How easy it is to lose a customer in web

I'll tell a story about me. I'm a web consumer, I buy lot of things from many different webstores around Europe. I have been quite loayal consumer of Chain Reaction Cycle's, but they lost my loyalty with a thing that wasn't really their fault. I think it's a perfect story of how easy it is to lose a customer in web nowadays.

For my triathlon hobby I was looking for aerobars for my bike. As I've used to I headed to CRC to check their offering. And as usual they had really good offering and very competitive prices for aerobars. I selected one set of aerobars and checked from the details view, that clamb diameter 31mm was suitable for my handlebar. I went on and I bought the item.

About week later aerobars arrived and I went straight on to try those on my bike. I was bit amazed to notice those didn't fit, those were for 26mm handlebar. I started to investigate why this had happened and noticed that CRC had different information in buy and description sheets of that product. I had actually ordered aerobars for 26mm handlebar by accident.

I mailed them to tell what had happened. In couple of hours they mailed me back saying that this was unfortunate, but it my own fault due that information next to buy button had said it to be for 26mm handlebar. I could return the product, but I would need to pay the postage.

I do agree that it was part of my fault, but that is not the point in web consuming. Person who was handling my ticket should have noticed that I was a loyal customer. I had ordered within 6 months 953 euros worth of equipment from them in six different orders. He could have said that they are sorry for the mixup and pay the postage back for replacing aerobars to suitable ones.

What did happen was that I started to look for other options. I hadn't even looked for options for a long time. Now I started searching and got a really nice deal from another webstore. Just like that they lost one loayal customer.

These type webstores are all about small profits and they are trying to cut down costs on every possible place. These kind of webstores are still more than anything else all about cash flow and masses. They should do everything possible to keep customers happy. And this was all about 15 euros worth of postage expenses. Not much for me, and nothing for CRC.

To note, I have nothing against CRC. I still think it's an exceptional webstore with really good pricing and product catalog. This is just a story of me noticing they are not the only ones.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen