AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!! I hate this fucking company! I can’t believe how bad they are

Ok.. here’s my story. its a tad on the long side..but after reading it.. I’m sure you’ll agree that buy.com SUCKS!

On August 1st I decided to order some DVD cases (the black plastic one, like what Blockbuster, etc.. keep their movies in). I had just bought a bunch of blank DVDs on spindles, and knew I would need someplace to keep the discs when I burnt them (I’ve tried keeping them in the microwave..but that doesn’t work so well.. ;> ) I do a quick search using pricegrabber and buy.com comes up as one of the re-sellers with the cases I’m looking for in stock, at a reasonable price (not drastically better then anyone else, but about the same). So.. I go online head over to their site (no..I’m not going to link it… I’m not going to give them any more traffic!) and place my order. Everything I want is listed as shipping in 1 to 2 business days, so I figure the order will get processed Tuesday the 3rd, maybe Weds the 4th. The grand total comes out to $39.31 (Free shipping). Since the ‘free’ shipping is listed as 7-9 business days, I figure I should have the cases by the 17th at the latest..a little bit later then I was hoping for, but not horrible. I click submit…and I wait.

The 3rd rolls around..I log in to my account to check order status…..’sent to warehouse’ Hey..that sounds promising..looks like it should ship the next day (the 4th)…so… I wait…

The 4th comes around..and I log in.. order status is…. ‘sent to warehouse’.. Ok..maybe it updates later in the day..after 5:00pm.. so I wait till its after 5 in California (since thats where they are) and then I check again… still ‘sent to warehouse’ Now I start to get a bit concerned….

I don’t check on the 5th, figuring I’ll get an email if they really do ship.. the 6th..still ‘sent to warehouse’.. so, being a reasonably intelligent person, I click on the order status link on their website..maybe ‘sent to warehouse’ means something different to buy.com then it does to everyone else. so.. here’s what I find (this is a cut and past from their website)

Most orders go through these 3 phases: Processing – – Sent to Warehouse – – Shipped.

Once you order, we carefully check to make sure you’re the person using your credit card or gift certificate.

While we’re doing this, or if we’re waiting for you to send in other forms of payment, your order is Processing. You can cancel your order within the first 30 minutes of processing.

Once we have verified your payment, your order is Sent to Warehouse to be fulfilled.

If your item is in stock, your order will be Shipped within 1 to 2 business days.

Ok..so.. I’m not imagining things.. sent to warehouse = shipping within 2 days..right there in black and white on their website. So.. the morning of the 7th…I send an email to buy.com via their online form (since I couldn’t find an actual email address or telephone # listed anywhere on the site) requesting cancellation of my order. On the 8th..I get an automated response (look 24 hours for an automated response to be sent!) it tells me my questions and concerns are important to them, and that a Customer Care agent will respond to my email as soon as possible! On the 9th…after hearing nothing else from buy.com, I go through the motions on their website to cancel my order. On the 10th, I get a reply to my request from the 7th!

Hello Dan,

Thank you for contacting Buy.com.

We are responding to your email regarding your order #19636283.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. According to our

records, you have submittted a cancellation request on 8/9/2004

for your order. Please remember that this is a request only,

and your order still may ship while this request is being processed.

If your order will ship and you don’t want to keep it, you can

refuse the delivery or return the item back to us. You can review

our Return Policy at:

<link removed>

We apologize again for the confusion. We hope that this information

has been helpful.

Thank you for writing to us.

Sincerely,

Team Buy.com

Look! how nice… they show I requested a cancellation..but they can’t actually tell me that my order will (or will not) get cancelled…So, I fire off a reply to their email, asking how come I was told 1-2 days when it took substantially longer, and I was never informed of any type of delay in shipping… If they ever answer that email, I’ll let you know what the response is.

And, apparently, the secret to getting buy.com to ship your order, is to cancel it. Because low and behold.. on the 14th, I receive an email.. telling me my order, placed on the 1st – to ship in 1-2 days, is shipping.. .hmm.. 1st… 14th.. yeah..that’s 2 days… apparently, buy.com’s days are 6.5 normal days long!

So..seeing that buy.com is completely incompetent.. I figure I better hurry up and request the RMA, since they only give you so many days (I wonder now, if the 20 days (since it shipped) are REAL days… or buy.com days.. if they were buy.com days.. I actually had like 120 real days to do it)

I send an email request, again, via their little web form….and then promptly go through the automated steps to get an RMA. I get the automated response telling me how important my concerns are (Hmm..if that’s true..how come I’m still waiting for a response regarding the shipping delay?) And the automated system does give me an RMA.

