The Chronic Consumer

As someone who shops online all the time, I make a large number of email inquiries about products I’m thinking about buying. I’d say that 99% of the time, I get replies within 1-3 days of submitting my email, no matter how big or how small the company is. Some places even promise to respond within 24 hours — and they almost always do.

But there’s still that 1 percent out there that either don’t answer my emails at all or that take their sweet time about it. Desert Essence, makers of personal care products such as shampoo, skin creams, and mouthwash is one of these companies with absolutely atrocious customer service practices.

Waaay back on January 27 of this year, I emailed their customer care department (the address of which was prominently displayed on the site: CustomerCare@DesertEssence.com) with a simple question.

Hello,

I am new to the Desert Essence website. I have a question about your Jojoba Oil. I see that one product is “100% pure certified organic”, while another is simply “100% pure”. Can you tell me about the differences between these two items?

Thank you,

[Name]

I waited approximately two weeks, but when I didn’t receive a reply, I just went ahead and ordered one of the items anyway, since I didn’t think the difference would be all that critical.

Imagine my utter astonishment to receive an email reply on MAY 1 of this year — more than 3 months after my initial inquiry:

Thank you for your question. Both oils are “pure” and cold pressed. However one is certified organic.

Healthy Regards,
Country Life Nutritionist

Wow, did they really need three whole months to come up with that response? That’s like, what, one sentence per month? Or maybe there was some other problem. Do they simply get so overwhelmed with emails that there’s a 3-month backlog??

Personally, I think this is inexcusable. It doesn’t take much to reply to an email inquiry from a customer, no matter how big or how small your company is, and no matter how many emails you receive.

I won’t go so far as to say that I won’t buy Desert Essence products again. I will, because their jojoba oil works for me. But I will try to buy it from third-party retailers rather than directly from the company itself.

Three months… unbelievable!