Okay store front, horrible service
Written: Jul 21 '05
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How Abe's of Maine became a trusted store at Shopping.com, I'll never know, considering that I see many reviews relating experiences remarkably similar to mine. I only gave it two stars instead of one because it seemed to have a decent store front, and they redeemed themselves in a very small way at the end. To start the story, here is the email I had to send a couple weeks after my order, which tells the story up to that point . . .
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To whom it may concern,
I have been extremely disappointed with the service I have received regarding my order A300318. On Wednesday, June 29, I ordered a Hoover F7220900 Steam Vac from your web site. It was listed as available, which I took to mean that it would ship quickly. Hoping to have it in time to do some steam cleaning that weekend, I chose the overnight shipping option.
As far as I can tell, now the morning of Friday, July 8, my order still has not been shipped. First of all, it is very disappointing that an item listed as available has not been shipped a week and a half after ordering. Secondly, I would not have chosen overnight shipping if I knew it was going to take so long to ship anyway.
I did receive a call, I believe on Friday, July 1 (though it may have been Thursday), confirming my order so that shipment could proceed. This got my hopes up that shipping was imminent, but those hopes were dashed. On Tuesday, July 5, I called your customer service number. I spoke to one of your representatives (I did not note her name), who informed me that my order had been processed and sent to the shipping department. When I asked if she could tell me when it would ship, she said she would find out and get back to me. She never did. All along, I have also been checking my order status on your web site, and it always says "Processed."
I do a lot of shopping on line, and I have never had such a poor experience. I have come to associate on line shopping with convenience, immediacy, and information. The experience I have had with your store gives me the impression that you are not ready for prime time when it comes to serving the modern on line shopper. I contrast this to the smooth shopping experience offered by a well-run on line store such as Amazon.com, where they give detailed information, such as how quickly a product can be shipped and, once ordered, detailed status information such as when it is expected to be shipped and arrive. Also, orders consistently arrive by the time promised, and often well before.
I know that not every order can be perfect, and sometimes even a well-run store is going to make occasional mistakes. In such cases, I measure the worth of a store by what steps they take to rectify those mistakes. That is why it was particularly galling that I got no more information or attempt to rectify my problem when I finally felt it necessary to call your customer service line. I hope I have a better experience now that I have felt compelled to take time out of my busy day to write this email.
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To complete the story, I never did get a response to this email per se, despite the site's promise that they respond to all email within 24 hours, though I did finally get a shipping notification a few days later. The package was sent ground, NOT overnight, and arrived about a week after I received the shipping notification.
Soon after, I called to get a refund on the difference between the overnight price and the ground price. The person who helped me insisted I could not have ordered overnight shipping, because the price I paid was way too low and matched the price they had for ground shipping at the time. I actually found this believeable, because $29.49 seems awfully low for overnight shipping on a 32-pound package. Be that as it may, I know the choices I saw when I ordered, and I know what I selected, so the web site was mistaken. The person that helped me insisted that there was not a mistake instead of taking my observation seriously and maybe looking for a bug in their web site. He based this on the fact that the web site currently is correct, but they had changed their shipping prices since then, so he could not know what I had seen. However, one bright spot here was that he did offer to refund me the difference between the shipping cost I paid and their new, lower shipping cost, a difference of $10.
Still, overall, this was a very frustrating shopping experience and I would not shop here again.
Recommended:
No
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Hoover SteamVac F7220-900
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Epinions.com ID:
inflammable
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Reviews written: 1
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