Pinhead-Sized Swim Goggles Maker Aqua Leisure Treats Customer Service Email As Spam

For companies who solicit customer service requests via email on their website, and then take SEVEN WEEKS to answer, some free advice:

Even if your company has Leisure in the name, check your customer service inbox more than once every two months.

Did you really flag my email as spam? Then how on earth did you find it in the first place? Did someone actually sift through two months of accumulated mail to find this? Perhaps you should rethink this process.

If, after two months, you finally do get around to finding and responding to this email which contained all the specifics necessary to resolve a complaint, COME UP WITH A BETTER #$()*%ING ANSWER THAN "CALL CUSTOMER SERVICE."

If the strap on your company's swim goggles is really supposed to be so short it will barely fit around a 1-year-old's head, much less the 5-year-old for whom it was purchased, put the age range on the packaging.

However, if the product is, as your website half-assedly describes, supposed to be for kids "ages 3-6," USE A STRAP THAT ACTUALLY FITS AROUND A KID'S NOT-UNUSUALLY LARGE, NOT-REALLY-LARGE-AT-ALL HEAD.

Don't send your ridiculous, late, non-response of an email on the first day after preschool ends, when the kid's already driving me crazy, and it's not even 10 o'clock.

Now I recognize, Man of Aqua Leisure, that this last tip is beyond your control. I'm just mentioning it to encourage you to give even the slightest consideration of your customers' situations, whatever they may be.

Because as the seller of cheap-but-situationally-crucial plastic play products, I suspect most people don't reach out to you from the beach when they find your product is useless; they curse you anonymously, and go to Wal-Mart to buy something else that looks different from the thing they wasted their money on the first time. And besides, if you'd done anything else on the list, #6 wouldn't even matter.

12 minutes later update: Un-)($#%ing- believable. I called customer service as instructed. Sat on hold for ten minutes. And then a recording told to me leave my name and contact information and the product I was calling about, and someone would get back to me.

from Customer Care to Greg Allen date Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 8:08 AM subject - please send adequate dive mask strap - 8:08 AM (2 hours ago)
Thank you for the e-mail

Could you please give customer care a call at 1866-807-3998 M-F
8:30-5:30 PM EST

Thank you

-----Original Message-----
From: greg.allen@***** On Behalf Of
Greg Allen
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 8:16 PM
To: Customer Care
Subject: [***SPAM***] - please send adequate dive mask strap - Sending
mail server found on relays.ordb.org

Dear Aqua Leisure Customer Service Representative,

My wife just purchased a dive mask [model EM-1150] at Buy Buy Baby in
Rockville, MD for our daughter who just turned five. My daughter has
a very normal-sized head. and yet the strap does not fit, even on the
most extended setting.

Please send a longer strap. Thank you,

Greg Allen
Mailing address: ********

2 Comments

teufelkindsvater | June 4, 2009 2:05 PM

and they say customer service is dead?

Crap like what happened to you will make me swear off the offending company for life. Yes, I do have a grudge list.

Donna | June 5, 2009 7:30 AM

I too have a grudge list, and stick to it.

But I'll say this: A Southern Season was unbelievably non-responsive over the course of several months, then on my last attempt at contact the woman who helped me, seeing my history of contact, was SO contrite, SO helpful, and SO over-the-top apologetic that the company moved off my grudge list. Not that I've bought anything there since, but the possibility exists.

Greg, I love that you are chasing this down. I'm increasingly angered over products that fail quickly or are so shoddily made as to never have really worked at all. The switch on my son's rocket lamp just broke; we've owned it about a year. Compare that to the pink daisy lamp my parents bought for me in 1971: still working, have never done anything more than change the lightbulbs.

June 4, 2009

Pinhead-Sized Swim Goggles Maker Aqua Leisure Treats Customer Service Email As Spam

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June 4, 2009

Pinhead-Sized Swim Goggles Maker Aqua Leisure Treats Customer Service Email As Spam

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