Buy.com: Great Prices; Good Selection; Fast web-site; Lacking Customer Service
Written: Sep 01 '06
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To be honest, and up front about my review, I actually went into my review with a rather disgruntled approach, thinking that I wanted to give Buy.com a low rating. However, the more I thought about the site, the more I started to think that they might not be as bad as I had convinced myself. Let’s go back to the beginning so that you can make sense of my opinion on the site. For a very recent purchase, I went to Buy.com to purchase 250GB External Hard Drives. They had a very good listed price, and it seemed like a dependable site that we could rely upon to deliver the products on time and at a less expensive price than other similar sites. Originally selling for $169.99, the drives were being sold for only $109.95 on the site. This was in comparison to $139.98 at Staples and $159.99 at Circuit City. So, you can see that since we were buying 7 of them, we were set to save a bundle of cash right from the start. It has been my experience that in regards to computer parts and electronics equipment, that Buy.com offers great deals that are often marked down from listed prices. It is not the same for their media sections though, where it hard to find good deals unless it is a brand new product.
The site itself was very easy to navigate, and one of the huge positives, is that it works so quickly. Each time I have been back to their web-site the load time for pages was almost non-existent. Every time I would click through something it would load up right away, and this is a great thing in my book. I have been to far too many different online stores where they just care about the volume of customers, and not the experience once they get those people to click through to the site. Logging in is just as easy, where in a few quick keystrokes and mouse-clicks, I am able to log in and find a product. Buy.com is set up as a vast search engine from the main page, where you can access computers, software, electronics, wireless equipment, cameras, networking tools, music, movies, books, games, toys, sports, and bags entries from their main tool bar tabs. Clicking on one of them takes you to a list of items (topics) that you can browse through, and each section also has a list of featured products listed at the center of the page. The search engine carries over to each of the pages, so if you want to do a site-wide search at anytime it is right there waiting. The engine works quickly as well, returning many different results.
One of the interesting things about their search engines is that it gives you unique information in the listings of your products that I haven't seen in other search engines. For instance if you are searching through toys, it tells you the ages that they are appropriate for on the main screen, saving you the time of clicking through that link to explore it for yourselves. I think this is an interesting tool that could be very helpful to people using the site around the Holidays. When you select a product that you are interested in purchasing, you are given a description, further details, and extended specifications. If prior customers have taken the time to write something, there will also be customer reviews of the products. These can be slightly interesting to get a feel for the product. None of the products I have ended up purchasing have had customer reviews on the item, so I guess take that note for what it is. When you finally decide to select a product, it sends that choice to a shopping basket that is to the side, ready for you to click on it when you are done shopping. By clicking on "proceed to checkout", you are then taken to a new page where you can either login, or create an account to be used on the site. Creating an account is slightly cumbersome, but necessary in that you have to provide all of your billing and shipping information anyways.
The total of your purchase will appear in the top right corner, along with your shipping and handling charges, and taxes if it applies. You are then asked if you would like to alter the estimated delivery time, depending on how fast you want the product. For the latest purchase, I was given the option of Budget (7 to 9 days), Standard (3 to 5 days for $24.57), Second Day (2 business days for $44.55), and Next Day (1 business day for $70.01). Selecting the Budget shipping option means that you will have to wait 7 to 9 days of delivery time after it is shipped, but at the same time you will not end up paying anything for shipping if you select the right product. A lot of their selections give you free shipping, but always be aware that if it is being offered, that it will communicate that in green text right below the product listing. If it is not noted, they have a scale that determines what amount of shipping you will be charged. For instance they charge a Shipment Charge of $1.95 on Books and Movies, with a 45 cent item charge for each selection. This price increases if you ask for the shipment to be sent quicker, but as I said, there are many items that don't have shipping charges. The shipping will most likely only ever come in to play if you are looking to buy like one CD or one DVD. However, if you are looking to buy several gifts, and the cost goes over their threshold in that category, you get free shipping. A great example is the $25.00 threshold in toys, where if you go above that, they have been offering free shipping of late.
After choosing the Budget shipping on my last purchase, I printed out my receipt and didn't think about the purchase for about 10 days. At that point, I went online, curious why the product had not been received. Well when I logged on it said that it was still "processing", and this is about when my frustration with the site started to grow. Calling the 1-800 number, which cannot be found on the site (I had to do a Google for it), I was on hold for a few minutes, and then connected with a gentleman who said that my billing address was incorrect. Without ever seeing a notification in my e-mail, I wondered why they asked for my phone number when I signed up on the site, because they certainly never called me. The mistake with the billing address was that I didn't put the exact address the credit card company uses, but rather the one I have all the bills sent to. Changing that while on the phone, I was told the order would be updated in a couple of hours according to the same gentleman. I logged on about 4 hours later, and seeing no change, called the customer service line again just to make sure everything was going all right. This new gentleman said it would be up by the next day, so I went with that as a logical answer as well. Seeing no change the next day, I talked with yet another customer service person who said that it would take 48 hours before the other department was going to update anything. So with 3 phone calls, I got 3 different answers about what was up with my product. That alone is enough to frustrate someone into never coming back to a web-site. Calling back the 4th time, during the next week, I finally was able to straighten out that everything was correct in the system, and I was told that the order would be completed and shipped out the next day. This gentleman came through for me, and the web-site denoted that it was in transit.
When I received the 7 external drives, I was ecstatic that I had come away with such a great product at more than 30 percent off the original price. That saved me more than $420.00 right off the bat, and when you throw in that there was no shipping charge, I really came out ahead with this purchase. Everything arrived in perfect condition, and if you discount the delays with customer service, I actually received the items quicker than I had thought once they were actually shipped. This is about where you start to understand why I wasn't sure what I was going to rate my experiences with Buy.com. During the frustrations with the site, I kept thinking that I would never want to go back to their site, simply because of the horrible customer service that I had received. However, when I balance that against the nice search engines on the site, the extremely fast load times, the great prices on high-end products, and the fact that I had to pay no shipping, I found that the positives out-weighed some of the frustrations that I had with the phone calls. In addition, if I had entered the correct information online from the start, I would never have seen what I thought to be the ugly side of their phone system. In the end, I have decided that for products similar to these, that I will gladly return to Buy.com, and as a result I do give them a nice recommendation. They have a nice web-site that offers a lot of great deals, they are always putting items on sale or on discount, and they always end up delivering on their orders. For all of the positive aspects of Buy.com that I have been privy to, I give their site my recommendation.
Recommended:
Yes
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? external hard drives, computer components
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