Santa Fe Shuffle

Here's a tale of doing business with a company that you really just want to avoid doing business with, even though almost no one who reads this web site will ever have reason to do business with that company! You're forewarned.

I have a house in Santa Fe, where I am for the first time this year. (Been busy on business matters.) I flew into Albquerque (ABQ for ease of typing) yesterday, the night before Indian Market, the biggest event of the year in Santa Fe. Santa Fe is an hour north of ABQ, so usually I take a shuttle from the airport to downtown Santa Fe. There are four of five shuttle services. I usually use Sandia Shuttle. Reliable, friendly service. Sandia has an online reservation system, which is basic (no Web 2.0 here!) but works.

Being concerned that the shuttles would be full with people going to Indian Market, I got online Thursday evening. (I have a hard time remembering what it was like when you always had to use the phone to make reservations.) Sandia Shuttle doesn't take online reservations less than 24 hours in advance. I tried calling, but their offices hours are during the day. So I tried the other major shuttle service, Santa Fe Shuttle.

That's when I started acting stupid. I went right to the reservation page, which doesn't show the schedule. I made a reservation, which didn't include picking a particular shuttle departure. On the payments page, I chose the Paypal option, impressed that it was even an option. Everything worked fine, including getting my payment confirmation from Paypal by email while I was still on the Paypal page, saving a copy of the receipt to my computer (since I didn't have a printer).

I pressed the button to return to Sante Fe Shuttle's web page. But the button returned an error. So I could return to the home page for the shuttle service or return to PayPal, neither option leading to a specific reservation. Whatever: I figured they had my money and I would take whichever shuttle was available.

The next day I flew to ABQ. (I'll skip over the nightmare seat in the last row next to a lady who could easily have filled two seats.) I went to Santa Fe Shuttle. Their next shuttle doesn't leave for more than an hour. I'm not on the list for the next shuttle. So I call the office and tell the reservation agent I want to cancel and get my money back. She says she can't do that. I ask why: "I just can't do that." I again ask why they can't refund my money for a service they haven't provided. She says I can wait and get on the next shuttle so that they will provide the service. I tell her that the reservation on the web site never confirmed a schedule and now I want to cancel. She laughed and asked me why I made the reservation without knowing the schedule. I asked her: "Did you just laugh at me?" She laughed some more and said, "You really trusted the web site to work?" We had further conversation, too painful to share in detail, that was about how the only way to make a refund was for her to wait for the bookkeeper to come to work (not a daily event) and do some paperwork, which she didn't want to do.

I got upset. I told her that she could keep my money, that I wouldn't do business with her in the future, and that I would report on my experience in the Web. Here I am: I've gone on too long, sharing my suffering. And it was my fault for not checking the schedule first and being certain that I wanted to use their schedule. What kind of attitude leads someone to laugh at a customer for making a mistake?

The question I keep asking myself is: "Is the Web still too hard for a small business to use well?" Sandia Shuttle had set up their web site NOT to accept reservations within a 24 hour window. That's an easy way to avoid exactly what happened to me. (In fact, they did avoid it and were completely booked on their next shuttle because of the people arriving for Indian Market.) Even worse, what would the problem have been for the lady on the phone to take my address and mail me a refund for $23? Does Santa Fe Shuttle operate on such a slim margin that they need unused reservations to continue operating?

Perhaps the lesson is: Companies, large or small, with good attitudes about customers tend to show that good attitude in the way they design their web sites, regardless of whether they are sophisticated about ecommerce or not.

Comments

[Jim Forbes]

Stew,
Not every small business is as sophisticated as those in te Valley, and just because someone has a web-presence doesn't mean that they have a CFO, bookkeeper, or CEO on call 24/7 to respond to a ticked off customer who threatens to blog the interaction between a dispatcher and a customer.

Not many people outside the insular world of Silicon Valley kowtow to venture capitalists or former technology journalists. Try wearing a small business professional's shoes in mainstream America, away from groveling entrepreneurs before you beat someone over the head for not instantly rectifying your perceived problem.

Best wishes,
Jim Forbes
( somewhat spasticaly and reluctantly retired in Escondido, CA on my own little mountain).

[Andrew Eisner]

I have to admit, I think I'm going to have to side with Jim on this one and recommend cutting these folks some slack. Doesn't make it nonetheless annoying - almost as annoying as friends who don't reply to emails ;) - wouldn't you agree?

[Michael Krigsman]

Interesting post. I wrote about this at the Project Failures blog. (http://projectfailures.com/blog/2006/8/23/shuttle-of-death-and-rebirth.html)

Michael Krigsman

[Magda]

This is more to Mr. Forbes' comment. One way to ensure that your small business continues to exist and attract customers, is to have GOOD CUSTOMER service, there is absolutely no excuse for not treating a customer well... and I am sure they have to give refunds from time to time, and should train their employees on how to handle it, simple, even my dry cleaner will give me refund if they screw up, because they want to keep me as a customer for ongoing service. It doesn't take sophistication, just plain common sense.

I too would be annoyed, and I too expect it, and I'm not a Silicon valley VC. Stewart doesn't have the Superior, I'm a VC, attitude anyway.

Magda

[Jim Forbes]

Magda, you bet your butt small bsuinesses should train people in how to handle customer problems. but it's a mistake to assume that everyone is "Web or blog aware"
the awareness may be part and parcel of living in the Valley but it's sure not the case in other parts of the country.
P.S. this was not intended as a shot at Stew, who I like a great deal. It was meant to be a comment on the fact that not everyone who answers a phone at a company would be willing to call the company owner late at night to get a check cut.
Regards,
Jim

[Magda]

Jim,
I wonder if this "Web awareness" thing is a mid-US states thing mainly. When I travel, and mostly to places like my old home in Poland, people there are quite aware, and it's the Web and people like my dad being aware, that has accounted for so many positive changes in our ability to communicate (I was able to reserve a car in Warsaw last year via the web without any problems, and the car was waiting for me when I arrived!).

I often wonder about why other countries accept and adopt new technologies so much faster than some people here do!?

[Jim Forbes]

Magda,
thanks. One of the really positive things I saw in my career as a reporter and Demo producer was gthe astounding adoption rate and wilingness to try new technologies in Israel.
I've often wondered whether the Israeli's willingness to try new technologies is a function of the country's small size and its very nationalistic consumer attitude.

No compare this with America. ONe of the down sides of working in Silicon Valley has always been its "we're so hip and you're such rubes" attiude.

What's ironic is that when a company needs serious consumer research in California, they do it in Sacramento and the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles, not Silicon Valley or Hollywood.

Thanks
JimF

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