Have you ever dreaded making a call to complain about a service or product and feared that not only would you not receive satisfaction, but that you’d feel you wasted your time in the effort? I forced myself to dial up the help department at SendOutCards. It’s a company I’ve been involved with for many years now where I’ve had a decent experience, but not Nordstrom level.

I’d sent out a card to the fabulous women who attended my winter retreat in February inviting them to get first ‘dibs’ on my summer retreat. I wanted to touch their hearts and created a collage of their images that looked like this:

Winter Retreat Participants

But, fortunately (or not), one recipient texted me and also sent me the image of what (I thought) I’d sent. “I just got your invitation in the mail and what a wow you created! I am thinking though that the card didn’t come out quite the same way you designed it. Kind of like when you send flowers to someone and you never know what they look like when they arrive.”

Botched Card

You can see, it was not as intended. Fortunately, this group has a private Facebook page where I got to post a copy of what it should have looked like. Amazingly, these very generous souls thought I was trying to be artistic and liked the funky factor.

When I sent this image to Tammy at SendOutCards, she gasped. “We will refund your points (price per card) and expenses (the cost of postage) and extend 70 courtesy points to you as well for the mishap.” I was completely thrilled.

She’d never seen anything quite like this happen before and was going to check other cards that went out on that date received by less responsive/awesome (my word choice) recipients. We did agree that Mercury Retrograde may have played a role.

I was going to drop it because my audience was so kind and understanding and saw the original intent displayed. But I’m so glad I followed through and took care of the issue. No bad taste in my mouth for SendOutCards. Quite the opposite! I can’t wait to design another batch for my summer retreaters this July!