Detailed below is the rather sad history to date of my relationship with this company.
It subdivides into two distinct but complimentary sections.
The first outlines the actual business deal between Ebuyer and me. The second deals with my attempt to communicate with their online forum community and the vicious response by their moderator ‘dagwoood’
Section 1; This was posted on Ebuyer’s forum
Dear all, having ordered a laser printer from this company and having received a response both confirming the order and informing me of the expected date of delivery I can only described what happened next as going pear shaped.
Catalogued below is the history and reason behind this question to anyone that, have any of you been treated by this company in this manner, if so how did you pursue it, if indeed you did, and what was the eventual outcome. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Kindest regards
S. Halston
Tue, 12 Aug 2008
Dear halston,
Your order has been cancelled for one of the following reasons:
You have requested the order to be cancelled.
The item(s) you have ordered are no longer available or have been discontinued.
We apologise for any inconvenience. If you still require the order, please reorder the goods online.
Please note; if payment has been taken for your cancelled order, we will refund the money as soon as possible. The refund will take up to three working days to clear.
Kind regards,
Ebuyer Customer Support
Tue, 12 Aug 2008
Dear halston,
Many thanks for using our website for your customer service query. We are currently replying to all queries within 2 business days, please bear with us while we process your query.
A new eNote, number 1023374, has been raised, which reads:
Dear sir/ madam,
It is with great anger and disappointment that I pen this communiqué. On Friday the 8th of august I placed with you an order for a laser printer, your catalogue showing several in stock I placed the order in good faith. Having received on the same day a confirmation of both the receipt of my money and a confirmation of the expected date of delivery I naturally assumed that, as in the past when dealing with you, everything was fine.
However this has not proven to be the case, because on Mon, 11 Aug 2008 I received email from you stating that, “Unfortunately we were unaware of this stock discrepancy until your order went through to our warehouse to be dispatched” thereby supposedly and immediately making your systemic failure my problem, why is this?! It most certainly is not my problem. To add insult to injury when I rang you to find out just what had happened I was fobbed off with the excuse that the manager was not there to answer my questions but would most assuredly contact me by phone the next day to resolve this issue, But wait that didn’t happen did it? So when at last and in desperation I rang you I was informed that the printers were out of stock and my money would be refunded, again making this my problem. Understand this I placed an order, my money was accepted; this by anyone standards is a contract, a contract as far as I am concerned that is valid, you are in breach of it and are insisting, or rather the sales representative is insisting that there is nothing she can do about it, no offer of an alternative no offer of an accommodation, nothing. This shoddy way of treating people certainly does not echo your supposed “business philosophy” of giving “consumers and businesses what they want, when they want it. We never stop improving our world class operation by putting our customers - and their needs - first.”
I expect to receive an alternative to the printer advertised at the same price as the one originally ordered I further expect that your problems are not again made mine.
Halston
Account No …….
Wed, 13 Aug 2008
Dear halston,
We have replied to your eNote, number……., as follows :
Dear halston,
Thank you for your contact with our Customer Support Team.
We would firstly like to offer our most humble apologies for the annoyance and frustration which this matter has caused however as advised, unfortunately we were unaware of this stock discrepancy until your order went through to our warehouse to be dispatched.
As quoted in our terms an conditions, agreed to upon submission of an order, if after acceptance of your order we discover within 14 days of such acceptance that all of the goods are unavailable, we may terminate the contract and refund or re-credit you within 7 working days for any sum that has been paid by you or debited from your credit card for those goods. In accordance with this, a refund has been issued to you.
By way of a goodwill gesture, we have added a free shipping token to your account so that you can order an alternative if required. This will be used against the next order that is placed on a next day service and weighing up to 10kg.
Kind Regards
Sarah
Ebuyer Customer Support Team
Addendum for this forum, it should be remembered that had a seller on Ebay reneged on a deal like this they would have lost their account. It seems to me that Ebuyers terms and conditions boil down to nothing more than, if we wish to renege on a deal within 14 days we can and there’s nothing you can do about it, and if you should be cheeky enough to seek advice in our forum we will take it off line because we don’t like being criticised.
Any feedback to this post would be welcomed
Many thanks
Halston
