Hello Everyone--
I go away for a few days of vacation, take the time to browse signs101 and came across this post. I'd like to clarify a few things, and help set the record straight on this order.
First off, I am the Chief Operating Officer of Griffco Partners, Inc, a privately held corporation based in Utah. I am also one of the shareholders of the company, making me for all intents and purposes an "owner." It is my duty as the COO of Griffco to ensure our companies operate as they're supposed to. Obviously, in this instance our wholesale group, ABA Visibility Product fell short.
Before I address the complaint, I'd like to explain that Griffco Partners, Inc is a multi-million dollar company, with 34 current employees spread throughout our group of companies. I say this, not to boast, nor brag, but rather to help explain why the OP couldn't just contact the owner. There six owners of Griffco, and coincidentally they are all on vacation with me (it's a family business!).
I would also like to mention, as Colorado Signs did earlier, that everything we produce print wise is done in our 17K square foot facility in Salt Lake City. We do not use sub contractors for printing.
With that in mind, let me directly address this complaint, and share with you what I've learned.
First, we have 20 inbound phone lines to serve customers, and one of eight sales people will pick up the phone if called during our business hours of 8:30am to 5:00pm mountain time, monday through Friday. Email is answered between those hours as well. I don't have an answer as to why our customer was not able to get a hold of us. But I will continue to work on this.
Second, this tent was indeed delayed, and for that I can accept total blame. We have a Mimaki JV5320DS for our dye sublimation. If anyone has ever worked with a JV5, you would know it needs constant TLC. We had some new parts arrive, and it looks like this order was not completed before the machine was taken down for installation. In doing so, we missed the deadline for this tent top.
Upon realizing this, Shaila rushed the tent through production, and asked our customer to provide a shipping address so that we could ship the tent top directly to his customer. She secured the information, but we messed up. As you read earlier, our customer's customer is on a cross US trip promoting his product. The address we shipped it to appears to be his last stop, rather than his current stop.
When I found this out today, I immediately had our production group produce a new tent, and have it overnight for Saturday delivery to the correct address. I just spoke with our QC/Shipping Manager, and he verified the tent was produced, and sent to the address that our customer specified. If all goes well, this will arrive Saturday morning.
In the meantime, the tent top that was sent incorrectly is being picked up from the hotel where it was dropped off a day late, and also being overnighted to the customer. Thus our customer's customer will now have two tent tops to use for their display.
These are the immediate steps I took to fix our mistake. As It's Friday night at 10:30, I've not yet had a chance to speak with our customer directly, but that will happen as soon as possible.
I hope that this helps clear up what happened. Long story short, we screwed up, and we take full responsibility for what happened. I am going to make this right. To the guys at Mike Davis Signs, I sincerely apologize for the trouble we've caused you. This is not typical of what we do.
Thanks for reading.
Nate
