"Rude Service from Iron Wind Metals" Topic

I had a problem with an order from Iron Wind Metals through their online Paypal system. For some reason, if you use Paypal, they get the money but not the order.

To fix this, they have to double check everything. A few days after I placed my order, I got an email from Mike Noe, the President of their company explaining the problem.

I responded to it and told them I was disappointed that their system doesn't work the way it ought to if it is losing Paypal orders and that they needed to do something about it.

Mike,

Thanks for letting me know. I'm disappointed in the inefficency of your shopping cart system. I went through the whole checkout process step by step as it led me.

My order was still there, thankfully.

Since you already have my money, I'll go ahead and re-place this order. You'll have to do better next time if you want me to continue to order from IWM.

Maybe it was a bit snarky, I'll admit. But the response…

However, I do need to point out that the problem seems to be more with PayPal, as we have never had an issue with anyone placing a credit card order.
Moreover, most people placing PayPal orders seem to be able to figure it out…

Point of fact, most people that I notify about the fact that they (not us) failed to properly complete their order thank me for what they consider to be great customer service, not jump my case for taking the time to hand cross reference PayPal payments with orders so as to be able to let them know about problems.

As the main issue isn't strictly with us, we'll have a hard time making sure to do "better next time"

We appreciate any orders and will, as far as we are able, continue to give the best service that we can. However, if we continue to "disappoint", I would suggest that you patronize your local brick and mortar store. I'm sure that they can use the business…

Rude much? I canceled my order. Guess I'll have to go get all my Mechs and such from eBay, as I sure as heck ain't gonna send Iron Wind any money. Old secondhand Partha for me.

Any guess as to how many retailers (specifically TMP Sponsoring Members) *don't* have any trouble processing PayPal shopping cart ttransaction?

I can count over a dozen I've done business with over the last eighteen months or so. The "main issue" doesn't seem to be with them.

Allen

How about:
Mike,
Thanks for being so concerning about customer service that you detected the error and let me know my order is being processed. Is there any way in the future when I order from you I can avoid this from happening again?

Gotta go with tabletopwarrior on this one.

Mongo

Well at least he gives you a response. He just ignores all of the e mails that I send him. He doesn't give a ship about customers.

I had a similar problem with a company that for now will remain nameless as the situation got settled and I received a great perk for my inconvenience; but it was as JWOMACK94 had stated: I placed the order – they had my money, but there was no response and they didn't know they had an order from me. When they looked it up, they saw I had ordered and what it was, but said that PayPal doesn't notify them. Now, I wonder about this because I sell on Ebay occasionally and I have always been notified if I have been paid and I READ my emails, lol! So the issue was solved through a few phone calls and other things (long story) but I came out ahead in the end. However, it was 3 and a half months later after the initial order. Very peculiar to say the least.

I have also had the same problem, with a different company, and after a few back and forth e-mail it worked itself out and I have every intention of ordering from them again. If this was just a simple mistake then chastising him via e-mail isn't going to be very helpful.

Mongo

Maybe it was a bit snarky, I'll admit.

The customer is NOT always right and what you quoted here from you was indeed very snarky. I don't see how his response to you was in any way rude. Perhaps you left something out?

Certainly there could be a problem with his shopping cart. On the other hand, a lot of times I see users of systemns I support swear till they're blue in the face that they followed a procedure properly when in fact the audit trail shows they clearly did not.
--
Tim

Agree with Tabletopwarrior in this one. As someone who has worked in Customer Service for longer than I care to, I can say without a doubt if you give a snarky response or answer, it puts the other person immediately on the defensive, and you're likely to not get 100% good service. It was definitely your right to cancel the order and go with another source, but I'm going to be frank and say the disconnect here was not entirely on Noe's end.

Damon.

IF had an extremely positive experience with them just before Christmas. We did a group order for B5 just before the deadline and Mr. Noe's personal service in resolving the problem with Credit card pay was greatly appreciated. He promptly credited me for something that was left out and all this at the Christmas season. I was impressed.

The difference between a rep who goes "immediately on the defensive" and one who is professional is that the latter is far more likely to earn repeat business for his company.

The hard work isn't in pleasing happy customers, it's in winning back those who--for whatever reason--feel hard done by.

Allen

Not having a dog in this fight, I will say this is exactly why I don't have a Paypal checkout. I take it but there is a major problem with Paypal. The cart takes you to Paypal where you log in and send money. But if you don't click "Back to merchant" the order never goes through to me. So you get just what sounds like happened here. I get the money but have no way to know what was in the order.

