great looking website and a brilliant idea , unfortunately it takes more than that and all this negative criticism (warranted i might add ) has and will continue to effect your business in a not so good way .

Sure you'll have customers but this should be a lessoned learned for others thinking about getting into business , if you fuck up early prepare to pay for a long time to come . It's really that simple .

One word of advice Vapecrafter , and this is the thing that really made me raise an eyebrow , never and i mean never post something where you admit that you purposely held back and slacked off when it came to the delivery of a customers order.

Even if they didn't have anything nice to say about their experience , you can't do that EVER, it's just a monumental mistake on your part and really gives away what and how you think , not smart .

I couldn't believe i actually read that actually .

I agree. I wish it didn't turn out this way.

Like I've mentioned many times in this thread if I could have repaired the relationship at any point I absolutely would have. I don't like losing customers one bit. I've gone above and beyond for every single customer that has had to wait for an order because of everything that's happened with USPS. I understand companies must plan ahead for unforeseen circumstances but at the same time, I never thought people/postal workers would just steal unmarked packages out of the overnight bins or right off a counter, or that packages would get lost en masse in bulk, I just never thought that was a thing that happened. Even further when it did happen I didn't think it was a problem at every post office and perhaps endemic only to our local small-town one.

Whatever the problems were, I believe they are fixed now. We have offered store credits at or greater than amounts of their past orders to people who've had to wait longer than an acceptable wait time for an order. We've offered steep discounts to other people who didn't have to wait super long but still had to experience some processing delays on our end. We've done a lot to try to regain the trust of the community. I think we're getting there and I'm not trying to absolve ourselves of any blame, just trying to explain the situation as fully and as in-depth as I can. We've taken full responsibility for this and we're not trying to make excuses at all.

Again, if cherrycakes ever gave me one single indication that this was any kind of repairable relationship, I would have taken every possible step available to me to repair it. Instead, we're here where we are.

I gave you guys a second shot and you messed that up too.
why should I want to order from you in the future? I still haven't got my juice. All I got was a nasty email. Its not my fault it takes you guys a month to deliver. But you're absolutely right, never again. Two strikes and a nasty email, you're out.

 

[cherrycakes]

Damn, They could have filled 20 orders in the time it took them to email cherrycakes and respond to this thread.
LOL, J/K

that's another thing it takes two weeks to get somebody to f****** respond to email

 

[cherrycakes]

again I have not received a single tracking number indicating that they have actually mailed a packageI have asked repeatedly for tracking numbers nothing

 

[Zamazam]

Have not received second order from december, had to file a claim with my bank for my refund, and got a nasty email. Wonderful customer service!

Have you gotten any shipment from Vapecrafters since early December? That post office thing mentioned in the email you posted doesn't fly. If there are missing mail problems at the local PO, I can guarantee that the postal inspectors would be all over it. They take mail theft by postal employees VERY seriously.

 

[Zamazam]

again I have not received a single tracking number indicating that they have actually mailed a packageI have asked repeatedly for tracking numbers nothing

You won't get them at this point, they just don't give a shit about you or others who have ordered from them. Since they wrote you a lengthy nasty-gram, I'd like to find out how many other people have gotten screwed by Vapecrafters with their juice orders.

 

[Joshua Iles]

again I have not received a single tracking number indicating that they have actually mailed a packageI have asked repeatedly for tracking numbers nothing

You're just such a bitch shame on u for wanting the stuff u payed for. I play nice far too often, but have been known on occasion to call dumbass what it is. All I can say sis is it sounds like you've wasted your time unfortunately dealing with these people. Sucks being suckered tho. There's enough good people here, ive been hooked up a couple times just by giving people, not some shitty vendor who can't fulfill an order. I don't get to order much of anything, we won't go there, but I do know where my little bit of vape budget won't be spent.

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

You're just such a bitch shame on u for wanting the stuff u payed for. I play nice far too often, but have been known on occasion to call dumbass what it is. All I can say sis is it sounds like you've wasted your time unfortunately dealing with these people. Sucks being suckered tho. There's enough good people here, ive been hooked up a couple times just by giving people, not some shitty vendor who can't fulfill an order. I don't get to order much of anything, we won't go there, but I do know where my little bit of vape budget won't be spent.

She hasn't paid for anything, the first order she placed with us was a free contest winning which did take some time because we had issues and we gave it very low priority over our paid orders which we felt we had to get to those customers first.

The second order she placed right before the holiday season, we were unable to get it to her in a timely manner, and we refunded her the money.

