BIG Y Results, Whereforth Art Thou?

For those who don’t know me, I believe poor customer service is unnecessary and it usually happens because people are willing to tolerate it. Amazing how fast a company improves its customer service when enough people make it clear they won’t tolerate it. A local diner has lost most of my business because it consistently gives poor customer service and many other customers have cut back or stop eating there for the same reason. A major retailer hasn’t learned this lesson and had to merge with another major retailer a while back. Its employees know it’s only a matter of time before enough customers stop shopping there and the retailer closes its doors.

The big day arrives when FTDNA repeatedly reassured its November BIG-Y testers we would have results. Surprise when I accessed my account today, no results, but a note saying the results would delayed with a new expected date of March 28th.

FTDNA, this is unacceptable; it’s misleading at best. First, there was the note back in December we would have results on January 20th. After talking with FTDNA, I was told it was mistake and mid-February was the correct date. After a week or two, the Pending Results page updated to the mid-February date. When I asked about the mid-February date, several days later, an FTDNA employee said no, it’s a mistake and end of February was the correct date. This doesn’t include several earlier test results where FTDNA didn’t update the expected dates and it took one to two months or longer after the expected date before the tests were completed. 

As of late last night, they were still showing the February 28th expected date.

There is no way FTDNA did not know or anticipate a delay of up to a month and no valid reason to delay telling us until today. Several days ago they made it sound like the November orders would be completed by today, but the December and subsequent orders wouldn’t be ready until the end of March. The smart thing would be to tell people and give them the option of waiting for results or a FULL refund. As of now, I prefer getting a full refund to having my results. I voiced that opinion on their Facebook page and in an e-mail to the company. If the company had told me back in November it would be end of March, I would have said no thank you. Customers don’t appreciate being misled and at a minimum, we were repeatedly misled for the last four months. The sad thing is FTDNA’s customer treatment generally is better than its competition. I have never had a positive customer response from either AncestryDNA or 23andMe and I have about the same number of customer service contacts with each company. As long as customers quietly accept poor customer service, it is NOT going to change. If you are waiting on BIG Y results, let them you know if you are not happy with being delayed. I tried to log into today’s BIG-Y webinar, but couldn’t get in. I had registered when I first heard about it.