Why I will never shop from Buy.com again
One of the indulgences of having a blog is that you have a platform for complaining about crappy customer service. I don’t know if anyone at the company will read it (although lots of companies do have people monitoring the blogosphere for posts about them), but it will make me feel better.
As previously mentioned, T. went out and got a Wii in November. We agreed that we’d get a few games for it for Hanukkah. I discovered that Buy.com and Google checkout were running a discount promotion, so I decided to order the games through them. But it turned out they only had one of them in stock. So I ordered that one, plus some books to push the order over the required minimum.
I placed the order in November. The books came, but on December 19, with Hanukkah almost over, I emailed buy.com to point out that my order hadn’t arrived. On December 24th, they responded that they needed to file a lost shipment claim, and asked if I wanted a replacement or a refund. I said replacement.
On January 2, they emailed me to say "Your claim is currently being investigated. We will update you on the status of your claim via email or phone. Please
allow between 3-5 business days for us to research and to process your
claim with any relevant third parties, such as the shipper."
They then sent another message as follows:
"As your claim was for replacement and you are in immediate need of
the missing item from your order, we suggest that you place a new order
for the item on the Buy.com
website and change your claim to refund. If you would like us to make
the change from replacement to refund, then please email us and we will
gladly do so for you."
The next day, January 3rd, I got the game from a local store and asked them to switch the order to refund.
On January 4th, I got an email stating "Following your request we have updated your lost shipment claim to
reflect a refund instead of a replacement. We assure you that we are
working diligently to resolve this issue." I also (same day) got an email saying "We have received your order….We’ll send you an email as soon as your order is sent."
I immediately emailed them back saying I already asked for a refund. Two days later they got around to emailing me and said that I could cancel the order from their website. I did so.
Then I got this email from them:
"As you requested, we attempted to cancel your order for the item listed below from order #31827637. However, this item has already entered the shipping process and could not be cancelled. We apologize for any inconvenience and offer you three options when your order arrives:
– You may keep the product.
– You may refuse shipment for a full refund, in which case the carrier will return the product to us at our cost.
–
If you are unable to refuse the package, you may return the product for
a refund. In this case you might not be automatically credited for your
shipping costs depending on the condition of the package or when you
requested cancellation, etc."
Two weeks later, when the package finally showed up, I refused it.
They say that they never received the return, and so won’t give me a refund. Since they never should have shipped it to me in the first place, I figure this is their problem. They disagree.
So I’m out 50 bucks. And there’s not much I can do about it. But I’m never buying from them again.
Update: On May 7, I received an email from Google checkout that buy.com had directed them to refund my money. No further communication from buy.com directly.
March 16th, 2007 at 11:41 am
You do have some leverage. Call your credit card company and explain the situation. They will likely refund you, and take up the fight with buy.com on your behalf. Good luck!
March 16th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
elena slipped. what she said. you do not even have to call them, just fill out the disputed claim form on the back of your bill.
just having to go through the paperwork is enough reason to never buy from buy.com again!
thanks for the warning.
March 16th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
That is pretty annoying. I’ll add them to my Do Not Shop There list!
March 17th, 2007 at 12:46 am
How infuriating! I’ll tell others about your nightmarish experience with them. Sorry you had to go through that with everything else on your plate right now, Elizabeth!
March 17th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Immediately call your credit card company, explain the situation and say you are challenging the charge. You have a limited time to do so – something like 30 to 90 days. Hurry!! They will mail you a standard form for you to fill out that explains your side of the situation (hopefully you still have all the emails and can print them out and attach them). Once they receive the form they will contact buy.com and ask their side of the story.
At the very least since the actual shipment was made recently you should be able to date your complaint from that. In future don’t waste time with con games like this; when they sent you the followup email to your cancel (telling you an unauthorized shipment was being made)is when you should have contacted your credit card company.
Even very large companies are no match for credit card issuers.
Document, document, document. If you make phone calls take notes of date, time and person spoken to and keep them until the issue is completely resolved.
Activists would advocate contacting buy.com by phone and working your way up the customer service chain. Odds are this is a real waste of your time, but if you have time to burn it can often have positive results.
March 18th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
I’m with everybody else. Dispute the charge. I mean, you wouldn’t throw a fifty dollar bill in the garbage, right? Let the credit card company duke it out with them.
March 20th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Yuck. Thanks for the warning.
March 23rd, 2007 at 5:17 am
How infuriating! I had a similar bad experience with buy.com several years ago. If memory serves, I ultimately had to contest the charge on my credit card (you can do it online, if you’ve signed up for online access to your card) before it was put right. As a result, buy.com seems to have put me on some sort of disgruntled customers mailing list: every few months they send me a “Please come back ..” email with an enticing coupon attached.