IMPORTANT WAREHOUSE UPDATE
5/11/2020
Hello everyone, it’s Allison from West Penn and I decided to hop on here today to talk about some issues we’ve been having that unfortunately have gotten so bad that we need to address them.
As most of you know, we allow retail customers to come into our warehouse and hand select material for their projects. We have always done this and most people who come to visit us are excited about the opportunity to choose their wood from our selection of material. Many people also commend us on how organized and neat our warehouse is, and how a lot of our material is in prime condition.
As of recently though, we have had a handful of interactions with individuals who have come into warehouse and go through our bins of material, making a mess, not restacking material or restacking in a way that ends up damaging the wood. We ask everyone who comes into our warehouse to be neat and restack material flat and properly, and we have signs all over our warehouse that disclose this policy. It has unfortunately gotten to the point that when we ask these individuals to follow our policies, they become combative and sometimes disrespectful to our staff. People are even going as far as posting negative reviews about our business, calling us rude, all because we are asking them to follow our policies and help us take care of our material.
Fortunately, 99% of the individuals we deal with are amazing customers. But as we grow as a business, the 1% also grows in numbers and we are having to deal with this issue on a weekly, almost daily basis. Especially right now during this pandemic, we are already very short staffed and the staff that are able to work are working extremely hard to fulfill online orders and manage our warehouse operations, leaving little time to continously restack and take care of our material. With everything that has been happening, for the first time in our history as a business, we have considered closing our doors to the public....It’s really sad that this has even become a consideration, because all of our staff love to interact with the woodworkers who come and see us; it’s one of our favorite parts about this business!
Let me be clear, as of right now we are NOT closing our doors. But this may change in the future, especially if the pandemic situation continues on. We love having people come visit us but our top priority is to provide quality material at a competitive price and if we continuously have people damaging our material when they come to our warehouse, it hinders our ability to do that.
Help us keep our doors open to the public! I’m here to ask you, to plead with you all, that if you come to our warehouse, PLEASE respect our facility. Please follow our policies, and please help us out by being neat and orderly when going through our material. We love the woodworking community and we love that we can provide top notch wood for your projects. Please remember that we do our best, and when you help us out we in turn are able to help you more.
Lastly, if you have visited our warehouse, or even purchased something online from us, we would love to hear about your experience in the form of a review. While we may not be perfect, we do listen to all constructive feedback so that we can get better as a company. We think what we have here is pretty special and almost everyone who comes to our warehouse says the same thing...”like a kid in a candy store!”. Please considering leaving a review on google or Facebook to let other woodworkers know about the amazing selection we have to offer.
Thank you all for sticking with me through this message; while it’s not an ideal message we believe in honesty and transparency here at West Penn and will always continue to do our best as a business and as individuals to serve you better. I hope everyone is managing during these times, and as always...happy woodworking.