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

Have you gotten any shipment from Vapecrafters since early December? That post office thing mentioned in the email you posted doesn't fly. If there are missing mail problems at the local PO, I can guarantee that the postal inspectors would be all over it. They take mail theft by postal employees VERY seriously.

We've been able to ship some stuff out during the month of December but had a few incidents of lost/stolen packages. Everything has been reported to the PO with all associated tracking numbers. Did you even read what I wrote up there?

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

You won't get them at this point, they just don't give a shit about you or others who have ordered from them. Since they wrote you a lengthy nasty-gram, I'd like to find out how many other people have gotten screwed by Vapecrafters with their juice orders.

She pasted the entire "nasty" e-mail I sent her here. Please point out to me what part of it was nasty, please, I need to know. All I said was that we refunded her her money and would not be spending extra money to send an overnight package at that point. In response I got a "fuck you" -- I've been nothing but polite to Ms. Cakes and yes I admit we were slow in responding to her inquiries but every single time I have apologized and tried to help however I could, only to be greeted with more hostility at each attempt.

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

that's another thing it takes two weeks to get somebody to f****** respond to email

I'm not saying it's right, but God forbid anybody be allowed to take Christmas or New Years' off, right? There were reasons for every single delay and I tried to explain that to you in a professional manner, you just wouldn't accept any of our attempts to make good on our promises.

 

[VapedCrusader]

Damn, They could have filled 20 orders in the time it took them to email cherrycakes and respond to this thread.
LOL, J/K

LOL I posted this EXACT same thing earlier - too funny

 

[Zamazam]

Hi Kaween,

Thank you for responding in this thread. You might not know this, but there are some common themes that we see with juice vendors and online shops who are either struggling with growth or are in it to make a quick score and vanish.

They are (in no order of importance):

1. Lack of communications and either slow or no response to emails, phone calls, or facebook posts.
2. Shipping information not issued or communicated. Sometimes shipping labels are created and have no status updates over a month or so.
3. Postal mail being stolen at the origin post office, or while in transit, repeatedly.
   
4. Family issues, business supplier issues, events that cause the business to close for a while (My Parrot is having an existential life crisis)
5. Calling out customers on facebook, or forums, deleting any negative feedback en masse.

The big issue here is a lack of communication coupled with either slow or no shipping. When a customer emails and calls and does not get a response, or the response is slow, that customer is going to get really irritated and will begin posting or describing their situation in a public manner.

If you want to save your posterior from getting flamed on facebook and forums, communicate early, communicate often, and respond to customers concerns. A mentor of mine once told me that you can take a teenie-tiny fuzzy little issue and put it into a dark closet, with time that fuzzy little issue will turn into huge fanged hairy monster that will jump you when you open the closet door again.

 

[Kaween - VapeCrafter]

Hi Kaween,

Thank you for responding in this thread. You might not know this, but there are some common themes that we see with juice vendors and online shops who are either struggling with growth or are in it to make a quick score and vanish.

They are (in no order of importance):

1. Lack of communications and either slow or no response to emails, phone calls, or facebook posts.
2. Shipping information not issued or communicated. Sometimes shipping labels are created and have no status updates over a month or so.
3. Postal mail being stolen at the origin post office, or while in transit, repeatedly.
   
4. Family issues, business supplier issues, events that cause the business to close for a while (My Parrot is having an existential life crisis)
5. Calling out customers on facebook, or forums, deleting any negative feedback en masse.

The big issue here is a lack of communication coupled with either slow or no shipping. When a customer emails and calls and does not get a response, or the response is slow, that customer is going to get really irritated and will begin posting or describing their situation in a public manner.

If you want to save your posterior from getting flamed on facebook and forums, communicate early, communicate often, and respond to customers concerns. A mentor of mine once told me that you can take a teenie-tiny fuzzy little issue and put it into a dark closet, with time that fuzzy little issue will turn into huge fanged hairy monster that will jump you when you open the closet door again.

Thanks for summarizing all of this. We have learned quite a few lessons these past six months and a lot of it has been stoked by rapid growth that at times has been hard to keep up with. I've made no effort to absolve responsibility by making excuses and in fact have taken responsibility for every single time we have wronged anyone either by delivering late for whatever reason or not being immediately available for customer service. I have personally apologized and given free or discounted product to dozens of customers as a result of the issues we've faced but I always ensure I am professional and courteous in the process.

You'll see this on plenty of posts around VU where people have said, yes, we had issues shipping to them, it took a while, but we cleared them up and were able to deliver, were very polite while we did it, and the product they got in the end was fantastic.

 

[vapenator]

I was curious if anybody got that code 1KXET4RVJREC to work for them?