I work for a major retailer who ensures customer satisfaction by allowing returns for any previously purchased goods, opened or not and broken/used or not, that a customer purchased at any time in the history of the company. This is to say that the company I work for will accept returns for anything you purchased from them ever, for whatever reason, no questions asked. Seriously, I know of cases where someone bought something years ago that they smashed up (i.e. the customer’s fault) and returned to my company only to receive a replacement item or at very least a repaired item. In my opinion, this is a fantastic policy, and likely the single-most reason why the company has been in business and successful for as long as it has.
As a consumer, I prefer a shopping experience to be transparent. Whether I buy online or at a (physical) retail store, I am looking for easy to find merchandise followed by an equally easy way to complete the transcaction(s). And when things go wrong somewhere in the process — and I won’t deny this for a second — I expect a certain amount of ego stroking. In the retail world, ego stroking is better described with the euphemism: “customer service”.
Increasingly, I have noticed that firms seem to be less interested in providing customer service, or when they provide some level of customer service it’s not satisfactory. To be clear, I’m not that picky of a person, but when something goes wrong I expect it to be resolved to my satisfaction. I expect to see a value for my dollar and this not limited to the price tag(s) of whatever I’ve purchased.
An ongoing situation with NewEgg and to a lesser extent with Bank of America illustrates this observation.
I ordered a new hard drive and some memory from NewEgg for a MacBook in early November 2010. Before checking out, I updated my credit card and address information as we had recently moved. I had been buying computer stuff from NewEgg since 2003 or 2004, so this seemed like old hat to me. I finally submitted the order and a couple of days later I got a shipping confirmation. Oh no! NewEgg was shipping my items to the old address! Arggh! How did this happen?!
Unluckily for me, I had asked for 3-5 day UPS shipping so I didn’t have much time to act. I called NewEgg customer service on the phone, and I waited on hold for a seemingly endless amount of time. Waiting on hold and automated phone systems reminds me of that exchange between Willy Mays Hayes and Rick Vaughn from the movie Major League:
Willie Mays Hayes: Call the stewardess, Vaughn. I need one of those bags.
Rick Vaughn: There aren’t any stewardesses.
Willie Mays Hayes: I wonder if there are any pilots.
Suffice it to say, that long waiting (outside of the holiday season) does not a good customer service experience make. Eventually a NewEgg customer service representative picked up the phone and I told them my spiel. The NewEgg customer service representative went on to tell me that I “changed my address wrong” and was basically telling me there was nothing NewEgg could/would do about it and how I should “change my address correctly the next time”. I was having none of this, so I pressed. Mind you, I was still being somewhat affable at this point, or assuming that I wasn’t being totally affable, at very least I was being marginally reasonable. Finally, after further pressing, I was basically told by the NewEgg customer service representative that I had to call UPS to have them recall the package. After wasting another hour or so on hold with UPS, UPS told me that I could not authorize them to recall the package and that only the sender (NewEgg) could do so.
I called NewEgg once again and got into the phone hold queue for another hour. In parallel, I went to the customer service / chat section of the NewEgg website and started a chat session over there. I waited for half hour for a NewEgg customer service representative while the phone remained on hold in the background. Finally, a NewEgg representative picked up the chat session and I gave them my complaint ID. They reiterated how I should “change my address correctly next time”, and that there was “nothing they could do to reclaim the packages” since apparently UPS had ended up delivering them (to the old address) a day early. I explained that NewEgg had told me to call UPS and that UPS had redirected me back to NewEgg and that this incorrect advice had taken us several hours off course — during which UPS had delivered a package to the wrong address — and that this was beyond my control. I further explained that UPS had told me a package could be retrieved from the address, but they needed permission from the shipper to be able to try this. I asked NewEgg if they would try this, even explaining that I would be happy to pay any fees from UPS for the extra pickup, and they said they would not. Note that in the background my phone session with NewEgg was still on hold!
