Run from this company!
Written: Oct 19 '04
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| Full Review |
Even if they are repeatedly given the benefit of the doubt, this is just a terrible company with which to do business.
First, my credentials: I started doing business on the internet back in 1982, way before the Web existed, through The Source. I’m an Oracle Webmaster, have an MS in Systems, was trained at Bluestone while they were developing XML, know ERP and web commerce, and own my own businesses. I make most of my purchases online and do not remember ever posting negatively about any ecommerce vendor. But some businesses ruin the industry and I believe shoplet.com is one of those.
Now the short version of my experience: I did a search on HON 84 inch bookcases, and this vendor came up. The link is http://www.epinions.com/Office_Furniture-Hon_Square_Edge_Laminate_Bookcase_84_High_6_Shelf_Medium_Oak/display_~latest_prices. Unfortunately, when I clicked the store rating link, I got “this store has not yet been rated”. The link is http://www.epinions.com/Office_Furniture-Hon_Square_Edge_Laminate_Bookcase_84_High_6_Shelf_Medium_Oak/display_~latest_prices/pp_~1/sort_~avg_rating/sort_dir_~des/sec_~wtb#awtb. But now I see that clicking directly on the store info link gives two out of five checks. That link is http://www.epinions.com/Shoplet_Online_Stores_and_Services.
Be that as it may, I ordered six bookcases to fill out my library. I already had another six and had just moved up to the mountains. Shoplet.com offered free shipping. I admit stupidity here. Since they were paying for shipping, I thought I’d be a nice guy and save them from paying for multiple trips, and ordered all six at once. Their website gave reasons for purchasing from them:
Low Prices
FREE Next Day Shipping*
Tax-Free Shopping*
Customer Service
Real-Time Order Tracking
Easy Re-ordering
That was on September 22. At checkout, I noticed that I was indeed charged tax. Oh well, they are New York based. Price was OK, only (211.91- 183.60 =) $28.31 more each than if I picked them up at a local store. With tax, each unit from shoplet.com came out to $228.33 versus $198.75 for the local store. For all six, shipping was costing me $177.50. I need to go for surgery soon to solve a spinal osteoporosis problem, so I was not inclined to be cheap here.
I received a UPS shipping email confirmation from shoplet. That was Wednesday. Monday rolled around and still no delivery, so I decided to check the Real-Time Order Tracking. The status still showed that the order had been forwarded to the warehouse for processing. I was trying to find a number for them when the phone rang. It was a trucking company, asking when a good time for delivery would be. When I said ASAP, they scheduled me for the next day. They told me to call in the morning so that they could give me a delivery time window. When I called the next day they did indeed give a time window and then delivered at that time, true to their word.
The bookcases arrived Tuesday, September 28. These are seven-foot-long flat packed boxes. They had been laid on top of one another on their flat side, on top of what looked like a three-foot skid. The driver reasonably mentioned that we would need to see if they were damaged if I was going to refuse them. We unloaded all six onto my porch. The freight bill says 744 lbs. So far, the transaction was pretty normal.
The bottom package on the truck was now the top package on the porch. The driver was in a hurry, of course. He said that we didn’t have time to take it off the stack and look at it, so we opened the end. He said that broken bookcases could normally be seen from the end, and even if it was broken, he didn’t know what I could do at that point. I tipped him twenty dollars. That was a lot of weight to help unload.
As he got back into the truck, I opened the top box and saw that the two 84” sides were broken in half. I could see him at the corner so immediately called the trucking company and asked that they call him before he left the area. They brusquely told me he had other deliveries. Even when I told them that the truck was empty, they told me to call the shipper. Okay, this was the common carrier, not the vendor.
