excellent customer service

[redbird]

I placed a spice order with Penzey's yesterday morning. I got an email acknowledgement, which said that it would probably ship in 3-5 days, and click here if you want to change or cancel the order.

Later that day, I remembered that we wanted to order mustard (powdered), so I emailed and asked if I could do that. The response was that my order had already been packed for shipping, and they can create another order and waive the shipping, if I liked.

I said yes, and gave the gift card number and PIN again. I bought a $50 gift card for $35 a couple of months ago, and this order cost more than $35, so I'm into the effectively free spices. The company was encouraging people to buy gift cards for themselves. Yes, it's a short-term loan to them, but since I was confident I'd use it, it's effectively a very good interest rate, unlike the money I have on transit fare cards (including an ORCA, from when we lived in Seattle, which I will probably never use) and a Starbucks card.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Nice when you get good service!

[jenett]

I had a package from them mistakenly (my fault) end up at an old address, and when they got it back, they just called and said "Ok, so where do we send this?" and got it to me right away.

Such fantastic service.

(In non-pandemic times, I usually go to the store near me, just because the experience of wandering around smelling and peering at things is so good. But in the meantime, yay, spices by mail.)

[redbird]

Yes, in normal times I'd be in that same store, for the same reasons.

[sine_nomine]

I've been having a great time doing pickup at the store (I'm near the only store in the state of Maryland)... they're REALLY good about calling quickly and saying, "When would you like to come get this?" and I've added stuff when they call (they have to charge the card again for the add-ons but no biggie). They have a set of shelves outside the front door and label the bags with first name and last initial. Best part: when it gets hot they take them in and you can just call when you get there and they bring it out and put it on the shelf for you to get.

Certainly not the same as browsing but they make the connection feel human, which I really appreciate.

[maellenkleth]

I miss going to the Arlington store with my sister. The one in Lynwood is closer to me, but it still involves an ocean-voyage from Salishaan to Stary Vancouver, and then dealing with crossing the border at Checkpoint Charlie (the colloquial name for the I-5 border crossing at Douglas/Blaine).

It dawns upon me that I have never tried ordering spices by post. I am a bit put-off by the stories of the packages being opened and left to mix together, by one or the other country's border inspectors. Nrgh.

(User-icon is from Craigdarroch Castle, down in Victoria).

[otter]

I'm trying to visualize where you might live. I have lived in Tacoma, Bellingham and Stanwood/Camano Island. My son lives in Bothell.

[maellenkleth]

Salishaan is the original Ko'moks indigenous name for this big moutainous island, which was some time in the 1700s mapped by European explorers as La Isla de Vancouver y Quadra, which in turn was claimed as a private industrial possession of the Hudson Bay Company, then a Crown colony of England, briefly a self-governing overseas dominion of England, and finally part of British Columbia.

'Salish Sea' is the formal toponym for the inland seaway that covers most of Georgia Basin and Whatcom Basin. Not sure whether Puget Sound or Seattle Basin are properly arms of the Salish Sea.

The name 'Salishaan' is fairly popular over here, since otherwise we would tire of explaining that we do not live in suburban Vancouver.

I live in Strathcona district, about three hours northwest of the ferry-wharf at Duke Point, via a highway whose geotechnics I helped design in the early Nineties.[1]

There's a bridge along that highway, quadruple-carriageway, pre-stressed concrete, that is mounted atop wheels and possesses an extensible bellow beneath the roadway, so as to adjust for the expected shear movements associated with the expected Big Earthquake (which is already overdue according to the seismologists).

The other end of that big strike-slip fault is under Nisqually, near Tacoma. That end has already popped fairly recently.

There's always a footnote.

[1] I drew the design maps on the kitchen table of a flat in Manhattan, about four city blocks away from Redbird's then-place.

[otter]

My familiarity with the name Salishan was the part of Tacoma that my ex grew up in, one site of the race riots in the 1960s, that he remembers as a small child. Thank you for the detailed description. It's important that we give proper respect to place names, and remove the ones that were used by oppressors/colonists/capitalists/etc. I lived out there 1983-1993. Then returned to Minneapolis, where I still reside.

[maellenkleth]

I had no idea that there was another Salishan in Tacoma. Then again, my experience of Tacoma has mainly been fighting traffic from that domed stadium all way down to Fort Lewis.

Don't recall having ever been in Minneapolis. Had a friend who lived there, memorable for having a beard that went halfway down to his navel.

[redbird]

When a middle-sized group of people on both sides of the US/Canadian border ordered tea from Camellia Sinensis several months ago, most of us got our tea in a reasonable amount of time; a few were delayed; and one person had their lemongrass tea confiscated at the US border: someone mistakenly thought (a) that citrus tea wasn't legal for import, and (b) that lemongrass was citrus. The rest of their teas did reach them, though.

[otter]

I ordered from them for the first time this past year. And they tucked a bunch of little extras in the box. :)

[maellenkleth]

Love to cook, cook to love.

My sister used to teach at Harvard, so once a year I would go with her out to Penzeys and collect a teacher's gift box for her.

I love their balti mix, and their galangal is great with soup.

[bibliofile]

A friend loves to order from them when they have deals, and then donates the extras they won't use to food pantries. Where they get snapped up immediately.