Thread: Awesome Newsletter

NEW RANGE - AP COILOVERS

AP manufacturers fixed rate coilover suspension in Germany and all kits are TUV quality approved. The kits are high quality but a budget alternative to other coilover kits we sell. Ride quality is Awesome! Build quality is Awesome and all come with a 2 year warranty.



SPECIAL OFFERS

APR 2.0T FMIC
The biggest selling 2.0T intercooler in the USA and will fit Golf Gti MkV, Audi A3/S3 2.0T, Leon 2.0T, Octavia VRS, and the new TT 2.0T.

Just £649 +vat & fitting until the 31stOct, so contact us now to take advantage of this spine chilling offer!!!

Fitting deal! If you buy the intercooler at this special price, We'll fit it for you for just £99 +vat!


FULLY LOADED OFFER


Cruise Control and Fully Loaded ECU Performance Remap Offers!!

We are offering a number of special combined remap and cruise control fitting packages from now until November 30th 2008.

For all drive by wire 1.8T engined VAG cars we are offering a ‘Fully Loaded’ upgrade including fitting of OEM cruise control for £599 +vat. The usual cost of all this is £960 +vat so our deal gives you a total saving of £424.17.

We have the same offer but with the Stage 2 program for £699 +vat. The usual cost of all this is £1085 +vat giving you a total saving of £453.55.

For the later 2.0T FSI cars we have a similar package for vehicles including Golf MkIV, EOS, Octavia 2 VRS, Leon FR and Cupra that comprises of a fully loaded ECU and fitted cruise for only £699 +vat. The usual cost of all this is £1056 +vat, giving you a total saving of £419.47.

Stage 2 software is available at the deal price of £799 +vat. The usual cost of all this is £1181 +vat giving you a total saving of £448.85.

If you already have cruise control fitted we still have a deal price for you, with fully loaded programs and options on Stage 1 and Stage 2!!

Its funny seeing this newsletter, cause I emailed you about the suspension kit like 11 days ago in reply to your email which took ages to send to me anyway, I actually bought from DPM who were fantastic & answered my questions & done the deal within I'd say 30 mins to 1 hour tops from my 1st phone call to them, including calling Eibach & Koni for me, you never replied, I certainly made others aware of this cause why advertise products for sale but you cant supply the service to back it up, you lost a small £600 deal which would of lead to other purchases, not impressed tbh.

& a friend of mine walked away from a £1500 remap/exhaust system etc by you cause of your shoddy service on a small item that you sold him the wrong part which made him return for the correct one & that was actually at your site aswell, he went somewhere else as I did.

Only advice but you need to seriously look at your customer service cause although I've bought items of you before which comms was also slow or non existent, I know myself & the other seller will think twice before buying from awesome again, doesnt take 1 minute to reply to an email does it???

Hi

We only started these shocks on Friday and sent a newsletter out that day, when & to who did you email here so i can track the email down and find out why it has been missed, we answer EVERY email as quick as we can and for 11 days to have past we must not have received it.

You've been selling FSD's & Eibachs for ages so the newsletters is irrelevant, I just thought was funny you advertise but dont come back to buyers for the business.

TBH to little to late, you've lost my custom full stop & my mates, cause if you cant even reply to a simple email or sell someone the correct part then tbh I wouldnt put my faith in anything else you have to offer, I dont need to tell you businesses rely on people like ourselves to keep you running so a simple reply to an email would have kept my business, maybe its not huge but still kept me coming back, take a leaf out of Damian@dpm's book for customer service, I made what 2 phone calls to him asked questions got replies directly from Eibach & Koni & done the deal within an hour tops.

14 days later & still no reply, I run email systems for companies like yourselves, it wasnt returned undelivered, it was replied to the same path as was sent by Andy in Sales, so dont believe this for 1 second, it took ages for him to send me the email firstly with a comment of sorry for the delay & this isnt the 1st time I've experienced slow comms from awesome but I gave you the benefit of the doubt as parts were good.

If you cant backup the sales hype with the service then why advertise at all cause its wasted IMHO.