The shipper was SP Richards, a fulfillment house with their local warehouse in New Jersey. Even though Shoplet refers to their warehouses, they drop ship from wholesalers. I immediately called Shoplet.com at 212-619-3353 and told Mary that at least one was damaged and that I would start checking the others, but that I was not in the best of health. After I lugged off the top box, I opened the second box. As soon as I did, I was met by all kinds of hardware. The packing had torn and some of the hardware had been lost in shipment. The rest had lodged wherever it could, some of it badly denting the shelves. I called back and reiterated that I was not in good health and would appreciate it if they would just pick them all up and send me another batch instead of having me unload all of the boxes and possibly repacking them. I was told that since it was such a large order, if they had them picked up they would charge me for another six bookcases and then credit me back the first purchase once they had settled the matter with the warehouse. That was too much of a risk for me, as this was my first transaction with them and I did not wish to trust them with $2,740.00 of my money with no product. Though I was still acting like a gentleman, I was upset that they would penalize me for placing a large order. I recommend to anyone who still goes ahead and orders from this company to place a plethora of smaller orders instead of one large one, since they pay shipping and penalize for large orders.
I live in a colonial. I cleared the books off the floor of the second story library and started putting the bookcases together. HON needs to update their assembly instructions; there are differences between the shown product and the real one. I put four together. HON provides extra hardware, so I was then able to assemble the fifth with the hardware remaining from the first four. Even though there were dents, I needed the library set up ASAP and figured the books would cover the dents. I was up until about 4AM.
The next day (Wednesday) I called and told them they only needed to pick up the one unit. I called from my cell so do not have documented whether I spoke with Manager Mary or customer service representative Maria. She said that only returning one unit would help to expedite matters.
The trucker was back on Friday without calling first. There was nobody here to sign, but that didn’t matter anyway. Shoplet had filled out a bill of lading for all six units! The driver left a blank one for me to fill out. I called the trucking company on Monday (10/4) and told them the new bill of lading was ready. Again they didn’t call, but as my wife and I were driving, on our way to visit our children on Wednesday (10/6), we recognized the name of the trucking company on a truck that was entering town. My wife was so fed up by that time that she asked me to drop her in town until we had loaded the truck. That is what I did.
Monday rolled around again, this time October 11. There was no word on the new unit, which I had assumed would be cross-shipped with the bad one. I checked the web. This time Real-Time Order Tracking status showed that a credit had been issued. Credit? I called Maria again and asked whether they had given me credit and closed the issue or were going to ship a replacement. (My credit card company showed no credit, and I surely did not want credit for future orders with Shoplet.) I reiterated that I was awaiting a replacement. The next day was hospital day for me, and she promised to leave a message on my voicemail that day (Tuesday) no matter what news she had.
With no voicemail by Wednesday, I called Maria. She said that of course she had not called me, since she had not heard back from the warehouse. After we agreed that she would try contacting the warehouse, I did receive a call back from her. It seems that she was involved in a disagreement with the warehouse and was insisting that they had picked up all six units and should credit Shoplet for them. After I reminded her that only one was supposed to be picked up, she promised to call me back in forty-eight hours to check if I had received the replacement.
Another truck arrived on Friday (now 10/14) with a puzzled driver. He had an open box in the truck for me. We unloaded it and looked inside. The sides and shelves were shrink-wrapped, but there was no Styrofoam packing material and no hardware that either of us could see. There was no way I would accept this one again. We put it back on the truck and I called for Maria, who I could not reach right away. Debbie answered that call and insisted that she could handle it. I mentioned that I had the driver with me to answer any question Maria might have, but Debbie still kept me on the line until she had all the relevant numbers. Finally, after the driver had left, Debbie must have finished reading the history and transferred me to Maria, who sounded surprised to hear from me. She assured me that it is not Shoplet’s policy to ship damaged or opened goods. I started to wonder if they had any policy in place NOT to ship damaged or opened goods. She promised to call me back right away in order to let me know when I could expect a packaged, undamaged unit. That was at 10:45 AM, more than three weeks from when the order was placed, with forty dollars in tips, my credit card bill almost due, and Shoplet plodding through their antiquated procedures.
