Spare Parts [Archive] - CJ Wildlife Online Forums

storye_book

13th January 2007, 01:24 PM

hi alangs

a good customer who is friendly and cooperative will always get good service from the best birdfood companies. here are three examples from my experience (comments are my opinion only):

CJ WILDBIRD FOODS
the best bird feeder companies will almost always happily supply spare parts for feeders - after all it's in their interest, as you the customer will then be able to purchase more feeder seed from them. i have an old red plastic cjw seed feeder (must be 12+ years old), whose ports and perches have been well chewed by squirrels at different times. over the years, cj has very kindly replaced the ports for free, as each one got chewed up - even though their plastic feeders are sold as non-squirrel-proof. i now have a multicoloured feeder (depending on what colour parts they felt like sending me) and cj has created a regular birdfood customer.

ANOTHER TOP BIRDFOOD/FEEDER COMPANY
one of the other top bird feeder companies recently replaced a whole droll-yankee feeder for me - when they heard that it blew away in a gale while i was indisposed with a broken leg in winter '03/'04. i only mentioned it in passing as a sad event, and they immediately volunteered to replace it. it had a hook instead of a ring-hanger, and a dome which caught the wind - so perhaps they were responding to their own worry about the design. at the same time, they were also replacing a mealworm feeder which had been badly designed (huge drain-holes). they were obligated to make the latter replacement, because the sale of goods act says that an item must be fit for the purpose for which it was sold. so this second company, which has an excellent reputation, was doing its best to maintain that reputation.

A BIRDFOOD/FEEDER COMPANY WHICH HAS JUST CHANGED HANDS AND IS NOW RUN FOR COMMERCIAL REASONS ONLY (NO KNOWLEDGE OF BIRDS)
this company is well-known and runs big ads in glossy bird mags. as far as i can make out, its offices consist of a telesales dept of general employees who know nothing about the goods (or birds) and who also deal with public sales for 4 or 5 other different types of company. if you have a question or problem, you must hang on and argue politely for up to 15 minutes, insisting that you speak to a supervisor. the supervisor has no knowledge of birds/birdfood/feeders but if you are polite and cooperative, will see that you are well-served commercially, and compensated as necessary. if goods go missing, you should speak to a supervisor asap, and demand compensation in kind (choose your item from the catalogue in advance). this is my experience - you may not have the same luck though. this company has a same-day despatch promise for birdfood in its catalogue, but does not abide by it in my opinion. there is another catch with this company. it offers freebies in its glossy ads, but to get the freebie you must input a special code in your online/telephone/orderform order. the code seems to appear only on their printed catalogue. if you don't input the code, the freebie will not arrive at your door. the freebies are worth having (for the purpose they're designed for only - don't expect more).

CONCLUSION
i think there should be a guild or established standard for birdfood/feeder companies, to protect us from well-meaning but incompetent companies like the third one above. it would also support the good companies who know what they're doing, and prevent them from losing business to incompetent companies who are bringing the birdfeed business into disrepute.

so i suggest that you just ring up cjw and explain your problem to whoever answers the phone and i'm willing to bet that your problem will be solved immediately, if your broken feeder is a cj one.

good luck.