Old Town Terrible Customer service - Kayak Fishing Adventures on Big Water’s Edge

Hunters Pa · 06-19-2020, 09:24 AM

Sucks. If you paid via credit card you can refute the chare until issues are addressed. That may get their attention

Harry Hill · 06-19-2020, 09:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hunters Pa

Sucks. If you paid via credit card you can refute the chare until issues are addressed. That may get their attention

That is my next step, we gave them a week to address the issue with no satisfaction. It may be they feel because she is a woman they can just ignore her but they don't know my wife.

Harry Hill · 06-19-2020, 11:56 AM

The more I inspect the kayak the more I can see it never received an inspection before leaving the factory. Excess plastic was left in the scuppers, there are scratches and gouges in the scuppers and a lot of debris inside the hull. The drive unit has an inspection sticker signed by SDB but there are no stickers on the hull indication anyone inspected it. It appears Old Town knows they let a unit go out without being inspected and don't want to be responsible. I'm wondering if they let the kayak leave like this is it safe for my wife to be out on the open ocean in it. What did they miss that I can't see?

jorluivil · 06-19-2020, 11:58 PM

That sucks, that's one of the drawbacks of buying large items online. Hope it all works out for you two. I had a bad experience myself recently. I called a local company to get some assistance and the guy that picked up the phone had an attitude from the get go, the dude was such an ass that rather than arguing with him I just ended the call.

mean people suck.

Harry Hill · 06-23-2020, 09:36 AM

After almost three weeks since the first contact my wife finally received an e-mail from the original customer service person she contacted. Only the second e-mail in all that time after multiple attempts to contact the CS Chastity. A word of advice, if you have to contact Old Town customer service ask for Ken, if you get Chastity you are in for a long process. Anyway, my wife finally got Chastity to answer her phone after talking with Ken first. She was given a song and dance about how busy she is but my wife worked CS for a major corporation and knows the job. Chastity promised an answer within the hour and after an hour my wife received an e-mail telling her Old Town would replace the hull, we should keep the seat and drive, and to cut a twelve by twelve inch section of hull out around the serial number and send that back to old town with pictures of the destroyed hull. No apology and no compensation for all our time and trouble, and maybe a month wait for a new boat it seems replacing faulty hulls takes hind tit in Old Towns feeding cycle. I believe Chastity was authorized to do more but feels the need to short change us in the deal. It's sad because I had a lot of faith in Old Town and Johnson Outdoors before all this happened. All I can say is if you want an Old Town product by directly from a local operation like OEX, Brent would have taken care of this immediately

monstahfish · 06-29-2020, 10:36 AM

Just some context here to consider, and I definitely have no stake in old town. At my company, during the shutdown we lost half our customer service staff and they didn't come back. On top of this, we also lost a bunch of people in production some of whom were very experienced and we can't make product fast enough because everyone is buying outdoor products like crazy right now. Now they are overwhelmed and everyone in the engineering team is having to step in and help with customer service calls and none of us have been authorized to do any replacements or anything like that, we have to send instructions back to the overworked customer service staff.
Point being, things are hard for everyone right now and we've gotten way too used to things being easy. With cases spiking again, expect things to get worse before they get better.

Harry Hill · 06-29-2020, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by monstahfish

Just some context here to consider, and I definitely have no stake in old town. At my company, during the shutdown we lost half our customer service staff and they didn't come back. On top of this, we also lost a bunch of people in production some of whom were very experienced and we can't make product fast enough because everyone is buying outdoor products like crazy right now. Now they are overwhelmed and everyone in the engineering team is having to step in and help with customer service calls and none of us have been authorized to do any replacements or anything like that, we have to send instructions back to the overworked customer service staff.
Point being, things are hard for everyone right now and we've gotten way too used to things being easy. With cases spiking again, expect things to get worse before they get better.

