Paul
Incompetent customer support online
Between 27th March and 11 April 2022 I have wasted a huge amount of time persisting in sending 13 emails to MARS WRIGLEY UK's 'contact-us' and receiving 11 largely unhelpful replies, while trying to find out if Wrigley's Extra Spearmint Gum (in 12 packs of 14-pieces) was likely to become available again in the UK (Supermarkets, and my usual supplier in recent years, Amazon, both said “Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock.”). Subsequently I aimed to identify acceptable substitutes. Only a few very high-priced eBay sources (five x normal price, in one case) were saying they could supply the requested product, most likely having a small stock remaining, and looking to extract the maximum profit. At no point did MARS Wrigley alert me to “Wrigleys ***Orbit*** Spearmint Sugarfree Chewing Gum 14 Piece Pack Box of 12 Packs” (which I’ve only just found; but at twice the price of the EXTRA brand, it would not have been an acceptable solution.) At one point, the enquiry reference number (in the email subject line) changed from 00468567 to 02429416, which seemed to increase the confusion. HOWEVER: The Mars-Wrigley customer support responders were UNFAILINGLY POLITE. But they were unable to give clear replies, sometimes contradicting each other, and mostly either not reading the question fully/correctly, or replying with irrelevant information. It eventually became fairly clear, after the variety of replies, that Mars Wrigley very likely has withdrawn the requested product from the UK. My query therefore shifted to substitutes, to try to identify old-fashioned “stick” gum products. A visit to my local supermarket seemed to show that only small pieces of gum encased in (what I later learned was) a hard polyol shell were now available, which doesn’t suit me or my false teeth. Enquiries about stick gum led to even more confusion. The entire email trail is available, if MARS Wrigley want to check it, but it would be too long to post here. MY CONCLUSION is that the support staff probably don’t understand English very well and mostly just send out quick replies that they think might do, even though they often turned out to be irrelevant or contradicted earlier replies. Attempts to put the query into perspective seem to have only confused them further. My guess is that they are based somewhere in the Far East (the Philippines?) and are paid peanuts to deal rapidly with customer queries. NEVERTHELESS I will offer some praise to “Katrina” who clearly tried her best even though her replies were often inappropriate, but her final reply today was, for once, spot on. Thank you Katrina. And thanks to Wrigleys if you read - and act on this - too.