Interesting P&C customer service expeience.

Toothpick said:

The money you spent is irrelevant to them. They can't and shouldn't treat you any differently than any other customer. It's simply not good business practice to change your company polices based on how much money each customer spends.

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I am in a service business and God knows that my regular, high volume clients who keeps my family fed, will get preference over the one off client that is calling to see if he can undercut my competition. There is difference between a loyal customer and a one shot deal in every walk of business that I know of. We will just have to disagree on this.

cwf71 said:

Better, no. More important long term to the company? Perhaps if past patronage habits continue forward. Good customer service policies would dictate that they strive to keep all customers coming back. Disagree. May quibble about if the amount spent In the past should be a factor, but the fact that he is a past, repeat and current customer is relevant.

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THIS!^^^

captaincaveman said:

$1,500 in the past year is a lot of ordering. Why did you choose P&C for all of that spending? Have those reasons been nullified by one failure? While I've been known to abandon business relationships for offenses like that, this is a case that I'd let slide and just remember not to order that blend from P&C again, along with leaving an honest review on P&C's page for that blend so that other people know to order it elsewhere.

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I just said no more bulk buying, not that I would abandon doing business. Except for this, I have no complaints. I should have qualified that losing me meant bulk buying only in the second post. My apologies. BTW I have ordered from them since.

Toothpick said:

So by my view the amount of money you spend at a business is irrelevant to the level of service you should expect.

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If I stood behind a long standing, very high volume, regular customer to get the last bag of "Stonehaven" and they chose to sell it to me instead of him, just to satisfy some sense of fairness, I would call them fools. I have a dear friend that flies to the Virgin Islands and stays for free every year simply because he flies every week in his business and spends $$$. I have to pay full price to go anywhere because I don't go much. I's a reality of life I am OK with. P&C may not have such a practice, but maybe they should. It is VERY common.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this.

And just so it doesn't get lost in the flame war, I don't think anyone should get the bag of baccy that I did. That's the reason for the original post. There is absolutely nothing special about ME.

Flame war??

This is the Brown Leaf after all.

Flames, lighters....

I crack myself up

alpster said:

I just said no more bulk buying, not that I would abandon doing business. Except for this, I have no complaints. I should have qualified that losing me meant bulk buying only in the second post. My apologies. BTW I have ordered from them since.

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Spend a day or two reading a thread like this and one forgets details like that. D'oh! That's definitely a reasonable response, though IMO there's no need blacklisting all bulk blends.

A tupperware container will do.

Toothpick said:

The money you spent is irrelevant to them. They can't and shouldn't treat you any differently than any other customer. It's simply not good business practice to change your company polices based on how much money each customer spends.

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Disagree with you there Jason, you should always strive to offer the best service you can. However when it comes to a repeat customer that spends a decent sum of money with the company, normally there is a bit more leeway.

I think P&C has stepped up to the plate here. I sent an email to Russ and Their CS rep called me back and they are trying to make me whole. I feel like it will be resolved. I am waiting for one more email to let me know exactly what they are going to do. They have acknowledged the situation properly and I am now confident I will remain a happy customer. Sorry for being a whiner.

From what I have read from others, it sounds like they have gone down hill since the buy out. This, and dented tins, is unacceptable.

alpster said:

I think P&C has stepped up to the plate here. I sent an email to Russ and Their CS rep called me back and they are trying to make me whole. I feel like it will be resolved. I am waiting for one more email to let me know exactly what they are going to do. They have acknowledged the situation properly and I am now confident I will remain a happy customer. Sorry for being a whiner.

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Good to hear! Integrity goes a long way in a business like theirs.

alpster said:

I think P&C has stepped up to the plate here. I sent an email to Russ and Their CS rep called me back and they are trying to make me whole. I feel like it will be resolved. I am waiting for one more email to let me know exactly what they are going to do. They have acknowledged the situation properly and I am now confident I will remain a happy customer. Sorry for being a whiner.

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Fingers crosses that you will have the kind of good experience that I consistently have with P&C's customer service.

Glad this worked out for you Ronnie.

alpster said:

I think P&C has stepped up to the plate here. I sent an email to Russ and Their CS rep called me back and they are trying to make me whole. I feel like it will be resolved. I am waiting for one more email to let me know exactly what they are going to do. They have acknowledged the situation properly and I am now confident I will remain a happy customer. Sorry for being a whiner.

