My letter to LFS

I sent this to their customer service department today, as you can see I had some trouble with them. They are not my store of choice but all of the real fish stores only sell RO and I don't want to make anymore salt water till I get my refractometer in the mail.

I would just like to vent my concern for a LFS salt water department. I am currently waiting to get a new piece of equipment so I decided to buy salt water for a change, I usually make my own. So I go to your store and get "salt water" I go home, and I test it to make sure it has ok levels and I discover that it is basically fresh water. So I go back and tell my problem and they say oh we must be out of salt water (good thing they tell me that now). So they go in the back and make a new batch. So I go home to test the water again and it reads a specific gravity of around 1.01. Fresh water is 1.00 and a salt water tank needs a minimum of around 1.023. So if I would have put either of these buckets of water in my tank it would have completely killed my live stock including numerous corals. So I guess I will be making my own salt water for now on. Thanks for your time.

 

wow thats bad, love to hear there response. how big is your tank and how much water where you buying?

 

my tank is a 24 but i was buying 7.5 gallons ( i wasn't going to put all of that in at once but she didn't need to know that haha)

 

unfortunately can happen at any and all stores.

I always check all water I get before I do anything in my tanks Want to make sure your SG is what your SG is at

 

I think that your letter wasnt abrasive enough, needs more "powerful" words.


Luna

 

+1. You also used the word "so" well too many times.
When writing a letter to a company you need it it be perfect. Otherwise you will probably come off as unintelligent and the letter will be disregarded. Use lots of big words, and remind them of how many other stores are out there in the same business

 

haha i did say so alot huh, well at first i wanted to sound mean but then I semi felt bad, and i didnt want to get anyone in trouble. Sigh, im too nice sometimes.

 

Here's how mine would have gone (I LOVE writing letters like this, you should see some of mine to my vendors here at work, hehe).

To whom it may concern (and it had BETTER concern you!),

I wanted to write a quick note to you today to express my sincere dissatisfaction in the conduct and professionalism of your employees in your saltwater department. I am currently waiting for a piece of equipment to arrive in the mail that will more accurately measure my salt content for the saltwater I make myself at home. In the meantime, I decided I would go for some pre-made saltwater from what is supposed to be a trusted source - your retail establishment.

Using my better judgement, after I bought it and got it home I decided to test it anyway with my current SG Meter. Much to my surprise, your so-called "saltwater" was in fact FRESHWATER! Literally NO salt content was measured.

Assuming this was an honest mistake, I returned to the store with my concern. The employees told me they must have simply been out of saltwater and that they would go back and make a new batch.

Lo and behold, this "new batch" was just as bad! My measurement came out to 1.01 SG. Saltwater generally measures in at about 1.023SG. So apparently they either have no idea what they are doing, which would illustrate your lack of business skills in training your employees, or they are back there with Iodized table salt scooping it in by the teaspoon! Either way, had I added that freshwater into my aquarium under the assumption it was saltwater, the effects would have been disastrous! I have literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars invested in livestock - expensive fish and even MORE expensive live corals - and your employees put them all at risk with this grave lack of understanding.

That's not exactly what I would call "service with a smile"! I highly recommend you turn this sincerely abominable situation around, and fast, or risk someone with less forethought than myself adding your substandard saltwater to their fray and killing off all their prized livestock. Not to mention, it would be nice if you offered some kind of compensation for this atrocity.

 

Beautifully Stated Brandon!

 

You sound like me. Now THAT'S how it's done.

8)