I don’t think I’m going to buy anything from buy.com again.
About a week ago we put in an order for a graduation gift for my sister-in-law. We got about five different things, all related in a really swell “soup to nuts” type of gift. The order was placed on Friday. By Tuesday, the order was still listed in the system as “Processing” which, according to buy.com, meant that they were still checking my credit card info. Zot?
I sent them a brief email and asked about how long processing takes. The first email I received about an hour later was the automated reply – you know the one. Then I got a second email later still, saying that (in essence) “Processing is done when it doesn’t say ‘Processing’ on your order page. Then it won’t be processing anymore. It’s processed! It’ll be sent to our warehouse.” Gee, that was a big help!
So I kind of bit the bullet and let it slide, until later still Tuesday evening. I had another email from buy.com in my mailbox saying, “We’re still working on these backordered items.” Uh oh. None of my stuff was backordered, was it?
I rushed to the My Account page and took a peek. No – everything, in fact, had been “Sent to Warehouse” which is the promotion from “Processing.” Great, I thought, the order will finally ship.
On Wednesday morning, then, I received an email saying my order had shipped! Great! But… just one item had shipped. The others were still “Sent to Warehouse.” Then there was another email saying that my order had shipped! Great! But… again, just one item had shipped. Now the others changed back to “Processing!”
Yes, this confusing, befuddling mess had me concerned. We needed that gift in about 2.5 weeks and I was legitimately worried that we wouldn’t get it. But I received one of the items at work yesterday, and interestingly the three remaining items are shipping out together – and were out the door yesterday.
buy.com might have good deals, but their customer service and online status system needs some help. And for goodness sake, don’t freak people out with words like “backordered.” That really put a knife through my heart.
As a side note, Ryan reminded me of this.
Posted in Consumer Commentary
Matthew Christopher September 10, 2011, 6:54 pm
I would honestly never buy from them again. I have been having problems with tier verification process also and their customer service is terrible. I would highly recommend people go with another vendor even if they do pay a little more, assuming actually getting your order is important.