Dear Yankee Candle Fund Raising Customer,
We wanted to personally reach out and let you know that we sincerely regret the frustration
and inconvenience that our delay in shipping your order this season may have caused you,
your organization or your supporters. I also wanted to provide you with some background to
help explain this issue.
For several years, we have used a third-party fulfillment provider in Ohio to ship our
fundraising orders to customers. Unfortunately this year, the provider experienced significant
challenges which have resulted in delays in the shipment of some of our orders, including
yours. We understand that these delays are unacceptable to you, our customers, and can
assure you that they are unacceptable to Yankee Candle as well.
As soon as we became aware of this issue we began working around the clock to address it as
best we could. We sent Yankee Candle personnel to Ohio to work with the fulfillment
provider to resolve the problem, we required them to hire additional staff, and we activated a
new fulfillment center in Texas to help get the orders en route to customers. What was
especially frustrating to us, and ultimately to you, was that as a result of the problems that
our provider was having we were unable to obtain accurate and reliable information as to
when orders would in fact be delivered. This left our sales reps and other Yankee personnel
without the necessary information to deal with inquiries from our customers and only
increased the frustration of all involved. While all of our orders have been or ultimately will
be delivered, we know that for many of our customers the delays caused significant
frustration and inconvenience.
Yankee Candle is committed to a high standard of customer service. In this instance, we did
not live up to our own standard, and for that we offer a most sincere apology. I can assure
you we remain fully committed to the fundraising business and will take all necessary steps
to insure that this situation does not happen again. I hope that you will give us the
opportunity to earn back your trust and confidence in future seasons. Either way, I wish you
all the best with your fundraising efforts.
Sincerely,
Stephen Farley
President,
Retail Division