Just excuses to me, the first person that was contacted, a young lady named Chasity would not respond to phone or e-mail, when I contacted a young man named Ken, he not only answered the phone but also forwarded everything to a manager, which prompted Chasity to finally respond. It took her three weeks to finally offer a resolution. Chasity might want to remember that there are a lot of people out of work who would be more than willing to do her job in a prompt and courteous manner. Product might be slower getting out but customer service should always be first and formost on a companies mind. I never accepted excuses from my employees when it came to keeping our customers satisfied.

domtesta27 · 06-29-2020, 04:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by monstahfish

Just some context here to consider, and I definitely have no stake in old town. At my company, during the shutdown we lost half our customer service staff and they didn't come back. On top of this, we also lost a bunch of people in production some of whom were very experienced and we can't make product fast enough because everyone is buying outdoor products like crazy right now. Now they are overwhelmed and everyone in the engineering team is having to step in and help with customer service calls and none of us have been authorized to do any replacements or anything like that, we have to send instructions back to the overworked customer service staff.
Point being, things are hard for everyone right now and we've gotten way too used to things being easy. With cases spiking again, expect things to get worse before they get better.

PREACH!!!!!!!!! As someone who has to deal with the public and with customer service this is spot on. I will also say that you catch far more flies with honey than vinegar, and when someone who is calm, collected, and polite needs help I will bend over backwards to do everything I can do to get a resolution. When you take the "vinegar" approach, I'm more than likely gonna drag my feet a little, and probably feed you a very corporate friendly line about our service level agreement, give you the max estimate on time, and then send ya on your merry way!

06-19-2020, 11:56 AM	#3
Harry Hill Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2015 Location: Yucaipa, CA Posts: 1,136	The more I inspect the kayak the more I can see it never received an inspection before leaving the factory. Excess plastic was left in the scuppers, there are scratches and gouges in the scuppers and a lot of debris inside the hull. The drive unit has an inspection sticker signed by SDB but there are no stickers on the hull indication anyone inspected it. It appears Old Town knows they let a unit go out without being inspected and don't want to be responsible. I'm wondering if they let the kayak leave like this is it safe for my wife to be out on the open ocean in it. What did they miss that I can't see? __________________ you can't eat it if you release it

06-19-2020, 11:58 PM	#4
jorluivil Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Posts: 6,856	That sucks, that's one of the drawbacks of buying large items online. Hope it all works out for you two. I had a bad experience myself recently. I called a local company to get some assistance and the guy that picked up the phone had an attitude from the get go, the dude was such an ass that rather than arguing with him I just ended the call. mean people suck. __________________ www.facebook.com/Teamsewer

06-23-2020, 09:36 AM	#5
Harry Hill Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2015 Location: Yucaipa, CA Posts: 1,136	After almost three weeks since the first contact my wife finally received an e-mail from the original customer service person she contacted. Only the second e-mail in all that time after multiple attempts to contact the CS Chastity. A word of advice, if you have to contact Old Town customer service ask for Ken, if you get Chastity you are in for a long process. Anyway, my wife finally got Chastity to answer her phone after talking with Ken first. She was given a song and dance about how busy she is but my wife worked CS for a major corporation and knows the job. Chastity promised an answer within the hour and after an hour my wife received an e-mail telling her Old Town would replace the hull, we should keep the seat and drive, and to cut a twelve by twelve inch section of hull out around the serial number and send that back to old town with pictures of the destroyed hull. No apology and no compensation for all our time and trouble, and maybe a month wait for a new boat it seems replacing faulty hulls takes hind tit in Old Towns feeding cycle. I believe Chastity was authorized to do more but feels the need to short change us in the deal. It's sad because I had a lot of faith in Old Town and Johnson Outdoors before all this happened. All I can say is if you want an Old Town product by directly from a local operation like OEX, Brent would have taken care of this immediately __________________ you can't eat it if you release it

06-19-2020, 09:24 AM	#1
Hunters Pa Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Fullerton Posts: 1,361	Sucks. If you paid via credit card you can refute the chare until issues are addressed. That may get their attention

06-29-2020, 10:36 AM	#6
monstahfish Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2014 Posts: 423	Just some context here to consider, and I definitely have no stake in old town. At my company, during the shutdown we lost half our customer service staff and they didn't come back. On top of this, we also lost a bunch of people in production some of whom were very experienced and we can't make product fast enough because everyone is buying outdoor products like crazy right now. Now they are overwhelmed and everyone in the engineering team is having to step in and help with customer service calls and none of us have been authorized to do any replacements or anything like that, we have to send instructions back to the overworked customer service staff. Point being, things are hard for everyone right now and we've gotten way too used to things being easy. With cases spiking again, expect things to get worse before they get better.