RONA

May 2009

Dear Rona, 

I have been recently notified of your 15% in-store discount this Saturday through a web banner advertisement displayed in my e-mail account. There is a clear grammatical error present in your ad, which reads "ASK FOR YOU STICKER IN STORE." This tells me that this ad was not given the time and quality that should have gone into it, as it was rushed out. It also tells me that your marketing department is not checking the messages that it is sending out to the public. I am not very impressed, as I am left questioning the legitimacy of you advertising (see how noticeable that error is?) due to a lack of commitment to marketing excellence. 

Sincerely, 

Terry Ibele

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August 5th, 2010

Madam, Sir:

Hi mister Ibele, Due to a failure in our communications system last year, we have been unable to answer your email. Here is the answer you should have received: Thank you for your observation. We apologize for this terrible mistake and we appreciate your understanding, these things happen sometimes, and we always appreciate the attention and care of our loyals customers regarding this matter. Needless to say that we sincerely apologize for this unfortunate inconvenience. We wish to keep you amongst our loyal customers and you can be assured that we will be pleased to help you in your renovation or gardening projects. Thank you and have an excellent day.
Best regards,

Customer Service 

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October 8th, 2010

Dear Customer Service,

I have a few problems with the response that I received from you, dated August 5th, 2010.
 

First of all, the timeliness of your response, regardless of your communications systems failure, is outright insulting. It took nearly a year for customer service to respond to my message. However, your website’s contact page states, “We wish to answer your questions efficiently and quickly,” which seems entirely contradictory in this matter. What if my message was regarding an urgent safety issue on an item? What if my message was regarding product pricing and I took my business elsewhere? Regardless, for a company that generates over $6 billion in sales a year, it would be thought that you would be able to afford a decent ‘communication system,’ which would not fail in the first place and then take an entire year to fix.

Secondly, the response that I did receive states “…we always appreciate the attention and care of our loyal[s] customers…” Do you mean to say that you actually rely on your customers to complete quality control on your advertisements when mistakes slip through? I do not believe that I receive a paycheque from Rona, so I do not believe I should have to be on the lookout for your mistakes. Also, I have worked from both the Customer Marketing and agency side of businesses, so I know just how much quality control ads like these should have gone through. What “these things happen sometimes” indicates is that mistakes like this are not uncommon and that your marketing department is really not doing its job.

Finally, there are multiple spelling and grammar mistakes in your response, which I have indicated below. Your mistakes are in red, with a strike-through and my corrections are in green and bolded.

Sincerely,

Terry

P.S. Thanks for wishing me an excellent day :)

Madam, Sir: (really?)

Dear Mr. Ibele

Hi mister Ibele, Due to a failure in our communications system last year, we have been unable to answer your email. Here is the answer you should have received: Thank you for your observation. We apologize for this terrible mistake and we appreciate your understanding, these. These things happen sometimes, and we always appreciate the attention and care of our loyals loyal customers regarding this matter these matters. Needless to say that, we sincerely apologize for this unfortunate inconvenience (how exactly, is this an inconvenience?). We wish to keep you amongst our loyal customers and you can be assured that we will be pleased to help you in your renovation or gardening projects. Thank you and have an excellent day.

Best regards,

Customer Service

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OUTCOME: It will take another year before I get another response