Mark "Extra Crispy" Severin
Owner, Scale Creep Miniatures
ScaleCreep.com
FlagshipGames.com
DeepFriedHappyMice.com

That was whacked…
Granted I line IWM stuff… But with attitude like that, I'd ditch 'em….

I would ask my B&M shop to get me my Crimson Skies minis if I got service like that…

"But if you don't click "Back to merchant" the order never goes through to me."

That's a glitch in the cart setup, then. I don't have to do that with The War Store, or Maelstrom Games, or…

I don't recall having to do it with Scale Creep, either.

Allen

Had this problem with Avalanche games two weeks ago.
They got the money but not who placed it.
The checkout seemd strange so I emailed
Avalanche two days later just to see if they got the order,
lucky I did.
LOve Paypal and could not do without it but it does have hangups.
Mike

Attitude calls for attitude.

PayPal is my life's blood. It's the only payment method I accept. I have never had a problem with a sale (knock on wood).

I have had a difficult customer or two. It's part of doing business. Jwomack may have been a little snarky. But as a seller, I think it's best to just let it go. Apologize, give a little something extra, and hope your efforts generate good will and positive word of mouth. More often than not it does.

I have never never never had a problem with Paypal with any company. Iron Wind need to get their problem resolved. Not just pass the buck and say it isn't their problem just like that. Womack you are an annoying customer.

Womack should apologize for a poor attitude IMO. I'm sick of snarky people! Show some respect and class.

I've had a few problems like Scale Creep where I recieved payment but no notification for an order. I tried to replicate the orders and noticed that hitting the back button on the PayPal checkout screen got me the money but no notice of the order.

pigmentedminiatures.com

I have dealt with Iron Wind ever since they became Iron Wind. They have always treated me very well. The folks there have gone out of their way to be helpful. Your email was snarky. I wouldn't have replied exactly that way to you. But maybe you caught the guy on a bad day. Everybody has em, professional or not.

Thanks,

John

I've always had good service from IWM, even if it was a bit slow going back and forth to get the order ironed out and paid for.

Both messages seem fairly blunt, but I would not call them rude. Plain talk may not be what either side wanted to hear, but I see no abuse or insults.

JWOMACK94 is right.

Noe is wrong.

Looks like Iron Wind Metals failed to respond in a professional manner to an uncivil customer. No score draw.

When I had the online shop for ID Gaming I had the same problem. The problem was with how I set up the shopping cart, and nothing to do with the end user.

So basically I cocked up the initial set up. Not Paypals fault, certainly not the customer. I would say the ball lies in the court of IWM.

aren't they all bikers or something??
They will probably come and get you now.

My wife works in CS, (not for Ironwind) and my own experiences from problems: Any time I got an email trying to fix a problem I would be thrilled. Not all problems are fixable immediately, but you were contacted, and any time a person sends a comment like"you need to do better"(wether deserved or not)it sets up a confrontation. Too bad it couldn't simply be worked out!

I have had the same problem with payment received but order not,the guy who set up the website and delt with the paypal did.nt seem to know what the problem was so I have had to live with it a bit,luckily it does,nt happen too often and when it does its simple quick email to customer to explain the glitch ask for order details then post the items problem sorted.
Hope the new upgraded site will not have this issue.
I agree with various views mentioned,I work in my Full time capacity as a saleman in a store and I try my hardest to give a good service and use the old saying 'customer is always right' But I do believe that the occasional customer will stretch this,and yes even customers should at least start off in a well mannored way and up the preasure if satisfaction is not forthcoming.Despite this no matter how the customer treats me(and I have had some real BEEPS)I still remain calm and treat them with respect,I for one am not going to be the one who lowers his/her standards of human inter-action.And yes my experience also tells me a customer wanting to resolve a problem usually gets a better responce when they don,t go in all guns blazing,yes sometimes after intial contact one has to up the anti.
JWOMACK94 was a little sharp but not that bad in my opinion but the responce could of been better and should of been better.
Norfolkboy

Before becoming a manufacturer, I sold a lot of stuff on eBay and Paypal would sometimes set your e-mail functions back to its default setting. For sometime, I was not getting sale notifications, so I found the hard way and reset the settings. This happened a few times. It's extremely frustrating. In order to reduce issues, I occasionally check to make sure our shopping cart system works by doing tests.

I don't know if that's the case here, but I recall something similar recently happened at Conquest. Nothing is full proof. Last week, my server reset all my passwords without telling me, however, some services were working and other weren't. It took me several hours to figure that out.

Steve
Cavalcade Wargames
cavalcadewargames.com

Both customer and company would have achieved better results by leaving their annoyance out of their emails.

