Customer Service & The Small Online Toy Retailer
Small Online Toy Retailers like Mimitoys can provide great customer service.
How you handle customers and inquiries can be the difference between an unhappy customer who will never return and a loyal customer who tells their friends about your business.
We plan our website and warehouse so that everything goes smoothly when you open your delivery box full of toys. But occasionally we get it wrong, maybe 1 in every 200 orders – here is the major issues and how we address them
Wrong Toy Sent. Our fault and we rectify by sending you the correct toy. Normally we don’t ask for the incorrect item to be returned – effectively our mistake becomes your freebee!!!
Toy Order Not Yet Received. It’s important to note from our side that toy orders concluded by you before 2pm are dispatched to An-Post that same day. If you order at EG 3pm that order will be dispatched the following day. From the day of dispatch, delivery takes 1-2 working days but count 4 to be absolutely safe. Occasionally during the Christmas period online toy orders are rerouted to the wrong part of the country, that’s why we say to be certain count 4 days.
Toy Order not received. Very very rare, we have been working with An Post for the past 4 years and our delivery success rate is 99.9%. Normally the solution is with your Postperson, likely he/she has left it on your property or with a neighbor. Remedy – ask the postperson first, then check on The An Post Parcel Tracker and then call us and if no joy we’ll send afresh.
Parts missing from a toy – very rare too since our suppliers have good quality control processes in place, but it sometimes happens. Please get in touch and we will get the spare, missing or broken part sent out or refund.
In all cases, it is important that we hear about issues Mimitoys or our Toys have created for you. We select good toys and games and it is important you get what we promised. Please contact us if there is an issue.
Our business is now 18 years old, we are comfortable and knowledgeable in what we do. We get busy but we have planned for busy times months in advance. That means I am genuinely at the other end of our phone number 046 955 8977 or email mimi@mimitoys.ie
Our Online Toy business is planned so that I have time to respond – and I think its not arrogant of me to say that I do respond to customer service queries fairly instantly.
Lastly as I write this in early March 2022 these are my observations on ordering toys from the UK. Here is a great summary from Citizens Information
Orders can take 5 – 10 working days or arrive next day or somewhere in between – we still order Wholesale from the UK and there is no logic – same supplier can be 2 days or 12 days delivery from dispatch.
Online tracking when buying from UK Websites can be problematic on an order that originated in Often UK delivery tracking goes blind once it hits Ireland ie you’ve no idea where your order is and you need to call the UK courier to get the name/number of the Irish courier – it can be done but could take hours on the phone.
Returns are regularly problematic If the Order is damaged or not as expected, most UK online companies expect the more expensive items to be firstly returned and then they will refund. The big online fashion companies have it made easy but what about a Wooden Dollhouse bought from Amazon.co.uk. How do you return that, how do you declare for EU / UK customs? These are genuine panicked customer stories from Christmas ‘21.
Be careful if you think a “.ie” is based in Ireland. Some are not. The only way to check is navigate to the “contact us” and see the address. If it’s a UK address then delay and return issues may very well apply.
Even Amazon.de / Amazon.fr where are the items actually shipping from. We bought a cheap garden tennis net from Amazon.de – it got delivered from the UK. I wanted to return it – see above re post and customs declaration – it was a real pain.
UPDATE May 2023 re Ordering from a UK Website.
I understand tracking has been Ironed out, however the smaller the UK supplier the less likely they have customs charges built into their prices. In these cases you as the Irish consumer will need to pay those customs charges and EU VAT. Returns are a complete nightmare if you have to pst back directly to UK.
I guess my summary is that Customer Service for an online toyshop is easy if
- The online shop knows the customer service scenarios and the correct reactions to each and
- If the online shop is based in the same economic area as the online customer.