SS: When something you were waiting for arrives damaged!

[ufcrusher]

I have been waiting for about a week for an order of comic books to arrive from this new (to me) online store I am trying out. They had an ad in a mainstream book and their website seemed very professional. Their prices were also great, so I figured, take a chance and save a bunch of money. (Another company which I have known about forever had the same books marked at twice the price or more and didnt even have stock on them)

I placed the order, immediately got a response telling me the timeline for receiving my books and their strict grading criteria, which is overstreet or better. As each timeline passes, sure enough they complete the step on that exact day and then I am told that my product shipped. Great! Today, a mere two days later (they said four) I find an express mail package in my mailbox from the company. I look at it and immediately think, this is not good. Its one of those mailer envelopes and its stretched tightly and I can see where its gotten beaten up. There is no way the comics made it entact....but this is their business, so I give them the benefit of the doubt, praying that it will be alright. I open it up and inside is a cardboard sandwich, with a bagged cardboard sandwich containing the comics inside of it. Ok, so the cardboard might have protected the books..........

Unfortunately, when I take them out of the cardboard sandwich I find that it DID NOT protect them sufficiently as their was damage to all but 3. I figure this is going to be a nightmare trying to get the company to fix this. I carefully go over each book, go on their website to review their grading process and confirm that this condition isnt within the description of what I bought (it wasnt) and called them.

NSS part: I got through on the first call to an actual person, who transfered me to the person I needed to talk to. He apologized for the inconvenience, is pulling the books again for me to reship them, and explained that the mailer option sometimes fails to protect the books sufficiently and in the future I should probably upgrade to the box option. (The website said that the mailer would protect the books sufficiently so long as it wasnt a large order) I just need to RMA all the books back and will get credited the shipping cost.

As much as this sucks, at least the company stands by their products.

[whitak24]

that is crappy that they don't use a "safe" shipping method for all their orders, but i'm glad they're fixing it. it sounds like they're a pretty attentive company, which is always good.

[kei2]

Yeah it's never good to receive something damaged, because often less responsible shippers will deny responsibility. It's good that this particular company is stepping up.

[ufcrusher]

Yeah it's never good to receive something damaged, because often less responsible shippers will deny responsibility. It's good that this particular company is stepping up.

Exactly what I was worried about...I guess they decided that keeping customers happy is their A#1 responsibility.

[ufcrusher]

Update: I have been waiting patiently for over 15 days now for this replacement shipment. After the first week passed, I emailed them saying what is going on here. They got back to me and said that I should have already received it.....that I might want to check with my post office to see if they were holding a package for me. I explained to him that someone had been at home each day when the mail was delivered, so that it would not have been necessary to hold it. That I was getting annoyed that it had been over 10 days now and I wanted to know where my order was. He told me that if the order didnt get in by Friday (today) that he would ship another order.

Suffice it to say, it didnt arrive today and I called. The representative (a manager) told me that it would be sent out on Monday. I asked him to put a tracking number on it this time...he said that they would have to ship it via another method. I asked him what the difference in cost would be...he said nothing to me, so I told him to go ahead and ship it via UPS. If it doesnt get here by the time the guy promised, I'm going to get mean. I dont think they are intentionally doing this as the original order arrived without a hitch but I am getting annoyed. I havent yet revealed what I am which is always fun to see the reaction. You've never seen companies suddenly make things happen when you reveal yourself to them.