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Ready Refresh Water: Dumb Ass, Stupid Management

Ready Refresh Water: Dumb Ass, Stupid Management

The water supplier Poland Spring was in a scandal years ago with claims that it was using simple ground water for its product after its natural springs ran dry. Nestlé owned Poland Springs and suddenly changed our water deliveries at home to a company they own called Ready Refresh. Then things began to deteriorate.

A couple of months ago we needed to order more water, which we had always done when needed, but I found myself talking to someone with a very thick accent and very poor English in the Philippines, or Cambodia, or somewhere in Asia. What she eventually told me—after a lengthy wait listening to music, and then a further wait while she consulted someone else—was that it would be two weeks. That was that, no exceptions.

So I wrote to Henrik Jelert, the Ready Refresh CEO, to tell him that was not our normal servicing support, and his representative was almost incomprehensible, and I was firing them. He, of course, never deigned to reply, but two weeks later—after I had fired Ready Refresh and chose a very reliable new company, Crystal Rock, with phone reps in the US and the ability to change my deliveries online—a woman named Janet from Ready Refresh left a message (on the wrong phone number) asking if she could help with some problem I was having. I called her back, and this happened three more times: She was never available, and just to get to her voice mail took eight minutes.

Companies fail because of dumb ass, stupid management, like faking their products and faking their service.

Written by

Alan Weiss is a consultant, speaker, and author of over 60 books. His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients from over 500 leading organizations around the world.

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