March 13, 2006

Mr. Gil Kemp

Home Decorators Collection

8920 Pershall Road

Hazelwood, Mo. 63042-2809

Dear Mr. Kemp,

I am writing to you with reference to difficulties that I have had with your company.

I had purchased a set of art glass corners on the 2nd of November, 2005, and subsequently two sets of art glass corners on the 14th of November, 2005.

Having previously made a number of purchases from Home Decorators Collection, I started to become concerned at the length of time it was taking for these items to arrive.

Repeated calls to customer service gave me adjusted dates for shipping and always the moniker that these items were coming straight from the manufacturer.

A full three months later when I called, I was told that the first items were no longer available and that my money had been refunded. The second items were to arrive but had been sent to the wrong address.

Three and one half months after paying for the second set of items, I was told that these as well were unavailable and my money was being refunded.

No amount of discussion with anybody could convince them to understand that if the last items had been returned, and were no longer available, they were surely gathering dust in some corner of a warehouse.

Mr Kemp, May 16th will mark my 30th year in retail, five of those years with a company which also was in the business of shipping our products around the world. There are right ways and wrong ways of dealing with customer problems.

In my business,when a customer is dissatisfied with something, I refund their money and ask them what I can do to fix the problem. No one leaves my store anything less than happy and with the knowledge that they have been heard.

Do you believe it is proper business practice to hold a customer's money – any amount - for such a ridiculous amount of time and then simply brush it off by sending the money back?

Businesses such as yours and mine are built on product quality, selection, and price. They continue to thrive only if they provide quality customer service as well.

Neither of us can take our success for granted. I hope that you never feel so confident in your success that you forget this.

Regards,

Richard Williams

139 Yale Avenue

Mill Valley, California 94941

Richard Williams

2006-03-13T08:16:18

Richard Williams