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I got a SC fired!
Well...not fired from their job, but their customer fired them from a project.
I work for an office furniture company. I help customers design custom furniture, and then quote it. Our customers are furniture dealers, or interior designers. They work with the actual customer to find out what they want, then come to us to get it.
So, I had a meeting with a designer. She wanted two custom things and a handful of other standard items, 9 items in total. We designed her custom thing, then I took notes on the standard thing. After the meeting I get back to my desk, I write up the text for the special items, leave the price box empty on those lines, then fill in all the standard items. I print the page, and walk it to cost accounting to have them price the special components. I get the price and go back to my desk. I filled in one price, then got a phone call and got distracted.
20 minutes later I get back to the quote. I thought I was done. So I printed it, then printed it to PDF to send to our customer. I e-mailed it out, then went to the printer to get my copy to file. As soon as I got to the printer I realized that I had forgotten to add the price for the second item. I re-opened the quote, added the price, re-printed, and re-emailed with a note saying:
"Please disregard the last e-mail, when I looked at the printed version I found an error. Here is a corrected copy"
The first e-mail went out at 10:13am. The second went out at 10:16am. Three minutes.
I got a call later that afternoon from the customer:
SC: Hey, why did I get two e-mails.
Me: Well, I accidentally forgot to put the price in on one of the special items. I noticed it right away when I picked it up of the printer. The second e-mail that came over 3 minutes later has the correct copy.
SC: You can't change the price on me. Why should I have to eat the mistake that you made?
Me: No, I'm not asking you to eat the mistake. I made an error. I noticed it right away and sent the correct copy 3 minutes later. Simply use the correct quote and no one eats an error.
SC: No, you are making me pay for this out of my pocket. I refuse.
Me: Wait a second. When did you send the quote to your customer?
SC: About 5 minutes ago.
Me: which one did you send?
SC: The first one.
Me: Ok, so send the correct quote to the customer. They have to understand that the price on a special item can not be $0. Since you just sent it, they probably have not even looked at it.
SC: I'm not going to pay for that item, I expect you to honor your quote.
Me: I AM going to honor the quote I sent out 3 minutes after the first quote. You did not send it to your customer until after you had received the correct quote. If it was a matter of me pricing it a little bit off, AND I did not catch it, then I would honor it...however in this case it was a price that was clearly an error, and I caught it and corrected it within 3 MINUTES of sending the wrong one.
SC: I AM NOT PAYING FOR THAT ITEM!
She slammed the phone down.
I went to my boss and explained the circumstances. She said that I was correct. I called the local rep and explained the circumstances and sent them a copy of the correct quote. They said that I handled it perfectly and that they would get in touch with them.
I went into the quote system and wrote a note about what happened. I wrote "DO NOT USE / VOID" across the front of the incorrect quote.
That all happened April 3rd. When I did not hear anything back I assumed that she decided not to use us. I was not heartbroken.
Last week Monday I got a call from Order Entry "Hey, can you come over and help me. I just got a Purchase Order that is strange."
I get over there and it was a PO from that woman for that stuff. She had a $0 price on the second special. There was a note attached that said "You must honor your quote because it was an error made by bob [the goat]"
I found my old note and it re-freshed my memory.
I sent off an e-mail with a copy of the PO attached. I sent it to the designer, and copied my boss, the VP of sales, and the local rep.
----------------------------------
"With regards to your attached PO, back in April when we quoted this I did indeed send you a quote with the pricing of one line item at $0. I immediately realized my error and less than 3 minutes later delivered a corrected copy. You had the corrected copy in your inbox prior to your sending the quote out to your customer, and yet you chose to send them the incorrect quote out. You and I had a phone conversation 5 minutes after you sent out the incorrect copy and I informed you that you had a correct copy. You decided not to send the correct copy.
It is unfortunate that you decided to do this. You see, at the top of the quote there is a single line of text beneath the quote number. It reads "Quote is valid for 90 days" and is followed by a time date stamp. The date on your quote means it expired 4 days ago. The reason I say that it is unfortunate for you, is that we have the ability to override the system and allow older quotes to be accepted. However, due to your preference for following the exact letter of the rules we will have to re-quote those two special line items. After reviewing them, it has been discovered that there has been a 10% price increase in those two line items from the corrected price quote that you received AFTER the quote that you referenced.
On your quote line item #1 was $4213, and line item number two (the one you had at $0) should have been $3625. Now those prices are $4634 and $3988 respectively.
If you would like, simply reply to this message acknowledging that you accept the new prices and we can proceed with the processing of your order."
----------------------------------
I got a reply about 5 seconds later from the VP of sales that simply said "Bob, thank you for handling this issue for her". He replied to all when he said that, thereby endorsing it.
I heard nothing more about it, so I did not know what was going on. Yesterday I get a call from the local rep.
He said " Hey, I just wanted to give you a heads up. Apparently, the designer was not happy with your answer. She contacted her customer to tell them that we were jerking them around. What she did not know was that her customer is a close personal friend of mine. After she spent a few minutes berating [my company] he hung up with her and called me to find out what was happening. I did not know that this was his project. I explained the situation. He forwarded me a copy of the quote that he had. She HAD sent him the correct quote and was just trying to scam us out of the difference. He has fired her as his designer. I put him in contact with another designer that I like and he is sending her a PO today for the order. That's the easiest 9% that designer will ever make."
(My Mastercard commercial)
Second Designer: $4950 in commission for 15 minutes of work.
First Designer: $0 for 3 months of work.
Me: one BIG brownie point from the bosses here for handling that well.
Realizing that one more SC gets hosed for being an asshat: PRICELESS.