Since I had twice been promised phone calls by a set time and had not received them, I started calling back at 2PM. Between then and 3PM, I placed three twenty-minute phone calls that rang continuously with no messages at all from their end. I must say at this point that I had always gotten through to someone in the past. I did not know if they had gone out of business or not paid their phone bill, but was irritated by their (again antiquated) phone system.
I called again at 4:30 PM and asked for Maria. This time I got Manager Mary. You don’t want to deal with Manager Mary. She explained that of course Maria had not called back: they had had a sales meeting and then Maria went to lunch. When I mentioned that it was a Friday and the day was almost over, she laughed at me and said they work until 7PM. Her attitude was downright nasty. She promised me a discount on the order for my trouble (I couldn’t wait to see what this discount would be) and asked me how I would recommend they get me an undamaged unit. I told her that was Shoplet’s function, not mine. When she continued putting it on me, I said, “By now, I would wish for the warehouse manager to deliver the unit himself, even though I know that would never happen.” She loudly said, “So you’re saying that the only thing that would satisfy you would be for the warehouse manager himself to deliver it?” I guess they had had a great sales meeting and she was showing off to her subordinates.
Manager Mary said she would have the tracking information for me Monday morning. When I mentioned that the tracking did not work, since this was done by common carrier, she just raised her voice and repeated herself. I called her on it and she said she would tell me the name of the trucking company. So I told her the name of the trucking company instead. Maria did not call that day.
I called again around noon on Monday and Maria answered. I mentioned that she had not called again and she said that Manager Mary had told her the whole thing had been settled. I disillusioned her, and again she promised to call back right away with a delivery time. Maria constantly tried to be helpful. From my experience with slick sales organizations, I would guess that she is the nice chipper novice on the front lines who everyone hates to upset, while the buck (your buck) stops at Manager Mary.
After I left the office that evening, Maria brightly left a message at 5:30 PM saying that they were shipping directly from the manufacturer (HON) and that they needed two to three weeks lead-time. I couldn’t believe my ears the next morning when I received the message, and called back to confirm that she had said weeks, not days. Yes, weeks it was. I informed her that once snow starts up here, the truck would have a hard time getting to my door. I also informed her that I might be in surgery at that time. Then I asked her how long the actual shipping would take. She didn’t seem to understand the question, so I told her that if HON needed three weeks lead-time and they were across the country, if they also shipped by common carrier it could be another four to five weeks before I received the order. Since the next day would be four weeks from the original order date, that would make it at least eight weeks delivery on an order that had been promised as three day delivery. I told her my credit card bill was due Friday and asked how she suggested I handle this. I had not received the complete order yet and did not wish to pay for the replacement bookcase at this point, as I was no longer confident that I would receive it with customer service proving itself so ineffective. She told me that she "strongly did not suggest” that I not pay it in full. I asked her what kind of discount they were promising me. (I figured I would at least take the discount off the bill). She made notes of all of this and promised to get back to me.
At this point I decided to start researching this company. I found the epinions.com reviews and received Manager Mary’s discount email simultaneously. She magnanimously discounted the $1370.00 order by ten dollars!
I called Maria and told her to keep the ten dollars, cancel the last bookcase, and credit me back for it immediately because Friday is the last day to pay my credit card bill for the order. I also mentioned that the epinions reviews show that mine was not an isolated case as they all had suggested. I followed up with an email.
Yes, it’s hard to believe that this is the short version. What really bothers me is that throughout the whole affair, I was repeatedly instructed to understand that there are things outside their control. They even sent me this in writing. My answer to them is that customer service is not outside their control (ten dollars!), choosing responsible vendors is not outside their control, and not taking responsibility is not outside their control. For the techies, their CRM is nonexistent, they are far from agile, they are running way too lean, and their supply chain is archaic. They are the dinosaurs of ecommerce.
Yes, I was an idiot to deal with them this long. Far too trusting. But I’d rather be me than them.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
mountain_lion
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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