An email from Don
Ron in Drums PA
>I received this today from Don Pencil. With Don's permission, I'm sharing this with everyone.
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> Ron,
> I am truely sorry for the delays. A good customer should be able to expect more from a vender than that. Some of the posts on Wood Central are accurate.
> I can certainly understand your frustratsion. In the past two months I have had to deal with my mother's two hospitalizations (one in intensive care), a computor crash last week (the reason for no reply until today), some backorders from my suppliers, and do to all of this I have been traveling excessively these past two months between Southern California and Northern Washington. I and my wife live in Southern California and my mother is in Northern Washington.
> I am not caught up yet but I am getting there. The computer is back up as of yesterday and my mother is recovering well. She is 80 and it will take awhile. Some of my supplies are still backorder but they to are catching up.
>I read your e-mail from this morning. As your order was prepared to ship today I have choosen to send it to you as a "gift". I sent is via UPS this afternoon. It has always been my policy to do the best I can for my customers although it is not always possible. I am just a one-man show and it can get crazy.
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I appreciate Don's response and as a small business owner myself I can understand problems can arise. In my book family comes first, always, no matter what, period.
I'd would like to share an experience I had and how I handled it.
A few years back, we had a family crisis where I had to close my business for a few weeks. At the time, I was a one man show and I didn't even want to think how much money I would lose. It scared me to a point where I honestly thought I wouldn't recover from this set back. But I took some steps so my customers wouldn't go to my competitors. On all my email addresses, I setup an auto-reply messages something like "Due to a family crisis will be closed this week, when we return we will be happy to return your message, thank you for your understanding". We setup an answering machine message with the same basic info.
When I finally reopened and because my customers where informed I was swamped. I believe I didn't lose any business and may have gained some good will as well.
In closing, I may have been to short with my posting, and a good chance I was wrong about Don. I'd like to apologize to Don and everyone else who may have taken offense. I'm Sorry,