Well...not fired from their job, but their customer fired them from a project.
I work for an office furniture company. I help customers design custom furniture, and then quote it. Our customers are furniture dealers, or interior designers. They work with the actual customer to find out what they want, then come to us to get it.
So, I had a meeting with a designer. She wanted two custom things and a handful of other standard items, 9 items in total. We designed her custom thing, then I took notes on the standard thing. After the meeting I get back to my desk, I write up the text for the special items, leave the price box empty on those lines, then fill in all the standard items. I print the page, and walk it to cost accounting to have them price the special components. I get the price and go back to my desk. I filled in one price, then got a phone call and got distracted.
20 minutes later I get back to the quote. I thought I was done. So I printed it, then printed it to PDF to send to our customer. I e-mailed it out, then went to the printer to get my copy to file. As soon as I got to the printer I realized that I had forgotten to add the price for the second item. I re-opened the quote, added the price, re-printed, and re-emailed with a note saying:
"Please disregard the last e-mail, when I looked at the printed version I found an error. Here is a corrected copy"
The first e-mail went out at 10:13am. The second went out at 10:16am. Three minutes.
I got a call later that afternoon from the customer:
SC: Hey, why did I get two e-mails.
Me: Well, I accidentally forgot to put the price in on one of the special items. I noticed it right away when I picked it up of the printer. The second e-mail that came over 3 minutes later has the correct copy.
SC: You can't change the price on me. Why should I have to eat the mistake that you made?
Me: No, I'm not asking you to eat the mistake. I made an error. I noticed it right away and sent the correct copy 3 minutes later. Simply use the correct quote and no one eats an error.
SC: No, you are making me pay for this out of my pocket. I refuse.
Me: Wait a second. When did you send the quote to your customer?
SC: About 5 minutes ago.
Me: which one did you send?
SC: The first one.
Me: Ok, so send the correct quote to the customer. They have to understand that the price on a special item can not be $0. Since you just sent it, they probably have not even looked at it.
SC: I'm not going to pay for that item, I expect you to honor your quote.
Me: I AM going to honor the quote I sent out 3 minutes after the first quote. You did not send it to your customer until after you had received the correct quote. If it was a matter of me pricing it a little bit off, AND I did not catch it, then I would honor it...however in this case it was a price that was clearly an error, and I caught it and corrected it within 3 MINUTES of sending the wrong one.
SC: I AM NOT PAYING FOR THAT ITEM!
She slammed the phone down.
I went to my boss and explained the circumstances. She said that I was correct. I called the local rep and explained the circumstances and sent them a copy of the correct quote. They said that I handled it perfectly and that they would get in touch with them.
I went into the quote system and wrote a note about what happened. I wrote "DO NOT USE / VOID" across the front of the incorrect quote.
That all happened April 3rd. When I did not hear anything back I assumed that she decided not to use us. I was not heartbroken.
Last week Monday I got a call from Order Entry "Hey, can you come over and help me. I just got a Purchase Order that is strange."
I get over there and it was a PO from that woman for that stuff. She had a $0 price on the second special. There was a note attached that said "You must honor your quote because it was an error made by bob [the goat]"
I found my old note and it re-freshed my memory.
I sent off an e-mail with a copy of the PO attached. I sent it to the designer, and copied my boss, the VP of sales, and the local rep.
----------------------------------
"With regards to your attached PO, back in April when we quoted this I did indeed send you a quote with the pricing of one line item at $0. I immediately realized my error and less than 3 minutes later delivered a corrected copy. You had the corrected copy in your inbox prior to your sending the quote out to your customer, and yet you chose to send them the incorrect quote out. You and I had a phone conversation 5 minutes after you sent out the incorrect copy and I informed you that you had a correct copy. You decided not to send the correct copy.
It is unfortunate that you decided to do this. You see, at the top of the quote there is a single line of text beneath the quote number. It reads "Quote is valid for 90 days" and is followed by a time date stamp. The date on your quote means it expired 4 days ago. The reason I say that it is unfortunate for you, is that we have the ability to override the system and allow older quotes to be accepted. However, due to your preference for following the exact letter of the rules we will have to re-quote those two special line items. After reviewing them, it has been discovered that there has been a 10% price increase in those two line items from the corrected price quote that you received AFTER the quote that you referenced.
On your quote line item #1 was $4213, and line item number two (the one you had at $0) should have been $3625. Now those prices are $4634 and $3988 respectively.
If you would like, simply reply to this message acknowledging that you accept the new prices and we can proceed with the processing of your order."
----------------------------------
I got a reply about 5 seconds later from the VP of sales that simply said "Bob, thank you for handling this issue for her". He replied to all when he said that, thereby endorsing it.
I heard nothing more about it, so I did not know what was going on. Yesterday I get a call from the local rep.
He said " Hey, I just wanted to give you a heads up. Apparently, the designer was not happy with your answer. She contacted her customer to tell them that we were jerking them around. What she did not know was that her customer is a close personal friend of mine. After she spent a few minutes berating [my company] he hung up with her and called me to find out what was happening. I did not know that this was his project. I explained the situation. He forwarded me a copy of the quote that he had. She HAD sent him the correct quote and was just trying to scam us out of the difference. He has fired her as his designer. I put him in contact with another designer that I like and he is sending her a PO today for the order. That's the easiest 9% that designer will ever make."
(My Mastercard commercial)
Second Designer: $4950 in commission for 15 minutes of work.
First Designer: $0 for 3 months of work.
Me: one BIG brownie point from the bosses here for handling that well.
Realizing that one more SC gets hosed for being an asshat: PRICELESS.
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