There's loads of companies like yourselves now that do return calls/reply to emails that deserve my money & one of them has it now & will do futurewise.

Thanks for the reply and the info needed to get to the bottom of this... its a shame one member of our team can make us look poor as a whole... In andy's defence he does not work on the email side, that is al and sarah but its still very poor that the email wasnt sorted then and there or forwarded to the relevent people. So my apologies..

Nigel,

I would just like to take this opportunity to apologise for not getting back to you. I hold my hands up, it was my mistake, it simply slipped past me. As i am sure you understand, we get hundreds of enquiries every day, be that on emails, forums, phone calls or in the showroom itself, as well as dealing with all our workshop stuff. We do our best to deal with all these enquiries as quickly and efficiently as we can. On this occasion i thought i had replied to it, but i obviously did not, again i apologise for this mistake. As you have said above, your sale was resolved within 1 hour of your phone call to DPM, and i can assure you, that if you had called me too that you would have received the same service. Phone calls are normally answered/processed a lot more quickly than emails unfortunately. This is why we normally suggest that if anyone has any multiple enquiries, that it would be much quicker and efficient to call us up, as in most cases we can sort out any prices or queries on the phone there and then.

Here at awesome we strive to give the best service we can, and again, i apologise that on this occasion you have not received the quality of service expected.

This issues with emails has been noted by us and the management team and we are looking into how we can make it more efficient for all concerned.

Many thanks
Andy

OK, Just a little extra input for this one, and during the course of this post I'll be exchanging caps once or twice...

First, with my Admin cap on:

I feel the most important thing to get set in stone from the off is my (our) position on freedom of speech, because if I don't, there's scope for it to be drawn into question.

At ASN we have a responsibility to two key groups, pretty much in equal measure. First of all, our members - the community. Obviously our mission is to be the biggest, busiest, most useful and accurate Audi enthusiasts' resource on the internet. That means we are obliged to provide an environment for open discussion of issues, as without that, it's an impossibility to fulfill that mission. For starters, if transparency is compromised, we can't acheive the usefulness and accuracy targets; and if members feel that's the case - we're not going to be high on their favourites list if we're not as much, or more of a democracy than our peers. In short then, fairness and honesty is crucial for everyone's benefit.

At the same time, we have a responsibility to our partners. But that doesn't reach any further than the obligation described above, and one certainly can't be allowed to compromise the other.

In 'everyday' terms - it's largely fair to say that members and partners are interdependent. Simply put, we need partners to help us keep the site going - primarilly in fiscal terms; at the end of the day, a commitment of finance is of course required to ensure that each time someone types http://www.audi-sport.net into a browser's address-bar, the website to which we're all so devoted is piped down some copper and fibre to the person who wants to take part. Naturally having partners/sponsors/advertisers is probably the best way to deal with that situation. It stops us from relying solely on input from the site's organisers - our team invest vast swathes of time in the site for no financial reward, and while we do inevitably put our own funds into maintenence and development of ASN, it would be difficult to sustain as a singular source of income, and perhaps a little unfair - to be completely frank you might liken that to paying to work somewhere. Another option might be 'premium memberships' - whereby nobody can use ASN unless they put their hand in their pocket. I think 'premium memberships' can be a good idea, and great to bring extended, and otherwise impossible functionality to those people who are happy to contribute towards it. I feel that they should only really be an optional 'top-up' scheme though, and not an automatic requirement - I want us to provide as much as we can to the Audi community at no cost to it. So, the only remaining option is partners/sponsors/advertisers - however there's another angle outside overheads alone that makes them a good idea... If I bought a lottery ticket tomorrow, for ASN, and it came up with enough numbers to pay the X thousand pounds required to keep the site running for years to come, we'd still have partner companies - their value isn't just measured in pound notes, crucial also is the direct presence of representatives of numerous specialist and skilled organisations. Yes, that benefits such organisations in commercial terms by giving direct marketing potential, but it also benefits our members by having people around to help and advise on products and services which can be immensely useful in the pursuit of audi-enthusiasm. In summary, yes, we charge organisations to exist commercially on ASN, but we do realise their presence offers benefits other than simply paying our bills. If we didn't value their input, knowledge and expertise being present on the forum too, we'd be charging a lot more for them to be here. So equally as with 'public' members, we have an obligation to our partners, to ensure they're treated fairly - and get equal value out of their presence here as the value they put in.

