Come on Fendi, you could do money back more easily...

(Some Hollywood-style dramatization)
This posting is based on a true story.
(Silence...)
it happened to my dear friend Stef in Rome (thanx Stef for the material!).

In a beautiful afternoon in the spring of 2005, Stef walks with his wife Alex into the Fendi store in the eternal city, Rome. After a brief (or not so brief...) interval, his wife chooses a beautiful leather purse, that perfectly matches her style and contributes to enhance her beauty. It is a classic model, produced in limited quantity with the serial number recorded in an internal silver plate. Stef, seeing his partner so visibly happy, does not mind shelling out the 1,050 Euros (about 1,400 USD) that it costs. Ahh... what we do for love...

So far so good, everybody happy: birds are chirping and life looks fantastic.

However (and when you hear “however” you know that the real story is about to start) 4 weeks later, in a Saturday afternoon the precious purse shows signs of poor quality control and, alas, the belt bag breaks.

Stef brings back the purse and the "Proof of Purchase" to the store asking for an explanation and expecting a quick replacement, especially due to the price paid in the first place...

We know this is a Critical Interaction Moment (CIM): customer in need of help, very vulnerable and sensitive. How does the store react? To Stef bewilderment, the lady (manager in duty) in the shop refuses to do anything to help out immediately, saying that he would have to keep the purse the way it was for the moment, and to come back in the afternoon.

After lunch the same lady accepted to keep the purse "to be checked" in the Tuscany factory and still refused to replace it.

In complete shock, Stef leaves the shop, vowing to never ever buy anything from Fendi and to make sure no friend will ever consider spending any money on that brand. On the way to home, Stef (which is a top manager in a multinational company) calls the Fendi office in Milan to report the incident: he is put in touch with a professional lady, the Milan shop sales director, who apologized profusely and offers to replace the purse right away with a new one, at absolutely no cost, no question asked.

With this information he goes back to the Roman shop where the local manager still refuses replace the purse (ehi, she surely is perseverant in her approach)

Fortunately there is a happy ending: the following Monday the same Roman manager experiences a sudden about face and replaces Alex's purse with large smiles , and apologizing profusely for the misunderstanding.

Now, how much damage this behavior brings to astore? Not only it makes customers like Stef and Alex run away, but my friends started actively bad mouthing the company, putting all his energies in trying to hurt their sales… why creating such an enemy in order to save few dollars?

Episodes like this make me smile and look to the future with anticipation: there is still lot of work for guerrilla marketers!

Till next time

Mau in Shanghai