Buy.com: Good retailer but flawed in many ways
Written: Jan 09 '04 (Updated Jan 13 '04)
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Buy.com is an online retail site similar to Amazon that sells pretty much everything you could think of. There are supposedly over a million items on the site ranging from books to digicams and toys. Compared to most other online retailers, I would say Buy.com ranks among the more reliable ones despite their shrewd marketing tactics. Excuse me, did I just say shrewd? You got that right. Allow me to explain why. Buy.com offers free shipping on a select number of items on their site. While this is supposed to mean good news to the unsuspecting customer, the more seasoned net shoppers ( like yours truly ) will immediately notice that sometimes, free shipping isn't such a good thing after all.
Here's an example. A while ago, Buy.com was offering a certain brand of speakers at $175 plus free shipping. After checking with Amazon.com, I found that they had the very same speakers for about $250 plus $99 shipping. So, does this mean I would be getting a good deal on Buy.com? Eager to find out, I went back to Buy.com, read the fineprint only to discover that for $175, you do not get the entire set. You'd only get one one half of it, so be prepared to fork out another $175 for the other half. Upon closer comparison, their prices do not differ much from Amazon. For $350, you could get the same thing on both sites, so what's the deal with selling one half of the item just to make the price look lower?
Buy.com claims to have the 'Lowest Prices on Earth' but the truth is, their prices are really not much lower than most other sites on the internet ( and that includes free shipping and all ). I often use sites like Amazon & ebay as well as Pricegrabber as a benchmark to compare low prices on almost everything purchased online.
Return Policy
I may not like Buy.com that much, but I have to admit they probably have the best return policy in the business. Most items can be returned within a 30 day time frame and they will even pay for return shipping. A UPS return label can be printed right off your computer then attached to the item after selecting the return button on the site. Buy.com's return policy may be the only good thing about the site worth mentioning here.
Customer Service
Customer service agents on the phone are generally pleasant ( way better compared to Etechwarehouse.com ), however they're limited to taking orders and are unable to provide status on previous shipments. Ordering over the phone will cost an additional $2.95 so it's always a good idea to buy through the website. Buyers can check the status of their orders by going to their 'My Account' link located on the main site. Sometimes this does not help much ( especially if the item is out of stock at the time ) so you might want to send them an email to get a 'real' update on your orders. It normally takes them about a day to respond. The longest I had to wait was probably 3 days on an order placed during the year end holiday season.
Item availability
Unfortunately, Buy.com does not offer real time stats on item availability. If an item is presumed available, it will be listed as 'In Stock' on their site. Sometimes, when an item becomes unavailable, it may still be listed as 'In Stock' on the site for up to 2 days! yes, it does take them that long to update. Orders placed within that 2 days will be placed on a backorder. In most cases, the buyer will not be informed that the item has sold out and is left waiting for the next available shipment. This has happened a number of times when I had ordered some PC games and small electronic items from the site. Even worse, my order for some items were cancelled without my approval and by the time the next shipment got in, they had raised the prices!
Conclusion
Despite their shortcomings, Buy.com is still far better compared to most other retail sites I have dealt with. Next to Buy.com, I would also recommend Amazon, which I think is a little more reliable. If you can't find what you're looking for there, there's always ebay.
Recommended:
Yes
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? PC Games, PDAs & DVD players
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