La Societe' du The' customer service?

Welcome to Minnesota. You got here just in time for winter!

You didn't do anything wrong that I can see. What you have experienced is 100% pure Tony, the shop owner. I've been a regular at their shop since 1997, and this isn't the first time I've heard about him doing something like this.

No. If you'd gotten Bozena on the phone, she'd have been as sweet to you as clover honey.

Both Bozena and I have repeatedly mentioned to Tony that he ought to be careful about his "customer relations" skills. He can, at times, appear abrupt.

The reality of it is that he's just ridiculously concise. What you got was the short explanation. The reality of it is that he was probably in the middle of a rush in the store or otherwise occupied and simply didn't have time to discuss the issue.

Oh, please don't give up on the shop because of one gruff experience with Tony. And I'd recommend that you stop by the shop if you've got a chance. It's a wonderful experience to actually sample tea there before you buy it, or even just to sniff a few tins.

Plus, they do have a website that you can order from.

I will contact him about this and get back to the group with his response.

Cathy,

I called Tony about this just a few minutes ago. He said that he did not mean to be rude or abrupt.

He says that he has been getting a lot of phone calls recently from people who want to spend an hour on the phone haggling over prices. Additionally, you called him at a busy time in the shop and he just didn't have time to talk about the tea prices.

What he intended for you to do was to email him your question so he could give it a more "reflective answer" (his words). That way, he could attend to the customers in the shop and answer your question, too.

He did say that he's going to make an effort in the future to make sure that he's clear that he's willing to answer questions via email, but that he just doesn't have the time to answer them on the phone.

It's a small shop with 2 employees, after all, and typically only one of them is in the store at any given time. So they get a little overwhelmed at times.

Wow.... thanks for doing this. It's nice to be back in the midwest. :-)

Thanks,

Cathy Weeks

You're welcome.

You should know that you guys rock. (Not in a wussy 80's hair-band kind of way, but in a neighborly, nice way. Someone in the midwest reading this right now might be saying "fer cool", which is definitely an interesting and flavorful way to say you rock.)

Rufus T. Firefly

Le Sueur, St. Peter, Mankato? You call my local tea shoppe. I'm at the register and the only employee takes a call and I have to wait for him to give directions, rattle off the hundred teas for sale, describe the health benefits, blah-blah-blah. Here is a hint, there is no correlation between price and taste. It is simply supply and demand. Caveat Emptor pure and simple. You decide if the owner makes a living or not. Put your credit card where your mouth is and take a drive. If you've never been in a tea shoppe you owe it to yourself. I'd buy the most complex, sublime, distinctive teas I could find and convince myself I'll never like the taste of tea and enjoy a latte at Starbucks. I'm willing too put up with a inquisitive consumer asking questions in the shoppe but not someone who goes directly to the head of a line with a phone call who will never show up even after asking for directions. When it comes to tea be prepared for a few surprises and many disappointments. My biggest surprise this year Java tea. It goes directly to the head of my list for first time tea drinkers. It is a wonderful lite mello cup with no foreign harshness. My biggest disappointment Bai Hao. I can't imagine a Formosa tea tasting so lackluster. I just ran into a problem with Home Depot and won't be back till I get over it. I'll shop at the other big chain till something happens there.

Jim

Jim, I think you just described Tony's experience "to a tea".

Side note, Jim.

If it was a Bai Hao oolong (like Oriental Beauty), you might try using more tea and steeping 4-7 minutes, rather than the typical 3.

Cathy,

Before coming down too heavily on La Societe' du The, I had a look at their web site. First, their Darjeelings show no year. This is a serious omision since Darjeeling -- like fine French wine, I might add -- differs signficantly from year to year. Either their Pouchongs or the pictures of their Pouchongs to give them the benefitof the doubt are truly lousy,. Their pretentious use of French is not a plus. We speak English here in the good old US of A. Further, their organization "by region" or "by type," but with no way to look for, example, at a selection of green teas by region, makes it awkward to find what you might want.

Having gone this far, I'll say this: When a shop owner needs a team of apologists to keep people from fleeing the scene, we have the makings of a bad tea buying experience. Let's shop where people might have their bad days, but can generally manage to be polite to somebody on the telephone as well as somebody standing in front of them -- at the very same time.

Cathy, thanks for bringing this to our attention. We need to know. Finally, where's the Pu'erh, eh?

