Losing Trust In Franklin Covey

Aug 4, 2011 by Holly Ralston-Oyler

It has been a long time and well established fact that Franklin Covey* has been one of the staples in my personal and business lives. I loved working there. I have made life-long friends from my time in the company and I have been spoiled by their extraordinary customer service throughout the past 25-years.

The old Branding and Service

If you had a binder that broke or ripped after a year, they replaced it. If you did not like the planner pages you purchased after writing on them for a month, they replaced them or refunded the purchase amount. If you had a tech question on a Palm* or Lifedrive*, you could call customer service free of charge.  Of course – that my friends was the “old’ Franklin Quest*and  the early years of the Franklin Covey brand.

Today’s Branding and Service

Today is a totally different brand concept and quality of customer service.  Less than a month ago I purchased and downloaded Plan Plus* for Outlook. I was hoping to go all electronic with my time management skills over the next few months. I was also hoping to define a contact management database that would include copies of each email and file that needed to be associated with a contact.

Day one installation went well and things were moving along great. Day two, Outlook crashed – six times during the day. Since the Franklin Covey Plan Plus was the only thing new, I went to their support system and started reading forums about the product. HINT: Do this BEFORE you purchase a product. Seems I was not alone in this Outlook Crashing craze. A few more days went buy and things were were working great again, so I just brushed it aside in my mind. Then once again, crashes started coming out of no where.

As most of you know, I would make a wonderful ostrich since I spend most of the time with my head in the sand or retreating for cover. And yes, once again my head was knee deep in the sand on this computer issue. But, I’m not retreating for cover this time.

How NOT to run your Brand and Customer Service

A few days ago I asked for a refund. Today I received the answer – “no, it was past the 24-hour return time frame”. I had to go back and reread the email to make sure I was reading correctly…24-hours? They give you 24-hours to download software, install it and decide if it is going to work for you and/or with your computer system? Amazing!

Of course, I take full responsibility in the matter because I did not read every inch of their website looking for a return policy or time limit. That’s what happens when you have blind faith in people, concepts and companies. I did do that today and did not notice a 24-hour limit posted on their sales page. I am not going to waste my time going through their user agreements or other hidden copy. It’s just not worth the effort. I also read through the customer reviews and no surprise here, I found several clients that felt the same way I do at the moment. So the bottom line here is read the reviews before making a purchase – on any product or website.

Funny how things happen in life.

I really need additional shelf space in my office and in my office closet. The way I figure it, once I throw out the zillion pounds of FC planner pages and paper I have stacked everywhere and take all the various size binders and brief cases to a consignment store (or dumpster, depending on my mood – the dumpster is looking pretty good at the moment) I will be in excellent shape. There will be no need to purchase another bookcase and I will have an additional five (5) shelves (I’m not kidding on this one) available in my office closet.  So, using Holly-logic, I actually saved money by not having to purchase two new book cases and additional closet shelves. Better still, I finally broke my Franklin Covey habit with no withdrawal experience or regret. Just pure freedom from a very expensive habit over the past 20+ years. Oh, and did I mention that my husband is doing his happy-dance right now (really, not a pretty sight)?

So thank you FC for the organizing and housecleaning tip.

The time has finally come to move on to Michael Lineberger, the Efficiency Guru” and learn how to make a true contact management system out of Microsoft Outlook.