Dedicated Distribution is a vendor that we use to purchase and ship products to our customers. We have been consistently purchasing products from them since April. To date about $20,000 worth of wholesale cost. On 6/9 they shipped an order containing six (6) pamphlet-sized paper logbooks (total weight of less than 6 ounces) to one of our customers and charged us $22.12 in shipping costs. We were justifiably outraged and emailed our sales rep, Christina Holman, for an explanation. Her reply was an insistence that her "warehouse manager" was correct and she provided a a breakdown of the cost (1lb cost $19.47, res charge $2.41, fuel charge $0.24).intentionally not answering the actual question.
Becoming irate I then demanded to have the name & number of the warehouse managers superior. I received an email reply from Matt Elbert three hours later containing the email and phone extension of the warehouse manager. I called and spoke to him on Friday 6/10. His name is Russ Sanders. He was happy to explain to me what the costs were but absolutely inflexible on any discussions as to why they would not simply pop the six pieces of paper in the mail and put a stamp on it, thus saving us $20 in needless shipping costs. His answer was simply "that's the way we do things here". Basically he said they will only ship via Fedex or UPS regardless of the cost passed on to their customers because they're "not set up" to use the US Postal Service. This struck me as ludicrous, as there is no-one in the USA that does not have quick and ready access to the postal service, and I told him so. His answer was that if I didn't like it I could speak to the VP Operations, Gary Strub.
I then called Gary Strub expecting to have a rational discussion with an executive who understands what makes business tick (the customers). Was I ever surprised! I started the conversation by asking him how it was that some basic common sense was not being applied to the decisions made by their warehouse personnel. His answer was simply: "what can I do for you? Is there something you actually want to discuss or do you just want to bitch about our warehouse staff?" I was taken aback by this crass and confrontational attitude. I started to try and explain the situation to him but he cut me off, stating "If you don't like the way we do things then I suggest you take your business somewhere else!"
Gary then said: "Really!" and hung up the phone on me.
I was stunned but figured I would be bigger than that and let it go. It wasn't worth destroying a (mostly) working relationship over $20. So I went about my business.
Monday I noticed that one of our pending orders is still sitting pending with no confirmation. I emailed my sales rep to inquire on the status. No reply. I email again the next day. No reply. Finally, Wednesday I receive a reply from Matt Elbert saying: "Our Vice President of Operations, Gary Strub, told you last week that we no longer wish to do business with you and he has inactivated your account." I called Matt and talked it through with him. I apologized for any part that I had played in creating the antagonism and asked him to have Gary reconsider. The next day he emailed me this: "Gary is standing firm on his decision to inactivate your account." I acquiesced but asked that they AT LEAST ship the final pending order. He later replied no, that they would not even ship that one pending order, saying: "Sorry, Gary wont bend on this one."
This is one of the strangest experiences I have ever encountered in business. The fact that they simply canceled our account with no notice whatsoever and refused to even fulfill any final orders is hard to believe, not to mention damaging to our business.
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