Michael

Cathy snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com11/30/04

Is there a tea shop in Le Sueur? I'm 25 minutes north of Le Sueur, and my stepson's mom and stepdad live there, so I'm there regularly. Cathy Weeks

That doesn't particularly bother me... everyone has their marketing angle. Even not speaking much French, I didn't have any trouble navigating their site, and other tea places have their stupid angle, too (Republic of Tea being a prime example).

Here's the deal... if the store is good in every way, except for their phone skills, I'm willing to chalk it up to a bizarre ideosyncracy. And I won't use the phone with them. I emailed them another question, and got a polite, informative, and well-thought out answer, in a relatively short time (an hour or so). So we'll see. Unfortunately, I cannot be completely objective; they *do* have a strike against them. If I order from them, and get good service, or if I visit and like them, wonderful. But.... it would take LESS poor service on their part before I'd decide they weren't worth it, than another business without the strike would. Make sense?

Cathy Weeks

Cathy snipped-for-privacy@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com12/1/04

Yup.

As for having bad days, who's to say that Cathy's experience didn't fall on a "bad day"? Perhaps it's just bum luck that her first phone call was on a "bad day".

Yeah, I know. Two replies to one post are bad form.

Are you asking about the Pu Erh on their web site? Try searching without the apostrophe.

snipped-for-privacy@gwinn.us/1/04 15: snipped-for-privacy@gwinn.us

Not bad form at all, IMHO.

OK, I will. But, I didn't pull it up under "Pu'erh; I looked under "Yunnan," although not that carefully. I'll look again.

Have to admit that Darjeelings with no dates push my buttons as badly as I apparently pushed yours. And besides, there seemed to be some kind of concensus that.this Tony guy needs to work on his telephone skills in general. Sorry. We'll just let it rest now, Team One.

Michael

Hey, if it'll bring up a search under Pu Erh or Pu-Erh or Puerh, the's no reason Pu'Erh can't be included.

Hey, not everything you said was off base. Ok, so you don't share Tony's Francophile tendencies. That's a personal choice. Criticisms about how the products are organized, however, is a different beast.

I'll probably tell Tony about your comments the next time I see him. After all, they may be a small shop with only 2 employees, but if he wants to do internet business, he's got to pay attention to things like product organization and the quality of his photos.

Funny- the French feel the same way- they're trying to eradicate Franglish from common usage.

We speak many languages here in the good old USA. French happens to be one of them. So is Spanish. I know people who speak Urdu. I don't see any harm in a tea shop calling itself 'tea society' in French- it's not like it's hard to figure out.

Hmm- maybe all the French restaurants in the US ought to change their names to English ones. Maybe we should ask all businesses in the US that use non-English names to conform to English. But seeing as how some people associate tea (and other foods) with mystery, romance, and far away places- maybe not. After all, I don't find Au Bon Pain pretentious, anymore than I find Starbuck's pretentious- and a lot more people can figure out that the first means 'with good bread' than know that the other refers to Moby Dick because Starbuck's was started near whaling waters. and I think Champagne Veuve Clicquot sounds a lot prettier than 'Widow Clicquot's bubbly white wine'.

I was trying to determine your location from the Twin cities. Looks like I wasn't close. If you want pandering visit a tea shoppe which aren't that common and they're thrilled to see a new face or if you want phone service call a website where the first thing you hear they don't take American Express. I could walk to my local tea shoppe but I have to cross two busy intersections where the walk signal is nothing more than a staging tree for traffic cutting to the front or rear and completely ignoring yielding to pedestrians in the crosswalk.

Jim

Cathy Weeks wrote:

Wow that worked, thanks Derek. The only tea I've ever brewed where time really means anything. Those leaves set on the surface for 5 minutes before starting to dance. I went for the seven and I guess could have taken a ten because the leaves really didn't look spent. Under my system the leaves only get one chance. A very mild oolong with absolutely no charcoal aftertaste. Sort of reminds me of a darjeeling without the muscat. However at $5/oz I'll use it for special occasions and drink other cheaper FOs with a punch. I've been tasting Huan Jin Gui all week and finally a mainland oolong I like as much as any pouchong from Taiwan. I wish my local tea shoppe owner would hang up more oft...click.click..click...uh..click.click.hel..click.lo...click,click,operator,operator. Anyone notice the new Google Groups update? Instant posting with 10 minute tree updates. Damn I can fan the flames. Also I can set up an instant email subscriber list where only certain email addresses can participate but posts are logged by Google. Someone tell the moderator of the private email tea group their posts don't have to go down the drain which is the reason I never joined. If I spaketh it is castest in stonest with copyrightest protectionest.

Jim

PS: This post under the old Google Groups. I got >