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发帖数: 16594 | 1 n article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the company’s hometown newspaper
, reported a few days before Christmas that the company had only just
informed some customers that online orders, some placed the day after
Thanksgiving, couldn’t be filled and were being cancelled. The out of
stock items included the most popular items, including TVs and iPads, “as
well as other tablets, cameras, laptops, PS3 games and the Nintendo Wii.”
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The company issued a statement that read: “Due to overwhelming demand of
hot product offerings on BestBuy.com during the November and December time
period, we have encountered a situation that has affected redemption of some
of our customers’ online orders.”
Let’s parse that sentence for a moment. The company “encountered a
situation”—that is, it was a passive victim of an external problem it
couldn’t control, in this case, customers daring to order products it
acknowledges were “hot” buys. This happened, inconveniently for Best Buy,
during “the November and December period,” that is, the only months that
matter to a retailer. For obvious reasons, the statement ties itself in
knots trying to avoid mentioning that the “situation” occurred during the
holidays.
The situation that Best Buy “encountered” has “affected redemption” of
some orders. Best Buy doesn’t fill online orders, it seems. Rather,
customers “redeem” them. So it’s the customers, not Best Buy, who have
the problem. And those customers haven’t been left hanging; they’ve only
been “affected” in efforts to “redeem” their orders. It’s not as if
the company did anything wrong, or, indeed, anything at all.
It’s all so passive. It’s also a transparent and truly feeble pack of
lies. Here’s what the honest and appropriate release would have said: “
Due to poor inventory management and sales forecasting of the most popular
products during our key sales season, we can’t fill orders we promised to
fill weeks ago in time for Christmas.”
There’s a little more to the Best Buy’s press release: “We are very
sorry for the inconvenience this has caused, and we have notified the
affected customers.”
Again, note the use of the passive voice—”this” refers to the “situation
” that Best Buy “encountered.” The “situation,” not Best Buy’s poor
operations, “has caused” inconvenience to customers. It’s not something
Best Buy did wrong. It’s like they’re reporting the weather; something
utterly out of their control about which the company is a mere observer.
They’ve “notified the affected customers” despite, it seems, no sense of
obligation to do so, let alone to find a solution to a problem entirely of
the company’s own creation. How sorry are they, do you think?
Again, here’s my rewrite: “Three days before Christmas, too late for the
customers to make alternative arrangements, we are just now letting our
would-be customers know. We have no excuse for such amateur behavior.”
According to the article, the company refused to answer any questions beyond
the release. Here are a few: How many customers were affected? What
specific products were involved? How has the company failed so badly to
perform to even the lowest standards imaginable for a retailer at Christmas?
Did the company expect anyone would be fooled by the ridiculously obtuse
statement of non-apology? |
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