We have to strike as close to a perfect balance as possible between the obligation we hold with our members, and that which we hold with our partners; because without any members, there's nobody here to assist/do business with, and no facilities required which need help to be paid for. At the same time, if there are no partners, it'd be very tricky (read: almost impossible) to keep the site live, delivering the great experience and resource which we hope it does.

So, on to this particular thread...

We were alerted to the discussion unfolding here by numerous people and partners (read: not just Awesome); and they voiced similar opinions that perhaps it was a little unfair; one-sided, you might say. At that point it was decided that while that may be the case, the posts raising issues would be left alone, as of course if factually accurate, fall inside our remit to allow free speech and open-discussion. Equally, we felt that Awesome should have the opportunity to make a public response to points which were also raised in the public domain. It's fairer for everyone if it's all handled openly and honestly rather than being taken behind closed doors prior to resolution.

Having said that though, I would perhaps venture that the issue might've been handled better a little differently. While I appreciate there's nothing wrong with a customer raising issues with a company of whom they're a (potential) customer, it may possibly have been a little strong to launch quite so quickly into comparisons and criticisms, particularly on a thread which only had a very tenuous link to the matter(s) in question.

I've got no reason to question, or seek proof of, the claims and comments made by each party in this discussion; and moreover, I don't think it's my place to do that, and I doubt very much that it would prove beneficial anyway.

So taking the disucssion at face value, I would perhaps suggest that if one person has an issue with another (or indeed a group/organisation/company), it would be best to give plenty of reasonable opportunity to put the situation right before making a large public issue of it.

What I'm saying in simple terms is that I can appreciate NHN's disappointment at difficulties in communication between him and Awesome, but I can also appreciate Awesome didn't intend things to be that way, and when pulled-up on it have offered an unreserved apology. I just feel that perhaps a private phone call, or even PM through this site, raising the issues (exactly as they were above) first might've been fairer.

I'm sure that Awesome realise their customers are crucial to their existence, just as we realise that our members are crucial to ours, if they didn't, they wouldn't be as successful as they are. With that in mind I think it'd be a fair assumption to make that they didn't intend to let a lead go cold; more that it was simply an accident of miscommunication. That happens in everyday life, and while we'd all prefer as little of it as possible, some degree will always be unavoidable. At the risk of being (probably suitably) chastised, I'll venture that the ladies in our lives could probably ensure we never reach a perfect communication target all on their own! I just think that it might've been fairer, especially given that smoother communication with another party via telephone was used as an example, or point of criticism, if a phone call was made to Awesome raising these issues before it was made such a public issue...

...I'll continue having taken off my 'Admin' cap, and put-on my 'Customer' cap.

...I think if a phone call had been made to Awesome, as it was to the next party, even just to draw attention to the slow/overlooked email situation (ie not directly seeking a resolution to the queries in the email(s) on the phone instead), you would likely have got the same unreserved apology for what appears to be an accidental lapse immediately, and then the information you required both immediately during the telephone conversation, and in 'hard-copy' via email. If, following that phone call, you hadn't received an apology and the requested information, then perhaps a thread on a public-board would be warranted, and be completely fair - but I honestly don't think it would have come to that.

I say that confidently, as above, wearing my 'Customer' cap - because I can claim in completely honesty that in my numerous dealings with Awesome they've always been very helpful and grounded folk. I hasten to add that in the majority of cases I've been a secret-shopper too, not mentioning my attachment to ASN which arguably might influence a company's response.

Regards,

Rob.

Here we go, I'll read the book later Rob, lol.

Do you mind if I'm blunt Rob, which I will be later as you seem to be reasonable person & as you say freedom of speech.