Death and Autopsy of Trust - A True Story

It is funny how often we talk about terms like trust, brand risk and customer loyalty in our professional life. And how rudely reality can intrude even with brands that used to hold your trust and loyalty for a long time. It‘s a fragile element, this trust, and this is a story of how one small and two global brands managed to kill it! Listen up @PayPal, @DHL and @Dessue EFH.

In spite of her reluctance to shop online (instead of supporting small, local brick & mortar stores) my partner decided to give in and buy her new beach outfit from an online store in Bratislava. The Dessue.com (European Fashion House) looked professional enough and with payments handled by PayPal, what could go wrong. The items arrived promptly but two out of three didn‘t fit well, so she returned those two to the original address. This is where troubles began. While branding itself the European Fashion House and while having a physical store in Bratislava, the Dessue.com EFH customer service is non-existent. And if (by chance) someone actually does pick up the phone they don‘t speak English, german or french. And they don’t react to emails either. Their stance on customer service became even more evident as the return shipment was not accepted and (of course) no money was ever returned. I guess we could ask @Robert Michalak to take action.

Dessue EFH wake up and do your job!

As the return shipment was sent on my partner's cost and not accepted as a return by Dessue, @DHL promptly tried to return it back to her and obviously asked an outrageous amount (47€) for the return of the return and the handling of the non-standard process. When you try to talk to someone at the @Deutsche Post / DHL - Central Package Handling Department in Wuppertal, Germany - it‘s like traveling back to the dark ages. Their ?service line“ is only available on workdays between 8 am and 1 pm but in reality, it is not available at all. I tried to call them for 25 times on three consecutive days and always got the same answering machine text: ?We are all busy but you can send us a fax at...!“ The term ?digital diaspora“ just received a new honorary crown - and DHL / Deutsche Post is fully entitled to it. No email, no call center, not even a call-back option but a solemn fax machine. I guess we could ask @Frank Appel, @David Thornewil or @Phil Nolden to take some action? 

DHL wake up and do your job!

Now on to my favorite digital dungeon - @PayPal Germany. Out of the three players, you should think that the payments services empire owns up best to talks of digital customer service. And after all their "buyer protection program" is one of the cornerstone value propositions of why online shoppers should choose PayPal over all the other payment channels. My partner promptly invoked the "buyer protection dispute resolution process". After the forms kept failing a number of times - I must guess on purpose, so less persevering characters are turned off - she managed to log a ticket. And after a wait of about ten days, she received a cryptic answer. It said: ?We have to deny your request for buyer protection as your criteria for conflicts are not in line with our criteria for conflicts“. 

So what exactly is this supposed to mean? Even after three iterations and an internal process, that must have cost PayPal a multiple of the amount in question, no more sensible answers could be obtained from PayPal. Besides the fact, that PayPal seems to cover for merchants that are not up to their job, PayPal also does not seem to be interested at all in resolving any buy-side conflicts. They didn’t explain their decision, didn‘t name any real person to talk to and did not disclose any communication from the merchant perspective. I can only assume, that they are similar negligent in terms of KYC and AML and would suggest that their German and European compliance staff takes a diligent look at their own customer service and buyer protection processes. I hope we can ask @Florencia Solazzi, @Roland Hatton or @Nicolas Mrozek to take action in this regard.

PayPal wake up and do what you promised to do. 

And why is this little story of a mere 125€ worth going through all that trouble? Because it's the small things that matter and the even more subtle interactions between customers and service providers that kill all trust. The feeling of not being worth the interaction. Of being left alone in the hyper-efficient, straight-through-processed cogwheels of scale and automation. Excellence is a lofty expectation that few brands manage. But being taken seriously as a client should be our baseline - and Dessue, DHL and PayPal - you fail on that baseline.

Thanks for the Cover Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash