NaBloPoMo 2021.15 A tale of two companies in a pandemic and afterwards: Who Gives A Crap vs Fresh Direct

We subscribe to Who Gives a Crap toilet paper. Every six weeks or something, we get a big box of TP delivered right to our door. Highly recommend the product, plus 50% of their profits go to build toilets in places that don't have toilets. Need toilet paper? You too can subscribe here: https://us.whogivesacrap.org/

Who Gives a Crap donates
50% of their profits to charity.

Here's the vital detail: We signed up for Who Gives a Crap pre-pandemic, maybe like the middle of 2019 or something. However many months later, BAM, pandemic hits and the shelves are empty of toilet paper. 

Remember when everybody was all stressed out they'd have no TP and would have to make do with ... some other non-optimal paper product? Frankly, I never considered what everybody else was thinking for their TP Plan B, I was blissfully unconcerned. You know why?

Because Who Gives A Crap sent an email to all their subscribers saying that anyone who had subscribed pre-pandemic would be guaranteed their shipment. They were turning away all the johnny-come-latelies to make sure that their loyal customers got their shipments as a first priority. They rewarded our loyalty with loyalty.

I will never cancel my subscription to Who Gives a Crap. My progeny will be saddled with it. 

This is case study #1.

Compare and contrast this with my second case study, which I'm calling "Fresh Forget-where-Your-Bread-is-Buttered Direct." We were loyal Fresh Direct customers for literally years. Years. Multiple years. Every week we got a Fresh Direct order delivered to our house.

Pandemic hits. 

Not only could we not manage to get any food delivered because we couldn't get a delivery slot, we also had pre-paid a f*ing delivery subscription fee for 2020 which we therefore couldn't use. I emailed and called and asked if they could do something, anything, for their longtime loyal customers. Could they figure out some online or offline way that I could have our normal shipment delivered?

No.
Fresh Direct simply could not. 

Ahold Delahize might want to rethink
a few things over there at Fresh Direct

Fresh Direct was very very happy to throw their backs into a first-come-first-served model in which anybody who was willing to get up at midnight to place their grocery order got their groceries. All these never-before-shopped-at-Fresh-Direct people got all the love.

After I bitched long and loud enough, I finally got our delivery fee partially refunded on a pro-rated basis. Did anyone take that as a sign to apologize and snap into action with some new customer retention strategy? No, they did not. They were basking in the glow of all the new customers who had never shopped for groceries online before, and anybody with half a brain might suspect very likely would not continue to do so after it wasn't a necessity.

We took our business elsewhere.

Fast forward 18 months and guess who is back? Badgering me with email after email to please, please, please sign up again for grocery delivery? Right, it's my old friend Fresh Direct. I had to unsubscribe to the Fresh Direct emails they were sending so many. Now I'm getting Fresh Direct postcards. Fresh Direct is giving me $50 off my first order. Fresh Direct is promising me unicorns and rainbows.

Umm. No. 

I read somewhere that nothing is worse than scorning a loyal customer because of the antipathy this creates. Maybe this is true. 

But I'll tell you what is also true. If someone from Fresh Direct had called or emailed at any point after they got their shit together over there, and if they had apologized for their appalling treatment of their loyal customers ... I probably would have given them the benefit of the doubt. Frankly, if anyone over there right now would be slightly less tone deaf and possibly consider why their former customers abandoned them and acknowledge it, I might forgive them. But no. I just keep getting a series of "we miss you" postcards like there's no bad blood anywhere to be found.

And so, this is the end of the story... we get our groceries delivered from Fresh Direct's myriad of competitors.

We continue to be the prototypical disgruntled customer and telling, what is it 10? other people about our issue with Fresh Direct. Except, you know me, I'm a talker, I probably already told 40-85 other people.

Motto: Don't be like Fresh Direct. Be like https://us.whogivesacrap.org/