Yet another company that can't use a telephone

Having been twice unsuccessful in being able to buy a particular type of lettuce seedling at Stodels Kenilworth due to them being out of stock each time I subsequently tried to phone them to check on availability before wasting time and money driving there fruitlessly and again being told they did not have stock. On both occasions that I attempted to call them (on a weekday and mid morning) the phone just rang and rang and rang without response. I also can tell that they are using a VOIP phone system which apart from often providing lousy audio quality for callers in many cases very often tend to be unreliable as well. Why businesses allow themselves to be suckered into changing from traditional land lines to VOIP is beyond me. But in this instance having failed to get through telephonically I take a chance and drive to the branch yet again to see if they now have stock of what I want. As it turns out no. Irrespective, on asking to speak to the branch manager to complain about their inability to answer my incoming calls I hang around waiting for far too long for someone in charge to make an appearance. When that person eventually makes an appearance and after telling him that his incoming calls are not being answered there is no apology offered for wasting a customer's time. It is also very obvious that as a manager he is unaware there is a problem with incoming calls to his branch not being answered. In my experience there are few countries, apart from South Africa, where incoming calls either take forever to be answered or do not get picked up at all. If businesses here are serious about retaining long term customers yet treat them like this they are are ultimately going to fail when those same customers get fed up enough to go elsewhere - not just to another supplier, in many cases to another country where far superior levels of customer service are usually the norm. Wakey, wakey Stodels - you might just be one of those businesses.