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The fact that you had to email Russ directly to get it resolved is a major problem, IMHO.

I agree. He's just a blender tobacconist not manager, CEO, director, supervisor, and babysitter for P&C poor customer service.

I'm not saying I feel you did the wrong thing, you did the right thing. They are just dropping the ball way too often trying to be the Walmart of tobacconists.

All is good. They acknowledged that there was a problem with the tobacco and sent me a small gift card for my trouble. I am satisfied that complaint was dealt with graciously and the problem is reconciled. Thanks for everyone's input and well wishes.

alpster said:

I think P&C has stepped up to the plate here. I sent an email to Russ and Their CS rep called me back and they are trying to make me whole. I feel like it will be resolved. I am waiting for one more email to let me know exactly what they are going to do. They have acknowledged the situation properly and I am now confident I will remain a happy customer. Sorry for being a whiner.

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Glad to hear it, but sorry you had to call in the big guns in Russ. He's a good guy but we shouldn't have to rely on him for a relative No Brainer issue.

alpster said:

All is good. They acknowledged that there was a problem with the tobacco and sent me a small gift card for my trouble. I am satisfied that complaint was dealt with graciously and the problem is reconciled. Thanks for everyone's input and well wishes.

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Even better!

Thanks for the info on all counts. It's good to be an informed consumer.

Glad things got resolved to your satisfaction. I've had one purchase with them for over $100 and was quite pleased with the transaction.

I'd be happy with that resolution.

I'm glad P&C has finally resolved your problem Ronnie. It shouldn't have taken intervention by Russ, though--they should just be doing the right thing.

I wanted to add to the thread and share that I'm increasingly dissatisfied with the customer service of P&C. My latest headaches stem from the poor job they do packaging orders. In the past, when I received a damaged tin, P&C would ship out a new tin no questions asked and let me keep the damaged tin. It was a minor inconvenience, but not a big deal, and they made it right. Every time the damage arose because they didn't add much in the way of packing materials, and I figured it was kind of a cost-benefit analysis for them. But I always felt taken care of, and by letting me keep the damaged tin, it kind of made it a little bonus. And they kept earning my business.

I just received a small order from them this week, and it had even fewer packing materials than in the past (just some brown craft paper packing), and 3 of the tins were damaged (well, actually 5 but two weren't so bad that I cared about it and I was going to open those 2 instead of cellaring them anyway). P&C will replace the damaged tins, but they want me to send the tins back (at their expense) and then they will ship out replacement tins. Although they're taking care of the situation by replacing the tins, I am troubled by this policy change. P&C chooses to not pack its orders properly and it's an annoyance to receive an order with a high percentage of damaged tins. Add to that the (admittedly minor) hassle of taking a package to the post office and waiting for it to travel across the country and the new tins to ship back to me across the country. I just don't want to wait 4 weeks total to get the product I ordered (original shipping time + shipping back to P&C + replacement shipment time). Especially when I don't have any confidence that the replacement tins will be packed any better or arrive in any better condition.

I may still use P&C when they have especially good sales, but I've been increasingly dissatisfied with the condition my order arrives in and their customer service. I will only order tins in groups of 5, though, as they usually come packaged together from the manufacturer in bundles of 5 which reduces the chance for damage. I'll be the first to admit I'm being picky, and others may be totally fine with their solution to my "problem". That's OK. For me, it's just the last straw in a string of issues, and tales like Ronnie's demonstrate that this is a company-wide problem. At this point I think I'm done with P&C. This is a shame, as I have done an embarrassing amount of business with them over the past 3 years. In the end, I don't feel bad, though. I already have a big cellar and don't need to buy much more, and I like the folks at Smokingpipes a lot and will be happy to send them my business.

No, you're not picky. You expect to get what you paid for undamaged. This isn't the only place I have heard people complaining about P&C. They seem to have gone downhill since they got bought out. If they don't want to take care of their customers, someone else will.

I'm sorry to hear of your experiences with P&C Hirsute. If you are planning on storing a tin intact instead of removing the tobacco from it and jarring it you don't want to take a chance that the vacuum seal has been broken in transit. I'm no expert in running a business by any means but I would think it would be cheaper in the long run just to pack things so they don't have losses in transit. It would save on extra shipping costs and keep them from losing customers. How expensive could wadded up brown paper from a big roll be and paper is recyclable too.

Rick