Zappos DOES NOT EQUAL A Good Example of Customer Service in Social Media

You know, I'm sick and tired of constantly seeing posts about how Zappos is equivalent to great customer service! It seems like it's the only example out there for social media, but I know it's not!

Zappos sure as hell wasn't great for me in terms of Customer Experience; in fact, I do believe that my experience was far much worse than it would have been if I had never know that they were supposed to be synonymous with customer service!

Several months back I was looking for new shoes and I said hey what the hell, the local FootLocker sucks and seems to be staffed by inept kids that leave you waiting for 25 minutes listening to the worst goddamn mutherfucking music ever made while they try to find if your shoes are at another store or when they'll be in stock. It was so aggravating I said to myself, there has to be an easier way to get my shoes, I know exactly what I want, I get the same pair over and over because they are great!

I check out this Zappos thing people are wild about, although I have no idea how online shoes can be that exciting, at least if you are a guy. I check their site, it seemed nice enough, finding my shoes wasn't tough, and hey they were a good price with free shipping and free returns! Wow, these guys are good I thought, so I go to try to buy, but sorry I live in that far off mystical land of Canada that doesn't exist in the same universe as America, let alone the same continent. I'm pissed and yell FAIL. So I look for an alternative, perhaps they have a Canadian site? If they are so great they must!

Lo and Behold! They do! But hey, is this even the same company? The site looks completely different, like it's made from crap and aimed at people who aren't as important or who don't care about looks for functionality like Americans do. Funny how most sites seem to think that when they expand to Canada...

So I look for my shoes, and boy was that fun. 10 minutes later and after looking through every pair of shoes, I couldn't find my basic pair of New Balance running shoes! And WTF is this? $10 to ship on more expensive shoes then they'd be in the states? and $15 return? It even says they are shipping them from the US!!! If that is the case, why don't they just let me use their beautiful site that is fully stocked and pay for the shipping? Why do I have to pick from a lesser more expensive group and still have to pay for shipping? What kind of Bullshit are they running?!

So Anyways, I complain over Twitter making sure to mention Zappos and showing that I was unhappy (I even used a frowny!), and of course I've heard that over 200 of their employees are monitoring twitter. I expected someone to swoop down to my rescue any minute, or to at least appologize for lack of international service.

Several months later I still haven't heard a peep from them. Good customer service my fucking ass! Maybe if I was born under the American Flag I would have gotten some reception, but for a company that is synonymous with social media and great customer service, at least one fucking person could have said "Sorry, we're still working on our Canadian store", or "how can I help you pay us?". Seriously, WTF, high expectations, incredibly low results, seems pretty sad to me, and not even a reply from a Canadian Zappos employee, if they actually have any, or anyone in Canada. Perhaps I only had one tweet, but with the tools available at the time and 200 employees, someone must have saw my tweet.

I'll never use them as an example of Good customer service, just as one that is bad. Are they good because they offer free shipping and returns? Maybe that's it? Well so does well.ca and I know they are nice people who respond to you on twitter! Perhaps it's their culture? What fucking good does their culture do me if they don't help me (200 employees not helping me)? I really hate to say it, but at this point I believe Rogers (...shudder) does a better job of customer service using Social Media. Take that!

Anyways, I've been meaning to get this rant out for a long time, but seeing a recent tweet about zappos = customer service just got me riled up again.