Bill Z.
Yelp
I'm a huge fan of Penzey's. Every store I visit will probably get 4 or 5 stars, their sales staff are great, and the spices really are fresh. But this particular review is about my online customer experience, which I am directing to their HQ, which I believe is at this address.
On December 24th, I made an online purchase. It was not my first time ordering online, and I deliberately waited until 12/24 because this wasn't a Christmas order and I wasn't in a rush or in need to express ship anything. I filled out my order as usual, went to Checkout, and clicked to submit. I thought I saw, for a fraction of a second, a confirmation message, but then unexpectedly, I wound up being back in the checkout page, my cart still full, with no emails, no error messages, no diagnostics, or no fields flagged as in error. I had no idea if it went through. I also needed to check with my credit card company to see if a request had been processed, denied, etc. before I felt comfortable ordering again.
The next thing I did was send an email to Penzey's customer service, from the link on their site, requesting confirmation on whether they received an order. I got an acknowledgement message shortly after submission, but it said their customer service department was closed for Christmas, and that they would resume on 12/27. I'm torn about this. On the one hand, I think it's great that Penzey's would give all their employees the time off. But on the other hand, Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year for shipped goods, and to not provide any customer service at all for a window of at least 3 days is ... unusual.
Once I got the credit card confirmation that nothing bad happened, I did resubmit my order without problems, on the 26th. But I never heard back from customer service. Maybe they decided not to get back to me since they saw I did subsequently submit my order. Still, a "You're all set!" would have been nice.
UPDATE: I did finally receive a confirmation that my order (the second submission) was processed and shipped. That note came on 12/31, 5 days after I made the order, 7 days after I submitted the inquiry.
I'll certainly be looking forward to getting my spices back at the stores, either curbside pickup or eventually going back in. I know that will always be a good experience.