Thanks for your feedback, Ms Chu seems more disappointed than angry and describes herself as a loyal customer so that’s a good start.
We’ll escalate this for Geoff (Customer Service Manager) to quickly contact her today to try and build bridges.
We can explain that we normally hold very significant stocks to act as a buffer but that local and international demand have in fact made it very difficult for the factories to keep up, a situation that we believe will be remedied soon.
I suggest that you should offer to airfreight a pallet of pans at your cost which should cover her order. I’m sure this would be one of those occasions where an unhappy customer is converted to a brand advocate. I note there is 30 pieces becoming available this week, please confirm your acceptance of this solution.
By way of background I’ve summarised the supply situation as I see it below:
As you have observed, this item is a product Thailand haven’t been able to supply. This is clearly a Villeroy & Boch supply problem, and not related to our ordering processes. Our last receipt was May 2014 and we have been out of stock since soon after that.
We have overdue orders placed back to April 2014 (see below), and until last week the weekly response we have been getting is ‘waiting for customer service confirm’. When Villeroy & Boch can’t tell us when they can supply, we have no choice but to move our dates out to an estimate. There is still none in transit. There should be no surprises around this issue, the product has featured on the ‘po not in transit’ report for months, which is sent to Kelvin, copied yourself, Desmond, and Terry. This is not the only dissatisfied customer relating to both the ‘01’ and ‘R1’ versions.