Roaste.com strikes again with exceptional customer service.

Roaste.com strikes again with exceptional customer service.


I like blogging about great customer service because it is so rare and makes you feel so good when you get it, and it usually happens exactly when things are not going well and boost is such a refreshing change.  


I have heard that Roaste.com has exceptional customer service and seen a few blog posts about it and posts about it on message boards, but I confess that in some sense before today I had never seen it myself.


Now it is true I had seen some great customer service – this is a great community to hang out in and chat about coffee.  I love that.  I also love the whole notion of ebeans and would be crazy to be anything but thrilled about them.  I also love the fact that when I wanted an espresso machine I wanted one Roaste did not sell and they promptly went out and got it for me.  So yes I have seen very good customer service, but what I am talking about here is the kind of customer service where things go wrong and the company makes it right.  I had never seen that from Roaste because I had never had anything go wrong so there was nothing for them to make right.


A while back I did get an order that I was unhappy with though.  I only pick coffees that are labeled “roast to order” because I want it shipped to me the day it is roasted.  I usually order Sunday night so that the coffee will be roasted Monday and shipped that day and then I will get it without a weekend slowing down the shipment (usually Wed. or Thurs).  Sometimes roasters here and elsewhere say something on their page like “we only roast blend X on Tuesdays" and that is totally fine with me as I can plan around that, as long as they then ship me the blend promptly after it is roasted I am happy.


I am also perfectly fine with the idea that a roaster might ship me some coffee and it might get lost in the mail for a week or so and get to me later than I would like.  I would not be unhappy with the roaster in that case because it, of course, is not their fault and it is the risk you take ordering things by mail (on the other hand I’ve ordered a lot of coffee by mail this has never happened to me).


That time, though I got a coffee that was ordered on Sunday, shipped on Monday, but roasted the previous Wed.  meaning I didn’t get it until it was 7 days old and could not pull shots until it was 8 days old, which for some espresso means it is already past its peak (and others it is just entering it).  I, however, want to be able to decide for myself when the peak is and when it will be pulled, and if I have to freeze some I want to do that by day 3.  I was not happy.  I was not irate because it is not like they shipped me coffee that was bad or that was months old, but it still is not what I look for in a roaster.


I decided to contact Roaste.com and mention that I was not pleased partly because I thought I wouldn’t order this coffee again and they might lose other future sales from other customers, too.


Within an hour Tim from Roaste.com wrote back and offered to get me a brand new bag that would be shipped the day it was roasted and make sure it did not happen again for other people.  


To me this is, to be honest, better than if no mistake had ever been made.  If you buy a computer that is not the way you want it to be, if they replace it they make you send back the original.  That is not the case here.  This coffee was not as fresh as I would like it, but it was not unusable, so the bag I got first brought me some pleasure and the next was even better since I will got it freshly roasted and becasue of the first bag I had a big head start on dialing it in.  I will gladly order from the roaster again knowing that Roaste.com will make sure it gets to me promptly!