Red Alert, Crisis Ahead

Ugh! What a week. We are working on a project with I Love All Access. This company sells VIP packages to concerts like Christina Aguilera, Def Leppard, Sammy Hagar and Godsmack. It’s a great idea for fans. You get a goodie bag, sound check party, great tickets, sometimes a backstage tour, depending on the band. Anyway, the goodie bags are where we come in. Scott from Lil Gary’s office calls and we source out some different bags and get them samples. They choose a bag and place the order. I’ve been dealing with the factory (US Box) for a couple weeks on this. Pricing had been confirmed a multitude of times. I talk to my contact (Dominic) at US Box on a Friday and he reconfirms the pricing and inventory. Ok, all good, call and place the order on Monday. They are supposed to open at 8AM on Monday. I call for the first 45 minutes and no answer. Finally they arrive. I tell Dominic that I need to order the bags. He gives me a price $.06 more than quoted. There is nothing I can do, I need the bags. I argue back and forth with Dominic, the supervisor, the owner and they won’t work with me on the price. The philosophy here at our company is that if I mis-quote, too bad for me, I have to eat the difference. That is how we pay for our mistakes. I’m glad I don’t make that many. ;-) So then they invoice me another penny higher than the $.06. Now I want to rip their heads off. I vow never to work with them again and to place a comment in the back end system of our online search tool (as other people have). I don’t want anyone else to have to go through this. But it gets even better. They wait until 4:55PM EST to tell me “oh by the way, we don’t have any of those bags”. These are the same bags I ordered before 9AM and it takes them all day to figure this out. The bags are supposed to be in Kentucky on Thursday. After I recover from my stroke I call Jimmy upstairs and we start another search to find the bags. We find the manufacturer, but they are closed because it is after 5 now. Jimmy finds another source in California. Similar bag, just a little bigger. The company is AB Packaging. I talk to Richard who happens to be a life saver. He assures me that if I have an order in by Tuesday morning he can ship same day for arrival on Thursday. I have to pay just a little more and I have to buy more bags than I intended but the final result is a happy client (I Love All Access). As long as my clients are happy that is all that really matters. I hear from Scott today and he said the bags arrived on schedule and they worked out just fine. Thank you everyone that helped on this project.