Whilst trying to return an item online recently it occurred to me how much I appreciate those companies that take the time to respond to your query personally. On this occasion I was trying to access the returns link on a website that shall remain nameless. Finding it was broken, I looked for an email address and sent them a screenshot of the error message and the location of the broken link. I shortly received an automated response telling me my ticket was being looked at. Great, I thought, it will soon be fixed. A little while later I received a reply to my ticket, telling me that to return the item I needed to access the returns link.

Something had obviously been lost in translation here. Either they simply didn’t bother to read my original email or the person who responded has a limited grasp of English and simply picked out the word “return” matching it to the nearest generic response they could copy and paste. This is the reason I prefer to deal with the small retailer who focuses their attention on customer service rather than outsourcing this to an external, often overseas organisation. It really is frustrating to receive a generic response and not have your query  answered. I guess these larger organisations have so many customers they can afford to annoy and perhaps lose a few.