The next day (we’re on the 15th now, for those keeping track) I get a response to my web-form submission. It tells me that they are waiting to receive my product (What a coincidence..so am I) and that I have 7-10 days for the carrier to deliver it, 10 days for them to look at it, and then 5-7 days before they will apply a credit. Not good… 7-10 days to return a product I haven’t received yet…so.. I fire off a reply to their email.. insuring that they know I haven’t received it, and that I will be returning it unopened, when I do receive it. I promptly receive the automated reply, telling me how important my concerns are.

The 16th sees a brief reply to my reply… letting me know that if I want to I can refuse delivery and send it back that way (which is better, since I would have to pay to ship it back to buy.com, and then hope they manage to figure out how to issue a refund for that)

The 17th sees the attempted delivery, and the refusal, of both boxes containing my purchases. On the 19th, send another email through their web-form.. informing them of the delivery refusal, and requesting my credit be issued. I of course, get the automated response telling me how important my concerns are, and then later that same day (wow..real response time! its a first….and last) I get a response telling me that ‘a credit has been requested’ for me, and that if its approved, they’ll email me and then send it to the bank. Ok.. I figure it can’t take what? more then 1 or 2 days for a credit to get processed, not as speedy as I would have liked..but acceptable.

I wait…. a lot… I get busy, and don’t have a chance to email buy.com for a bit. I was also giving the credit time to post to my credit card. No luck. Then.. on the 27th.. I get another email from buy.com… this has got to be the one telling me that my credit has been issued, and I just need to wait for it to hit the bank, right???? Wrong. It’s them telling me that a credit has already been requested for me (So, I assume they must have received, and examined, the refused delivery)…idiots… on the plus side..this means that surely the credit will be approved from whatever magical entity buy.com has to ask for permission to refund a customer’s money from…..so I figure I’ll give it another day or two…

So, on the 30th (yesterday), I send off another email…letting them know that it’s been 10 days since the first request to the magical money entity to get my money back, and looking for an update. I got, the automated response letting me know how important my concerns are to them. And I haven’t heard anything else. So, tonight, I post this in my blog. And, send this email to buy.com:

Ok… so.. how much longer am I going to have to wait for you guys to give me back my money? This is absolutely ridiculous! It has now been 12 days since you “requested” that buy.com give me back my money for an order that was cancelled a week before it was shipped.

I would love to know who buy.com has to request a credit from. I didn’t give my money to anyone else, I gave it (in what has turned out to be the absolute WORST internet shopping experience in the history of internet shopping) to buy.com.. so there should be no requesting of a credit..there needs to be a credit issued. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!! this bullshit has gone on long enough. I want an exact date when my money will be returned to me, and I want that date within 24 hours. I’m tired of the automated responses, the form letters, and the complete lack of service from everyone associated with buy.com. If I do not have my credit issued in 24 hours, I will be disputing this charge with my credit card company.

Now, I realize I could have disputed the charge a long time ago…but, having worked in retail, and having to do the paperwork on the merchant end, I didn’t want to inflict that on some poor minimum wage kid (at the time..now… I’ll inflict it!)

In addition to sending the email to their ‘customer circus’ address.. I sent it to these addresses… unfortunately, I don’t know if they are valid addresses or not.. I didn’t get the message bounced..so they are either valid, or they went into some gigantic killfile on buy.com’s servers…

If anyone knows if these are real, or not, I’d appreciate a comment telling me..also, if you happen to actually have the real email address for any of these people I’d love to get ahold of it!

Scot Blum – CEO I tried sblum@buy.com and scott.blum@buy.com

Neel Grover – President I tried ngrover@buy.com and neel.grover@buy.com

Robert Price – CFO I tried rprice@buy.com, and robert.price@buy.com

Oddly enough..I think the ‘customer circus’ address actually bounced.. I got this:

The original message was received at Wed, 1 Sep 2004 09:44:57 +0530

from indelmls01 [127.0.0.1]

—– The following addresses had permanent fatal errors —–

<buyservices>

(reason: Can’t create output)

—– Transcript of session follows —–

procmail: Quota exceeded while writing “/var/spool/mail/buyservices”

550 5.0.0 <buyservices>… Can’t create output

Reporting-MTA: dns; indelmls01.vcustomer.net

Received-From-MTA: DNS; indelmls01

Arrival-Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 09:44:57 +0530

Final-Recipient: RFC822; buyservices@indelmls01.vcustomer.net

Action: failed

Status: 5.3.0

Diagnostic-Code: X-Unix; 73

Last-Attempt-Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 09:45:27 +0530

and buyservices is not an address I sent it to… probably an aliased address to an outsourced support company…