www.grief.net

I wanted to share my email experience with the Grief Recovery Institute:

My Email

To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Kelly S. and I was confirmed to attend the Grief Recovery Workshop starting on the 22 July 2007. To be sure I arrived early I left my home at 5:30am to drive from Upland to the 405. This drive should take at minimum 2 hours. I was surprised that it only took me 45 minutes.
I then arrived at the location and parked across the street. I’m not sure how to continue saying what I’m about to say without upsetting you. But here it goes. I was expecting something different. I was not expecting a location that looks like a run down Traffic School. Having a Palm Reader next door was very disturbing. If it looked that bad on the out side I kept asking myself what it looked like on the inside. I kept thinking to myself over and over again that I would be trapped inside for the next three days.
My wife died suddenly and violently on the 15 of March while I was at work. I have made progress with this loss. I have even gotten to the point where I have moments where I’m ok. I didn’t sleep the night before the workshop. I was not doing well with spending the next three days going over the day she died, the 10 years we were married and what it is like today without her. When I saw your location I did not feel like it was a safe place to go inside and open myself up for the next three days about the pain of my loss.
I noticed when I got home that you did not have a street address on you website. You don’t have any pictures of the building or what the rooms look like inside. The pictures you do have I noticed seem to have been taken some time ago and do not reflect current workshops. Your link to testimonials does not contain any testimonials. If I had been aware of the visual location of this workshop I do not believe I would have given up almost $700. I spent the weekend in San Diego with a balcony view room of the Bay for less than $400. It is not that far of a reach for someone to think the facilities where you will be sharing intense grief would be one that is warm safe and inviting. Your location is none of these.
Although your return policy protects you from giving me a refund, I would ask that you consider doing so. I'm sure that many of your prospective attendees cancel for a variety of reasons thus the no refund policy. I do believe, though, that my reason is a valid reason. I showed up. I was willing and open-minded to his process. It just didn't look or feel like the place I saw on the website. It wasn't an inviting safe place for me to trust my grief to. If you won't consider a refund, perhaps you could point me in the direction to the place on the website that looked bright, new, clean, friendly, and warm.

And this is what they sent:

Dear Mr. S.,

We were dismayed, for many reasons, with the content of your note.

Frankly, yours is the very first comment we've ever received on the exterior of the building we rent. Over 700 people have attended Workshops at this location and no one has ever mentioned being put-off by the exterior. We’re sorry that your perception of the outside of the building dissuaded you from even coming in to see that it is quite pleasant within. And we must tell you that many people remark, with great humor, about the fact that there’s a psychic next door. Even grievers have a sense of humor and they’ll say, “Well if the Grief Recovery Workshop doesn’t work, we can go next door.” Of course we have no control over the other tenants on the street – all of whom happen to be delightful people.

In addition to the Personal Workshops here, we hold more than 50 Grief Recovery Training events each year at hotels throughout the country. Following these trainings, all participants fill out evaluation forms about the training facility, the program content, and the facilitator. Almost every one marks the content and the leadership at the highest level. But, a certain percentage of the attendees have negative comments about the locations from the points of view of comfort, cleanliness, convenience, noise, or unwelcoming hotel personnel. Of course we have no control over those opinions and they always vary from person to person.

The participants who come to our Woodman Avenue trainings never complain about our facility, as it is very clean and very well maintained. Even things like air-conditioning or heating, which we sometimes have no control over in hotels, here we can moderate instantly. Further, we put out a nice morning spread of bagels and sweet rolls and fruit, along with coffee and your choice of tea. In fact, we go out of our way to make sure that everyone is comfortable. And our staff here are warm and sensitive to the fact that those who come here are reeling in the aftermath of recent losses. We have a very respectful, caring environment here at the Institute and once again, it is unfortunate that you allowed your interpretation of the exterior of the building to prevent you from stepping inside.

In repsonse to your comments about not having our street address on our website – that is actually intentional. We get more than 2,000,000 hits a year on the very public site. We put our post-office address on the site since we are not a retail, walk-in facility. People come here to participate in Workshops or Trainings. In fact, it is partly because we have our events here in our seminar room that we leave our street address off the website, so we can maintain the peace and confidentiality of the events.

Regarding the testimonials: Thank you for pointing out that there are none under that heading on the website. There must have been a glitch at some time when we shifted some copy around and our webmaster overlooked reinserting the testimonials. We’ll repair that.

Regretfully we will not be refunding your tuition. However, should you wish to attend a future Personal Workshop, we will transfer your payment and waive the transfer fees as a courtesy.

Sincerely yours,
Office Manager
The Grief Recovery Institute


Thoughts: