Mr. Cubic Zirconia here, dear reader.
Not all businesses would read a bad review over the PA (Public Address) speaker system, but today I’m gonna do just that.
TBH, not all the feedback we get for our products and services is positive.
For many years, we’ve had a 2% return-for-refund rate.
[[Luckily for us, most of those inspected-and-sanitized products quickly sell through our company clearance program for the 3 reasons described in this article: Why are CubicZirconia.com clearance jewelry pieces so much less expensive than our normal website retail prices for the same item? ]]
And I reckon that if you’ve been in business long enough and have enough happy, satisfied customers…you’re bound to also have customers that think you’re a jackass.
I won’t lie to you. Sometimes I’ve been that jackass. My wife and I mess up (though she does so far fewer times in a given year than I probably do each week).
Sometimes our company team messes up and as owners I do feel it’s fair that my wife and I deserve the blame for what's imperfect.
Other times, not so much.
While not every store owner will take a complaint letter from a customer and read it aloud over the store PA (Public Address) speaker system…if you’ve been part of our cubic crew for any length of time, you likely already know by now that we’re pretty friggin’ different.
So without further ado, here's one of my favorite customer complaints…
and my reply is not too bad either.
(warning: there are curse words)
Her message
On Sat, Apr 16, 2022 at 4:55 PM J*** K**** <*********@gmail.com> wrote:
Are you fucking kidding me?
How xenophobic is this email! It’s disgusting and insanely unprofessional!
America isn’t the only country in the world, get the fuck over yourselves and grow up.
Jewellery should not be used as another tool to instil fear in people you absolute bigot
Sent from my iPhone
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FOR CONTEXT, This is the article her message was in response to: The Toxic Jewelry Problem Non-Manufacturer Retailers Have with Cheap Jewelry
(TLDR: Mass retailers that sell jewelry are always getting caught red-handed selling items manufactured with materials that are suspect. The result? Toxic jewelry.
Main point: The danger of toxic jewelry increases significantly when the jewelry is manufactured overseas away from government regulatory oversight-- including, unfortunately, a large number of ‘cheap jewelry’ items made in some non-U.S. countries that are imported and through little-understood loopholes sold in U.S. government oversight, are legally sold every day in American neighborhood malls and big-brand stores.
Sources: CBS, WashingtonPost, Vox, NY Post, etc
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AND
Our reply
Hi J***,
We're sorry of course that you felt our article/email to be unworthy.
You're certainly right that America isn't the only country in the world.
There's a lot of rah-rah superiority and a sense of entitlement among many Americans that the country is somehow the greatest. While I happen to have been born an American…personally I don't buy into all of it.
The world has a lot to offer outside the U.S (as I'm sure you know!).
As far as our company, we have team members in multiple countries, including not just the United States where we have our primary location and manufacturing facilities, but also Bangladesh, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan, and the Philippines.
The company owners having traveled extensively and lived in a number of countries...a lot of that international curiosity trickles into our corporate culture and well, we kinda do like to think of ourselves as less insular than the norm in the U.S.
That's why it does kind of hurt to hear you think our message is about bigotry or xenophobia. Personally, I had felt it was about safety and accountability in jewelry-making.
You may or may not care but FWIW, I read your message aloud to the writer of our piece, one of our company owners aka "Mr. Cubic Zirconia"--
- Todd
CubicZirconia.com Customer Support
Mr. Cubic Zirconia had this to say:
"I'm genuinely sorry I offended you, J***.
I spent two years as a teen in the next apartment to a family that immigrated to the U.S. from Cambodia.
Their son was bedridden and required round-the-clock care because he sucked on a cheap 'silver' pendant.
His mother bought that pendant at a mall not five minutes from our apartment complex.
Am I trying to instill fear in our audience? YES!
If just one person reading that makes a different choice and avoids ruining their family's lives because they assume something is safe because it's sold in his/her neighborhood...it will have been worth any number of people saying we're unprofessional.
The fact that the jewelry that messed up Phuong’s brain was made in one country or another is less relevant-- and perhaps could be improved in our article by removing mention of any country by name (i.e. China)-- and I will do that if it will give you any satisfaction.
What's more relevant is that we wanted to leave our audience with an understanding that lacking oversight or regulation to protect human safety, manufacturing tends to use the cheapest materials possible.
It's a shitty reality, and America is by no means perfect-- but consumer protections from a manufacturing standpoint are far better than any of the other countries I've lived in or traveled to myself.
That said, the warning we wished to share has NOTHING to do with one human color, ethnicity or nationality being intrinsically better than another.
If you think we can keep the health warning and tone down any language that upset someone in the way you felt upset...I'll absolutely do it."
Best,
Todd
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UPDATE
In the 2 years since I wrote that message to J*** and asked that it be passed along to her privately, I don't have much to add with this decision to post the exchange publicly.
Am I sorry to have lost J***'s patronage as a paying customer?
Of course.
But I don't regret publishing the original article.
I provided the evidence as best I could-- and yeah I named country names and brand names (the same ones that had been called out by investigative journalists from VOX, CBS, NY Post and Washington Post)...but that doesn't come from a place of xenophobia.
I don't feel like a bigot.
I guess I just don't have much patience for people who split hairs about language and cast stones when the proof is there: people's lives are being ruined by toxic jewelry such as that described in my article...and that which scrambled my neighbors' child Phuong’s brain.
What I wrote about in that 'Toxic jewelry' article is what put a precious child on an inescapable lifetime path of struggle and dependence. And my wife and I are totally willing to lose customers' spending by publishing these facts if doing so helps save the life of another customer or his/her loved one.
-- Mr. Cubic Zirconia
