For those of you that don’t know, my niece is getting married next week. Her mother (my sister) has been ordering custom pieces for the decorations, favor bags, flowers – etc. You name it, she’s trying to get them custom ordered. She’s had great success with a lot of companies, many delivering on or before the promised delivery date. That is, until she ordered her custom printed navy blue m&m’s from the M&M candy company at www.mymms.com.
You see, my nephew-to-be is named Matthew. My nieces’ name is Courtney. Wouldn’t it be cool – my sister and I thought collectively – to order those custom M&M’s in Navy blue with a single “c” printed on them, and also order some silver ones with the traditional “m”. M and C, Matt and Courtney – cool right? We thought so.
On line we went, placing our order on November the 2nd….remember this, it’s important later. We wanted the candies to arrive well ahead of time so that we had time to put them in the 300 plus favor bags and tie them with an adorable snowflake ribbon that my sister found at Target. My sister was concerned that with the special order, we’d need lots of time to get them printed and here, so she read every single line of information on the site. I read it too. Every word. Every single disclaimer. We gave them over a month to print and send them. Everything seemed as though it would work. Janene placed the order, was given a delivery date of December 2nd (a month away) and entered her credit card information.
Meanwhile we waited. The candy we ordered from another site arrived as promised. (20 lbs of Rock Candy Crystals if you were wondering). The company even found it in their hearts to include a thank you gift for the order. Amazing customer service, if you ask me.
December 2nd arrived. No M&M’s.
Janene called.
The customer service department at M&M’s proceeded to apologize profusely. Apparently the order had been lost – as can sometimes happen in “internet order land” – and they promised they’d be out within the next week. “Completely our fault” and “we couldn’t be sorrier” as well as added attempts to ship it out next day air – at an additional charge to my sister….what??? The company messed up, and they wanted to charge her for overnight delivery…hmmm…She politely declined…we still had time. The candy would ship that week and be here by the 10th. Okay, still time. Janene thanked them for being so prompt to fix the problem and hung up the phone. It was exasperating, but at least they were making it right…sort of.
The 10th came and went. Then the 11th. Still no Candy.
Janene called.
“There’s a problem with the order.”
“??????”
“It’s company policy that we do not ship custom printed candies out with only one letter printed on them. It goes against our trademark, the order has been held until a solution has been reached.”
again, “???????” – keep in mind, no mention of this on the website, in the fine print, or in the previous phone call regarding the delayed order.
M&M’s never once attempted to contact my sister regarding the order. Not once. Not via email, phone calls, or even snail mail. At this point, we’d have settled for smoke signals…anything to show they were working on it.
After talking more with the rep, Janene decided to continue with the order. “I suppose we can change the ‘C’ to simply read 2009 and leave it at that. When can they be here?”
“For an additional charge, we can overnight them to you and have them there by the 18th.”
“??????????”
I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details, but after much prodding and escalating the call to management, it was determined that M&M’s would cover the rush shipping charge.
The 18th arrived, and the candy finally showed up on my sister’s door step.
Remember the previous candy company mentioned that sent the candy along with a thank you gift?
Nothing of the sort from M&M’s. Not even a coupon for a discount off of her next order – should she decide she might ever want to go that route again.
Oh, and did I mention they arrived printed with a single ‘c’ on them? Yep. That’s right. So much for company policies and trademark.
Bottom line? The custom printed M&M’s are a really cool concept. I’ve considered ordering them myself a few times. The M&M’s website is fun to play with, and offers all sorts of custom colors. However – would I purchase from them again? Not anytime soon. Their customer service is severely lacking – and in an economy where people really aren’t spending on luxury items right now – I personally don’t believe they can afford to be so complacent about customer service and quality. Did we get the order we asked for? Yes, we eventually did. But I’ve got to tell you, it’s going to be a very long time before we try that again. If you order from M&M’s, make sure you keep good records, and have a LOT of lead time.
That’s it, from my perspective.
