Recently Masada Leather had an unhappy customer. Apparently Mr. Baylor Keese, a salesman for Southern Foods here in Athens, Georgia came into the store with a request. He had bought a custom made belt several years ago at Masada and in his own words, considered it his favorite belt. Baylor had recently lost 20 pounds and the belt no longer fit. Many people would just buy a belt that fits, however, this gentleman decided to have numerous holes punched in the belt to reflect his weight loss. After several holes had been punched in the belt, it was no longer possible to punch more holes. The manager of Masada, Graham did the professional fix by trimming off leather from the buckle end and sized the belt to fit correctly again. Mr. Keese left the store satisfied. Meanwhile, three weeks later, he returned to say the belt was too small and he needed a new belt. He neglected to mention in his blog that he had gained back some of the weight he had originally lost. Unfortunately for Mr. Keese, Masada Leather is not in the business of continuously re-working merchandise to fit the weight loss/ yo-yo dieting of our customers. Sure, if you lose weight, we can and will happily shorten the belt, but if you gain weight.....well. At some point you just have to bite the bullet and buy a new belt. Mr. Keese wanted Masada to give him a new belt. Naturally we don't do that and neither does any other store of which I am aware. As Mr. Keese left our store, unhappy that he did not receive a new belt for free, his parting words were, "Well, I guess I'll just have to start writing some letters!" And write he did! First, Mr Keese started a blog in the name of Masada Leather so that we now cannot blog about our own store on a blog spot unless we lengthen the name and re-adjust it. I have issues with Google about this, but apparently THAT is another blog in itself. Mr. Keese told his version of the story which was partly true, but in it he defamed a perfectly nice guy, my son, and completely misrepresented his character and personality. He also misjudged Graham's age by about 10 years which was distressing in itself. He also started a firestorm of comments about Masada, me (naturally I came to the defense of my son!), and how crappy our store apparently has been for the past 35 years. Really!?!?! We have a great store and people from all over the southeast shop with us and have for 35 years. Many people in the area have worn custom made/Irvin sandals since the beginning of time. What really irks this situation is that one of Mr. Keese's friends picked up the blog and posted it on Online athens.com. OK now this is really getting a little out of control. First of all, I am appalled that a newspaper with which we have spent thousands of dollars advertising our store would double cross us by allowing something like this in print and open to comment without first checking the validity of the story. Believe me, Athens Banner Herald has already heard from us on this one! Second of all we have had to contact our lawyer to file defamation and libel charges against this guy in order to have a court order to remove it from Google.
This ridiculous situation would be no different than if I decided to write my own blogspot about Southern Foods and what crappy service I had received in the purchasing of foods from this Wholesale supplier for one of our restaurants. Hmmmm... not a bad idea! Or better yet, maybe I could just inform the restaurants that rent commercial space from us that I no longer wish for them to buy from Southern Foods or I will not re-new their leases when they becomes available.
Fortunately for Mr. Baylor Keese, I am not a vindictive person, but having said that, I am a mother and my son Graham is the nicest young man you could ever meet. He is a hard working father of a two year old daughter, a wonderful son to Irvin and I both, and great partner for his beautiful girlfriend. Both Irvin and Graham work hard every day to make Masada Leather the best store it can be. We've had thousands of satisfied customers in our store and Mr. Keese was one of them until we didn't give him a free belt. Wonder why he didn't start up a blog on us when he had good things to say about our store? As with every retail establishment that hires part time workers, we have had our share of apathetic help. Believe me, we try to hard to supervise our workers and constantly assess their phone presence, their customer service skills, and their work ethic. Yes, we have employees that stand around and gossip while customers are in the store, but as soon as we are made aware of them they are terminated.
I guess my point here is that it seems easy for Mr. Keese to get pissed and bring the house down on Masada Leather, but he was not completely honest in his representation of the facts. He also did not take into consideration that he could potentially affect our family's livelihood. Nobody is perfect and neither is Graham, Irvin, myself, or Masada, but we really do try hard and give the best customer service we can even in the face of working with the public.