I'd have to say, that I've met Mike Noe at Gen Con and found him to be very personable and friendly, despite the biker appearance. Furthermore he was very cooperative in getting me the models I was looking for that were not at the booth. He immediately made a call and then told me it was going to be at the booth the next day, as he had someone coming from Cinncinatti.

Sure enough the next day, Mike had the models I asked for and personally completed the transaction and thanked me for my business.

I was going to say more, but have decided least said, soonest mended.

I talked to him at a con once and came away with the impression he had a low threshold for slights but in seeing the correspondence between the two of you, you both came acrossed a lil snarky. Not surprising you both feel annoyed with one another.

You get more flies with honey. It's cheesy but its true. Putting the guy on the spot and threating to take your business elsewhere got the guys back up. E-mail back and explain it, you may be surprised at the response.

Actually, I am going to say more.

Looking back over it, I know I was out of sorts thanks to pain and medication. Neither of us, as Dashetal has pointed out, were exactly models of civility in dealing with this mixup.

I think the best thing to do is try again. If it doesn't workout, well, at least I gave the benefit after reconsidering my condition and response. We'll see how IWM responds.

It does seem to be some inherent paypal issue. Another company (well, Eric Hotz) explicitly suggest on their website to let them know you ordered something because paypal mightn't.

If this has happened repeatedly to IWM in the past, they might have put up a similar notice…

IIRC while I don't order very often from IWM (I think they charge too much for shipping, or at least the last time I looked), the last time I did I seem to recall a notice about the "proper" way to do a paypal order, so I think the instructions were there…

Damon.

Hi Mom!

You'll have to do better next time if you want me to continue to order from IWM.

with a threat/ultimatum like that I am not surpised he was less than impressed.

I only use paypal and have had no issues….

Well, for what it's worth I have ordered from them several times and have never had a problem. Actually they went out of their way to help me and even gave me a good deal. IWM has always been top notch.

I am constantly amazed at how many threats and accusations come attached to an intial complaint? To be totaly honest I am so happy that I have Teresa and Connie who handle
these types of things as I am afraid I just could not put up with some of the stuff they do?
Russ Dunaway

Hey customer service,military intelligence and honest politicians are all oxy morons.Rob

I've bought many items using Paypal and I've had this exact problem at other vendors, which is how I discovered this problem.

Once I had that problem with Avalanche Press (as someone else noted above). I inquired (very politely) about it and they not only tracked down the issue, they gave me two of their games for free to make up for it (it was a large order). As someone else pointed out above, you catch more flies with sugar/honey than you do with salt.

Now I always hit 'return to merchant' to ensure the sale going through and have not had any problems since.

I've always been impressed with IWM either ordering online or at shows. They've always been very good to me and handled my orders well.

Whatever happened to acting in a professional manner? Yes, Womack, and sorry to say this dude but you were a little rude and patronising in your mail to Noe. However, the mistake wasn't yours, so I can understand you being a little miffed.
But Mike Noe shouldn't have let your email get to him and he shouldn't have responded the way he did. My job involves working with people who are sometimes in a great deal of emotional distress, and sometimes this means that they will kick out against the people trying to help them, and complain. When this happens it does hurt, but I don't take it personally. I just carry on doing the best job I can and support the person making the complaint.
That's not me being saintly, I'm just being professional about it…
I do feel Noe should have acted the same way, as all he's done is stick two fingers up to you and tell you to take your custom elsewhere, and that is rather sad…
Cheers

Ace

Everyone involved admitted to having a bad week, apologized to each other, and we have moved forward.

Sounds good.

Rude behavior from a merchant is unforgivable and gamers are often too willing to put up with it. Escalating an issue with an ill informed or rude customer is not the way to make a company money.

I think JWOMACK is entirely justified. If the store offers Paypal as a payment option, the customer has to presume it works correctly. If it doesn't, the vendor is wrong to blame it on Paypal; it's the vendor after all, who is using Paypal on his site as a payment option.

JWOMACK's email was a bit miffed, but not out of line. The vendor's blaming it on Paypal was lame; he took the money, didn't he?

Actually, he wasn't aware he even had the money.

I'm sure that in each of your business endeavors none of you have ever uttered anything over the line ever? Sorry, folks are human and make mistakes. There are loads of reasons why. It becomes a serious problem when it occurs more frequently. This was a situation where nobody was really at fault and has been resolved. Let it drop.

I am glad JWOMACK and Mike worked it out. Life is too short to feud over slights. So roll the dice paint the lead. This train wreck is over.