I asked to speak with a NewEgg manager and they pretty much told me the same thing(s) as the last customer representative had, except they added this gem:
“The only way the package can be retrieved at this point is if you go to the address and pick it up.”
I explained to the NewEgg manager that I no longer lived at old address, wasn’t sure if the new owner had moved in yet, and that the old address was 100 miles away. This was pretty much what I told the last customer service representative and it was of no use, although this time I added that I was requesting a refund for the merchandise unless NewEgg was willing to ship a new set out free of charge. She was having none of this and suggested that NewEgg would give me a refund only if I sent back the merchandise, even though they were well aware that the merchandise was not in my possession. She went on to lecture me about how this was my fault and how better management of this event on my part would’ve caused this not to have happened. At this point I think I started bleeding from my eyes and I was trying to keep my bile duct sealed but was having an impossible time doing that. I decided my tack wasn’t working, so I tried another approach: to just be totally blunt.
“Does NewEgg really believe in customer service, in that the customer is always right? Because that’s not what I’m seeing now.”, I remarked.
The manager changed her tune suddenly, and said that she was going to call UPS personally and that she would call me on my cell (she took down the number). This never materialized of course, so I tried to call NewEgg one last time and was rebuffed.
Oh, and since I forgot to mention it, we were talking about $150 worth of merchandise here. $150 is annoying to lose (it’s annoying to lose any amount of money, to be frank), but for a retailer as large as NewEgg I found it impossible to believe that they would take issue with $150 in the grand scheme of things. Regardless, it was clear that I was going to get no relief from NewEgg, so I figured that I needed a more muscular approach to solving the problem of the missing items and loss of $150. On top of that I had ordered a new hard drive and memory from Amazon for less than $150, so getting the money back was what I was after at this point.
Bank of America is a huge financial institution. They manage our checking accounts, savings, and mortgage. While we are hardly Donald Trumps or Thurston Howell, III, we have a long banking “relationship” (silly word to describe being a patron of a bank, but I digress) with Bank of America, and as part of our tenure and business with Bank of America I felt that we probably had some kind of purchase protection built into anything we bought with a Bank of America card, even a debit card.
I gave Bank of America a call and lo and behold, one is able to dispute a charge with a merchant. I spoke to a Bank of America representative who was very courteous and took down all of my information about the situation with NewEgg. In the end, Bank of America credited my account for $150 until they could resolve the matter with NewEgg. I was very pleased about this, with the understanding that things might not work out between Bank of America and NewEgg. Since Bank of America was large, we were solid Bank of America customers and Bank of America was looking out for our best interests (their claim — as they told me on the phone), I thought results would be imminent and they would be in our favor. Right? Wait for it!
Three weeks ago, our REALTOR (yes, he of house-selling infamy) dropped us an email where he noted that the people who had bought the house were going to ship us a few packages that had accidentally been sent there. I was kind of shocked that this even came up (especially since he got in touch with us exactly two months after we’d sold the house in New Hampshire), and wasn’t holding my breath when it came to our REALTOR and his follow through with this kind of stuff (well, about practically anything, in actuality), but decidedly if the packages were returned to us, we could ship them back to NewEgg, get a refund from NewEgg, pay $150 back to Bank of America, and close the lid on this extremely ridiculous matter once and for all.
Two days ago, Bank of America denied our claim and took their $150 back, citing the same lame reasons as NewEgg for why the claim was denied. We still don’t have the merchandise from our REALTOR and I am not hopeful. Now I’m re-pissed with NewEgg and am freshly pissed with Bank of America. Unfortunately, we all know what the only alternative is when one is dissatisfied with their bank! Should I play the “we’re taking all of our money out of your bank over a $150 dispute” card with Bank of America? The only positive that would come out of this would be a good blog posting. Everything else would totally suck.
As for NewEgg, I will never do business with them again: EVER. Once this matter is resolved, if I can still get a refund (minus the 15% “restocking fee”), I will return the items and wait for a refund. Then I will cancel my account, with extreme prejudice.
