Poor to Non-existant customer service department

I’ve been in a customer or technical support position my entire life, so I think I might know one or two things about providing decent customer service. Up until now, Sparkfun seems to have decent customer support, but I cannot make that claim anymore.

I placed an order at the end of July for qty 5 of FT232RL USB IC’s for a project I’m working on for my department. The order arrived in reasonable time, roughly 3-5 days, so no problem there. When blank boards from BatchPCB finally arrived, I set about putting them together, but when I got to the Sparkfun bag, The IC’s provided were NOT FT232RL’s, instead they were some TI 16 Channel Multiplexers, http://www.sparkfun.com/products/299

I have contacted customer service twice in two days and have not received an acknowledgement of my emails, an apology, the correct item…nothing. Today is day 3 with no contact. My build has stopped due to this, and while I was able to place an order with Newark.com for the correct IC’s, they have been on back-order until recently so I will need to wait longer.

This is completely unacceptable customer service & support. Admins/Staff, if you see this, please contact me at erichardson@savi.com my order number was #395824

Thank you.

I’m very sorry it took so long to get back to you. Both your emails went to spam, and we found them there this morning. We will be checking spam daily going forward to avoid any similar issue in the future.

I will also email you directly.

~Paul Robinson