Have you had a bad online purchase experience?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Rotch
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Mike Rotch

Mike Rotch

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Have any GTP members has a bad experience with purchasing something online? I am beginning to feel i am in the early stages of one. I ordered two books off abebooks.com at the beginning of October. One was from NY, the other Shropshire, Eng. Neither has arrived yet.

I have ordered book off abe before and they have arrived within a month (one from texas, one from cali). The retailers say it would take betwenn 14 and 29 business days to arrive. I can complain either, because they handily put in delays from customs may result in their disclaimer. I doubt customs are interested in the books I have bought - militaria, WWII.

Why cant things work like they are supposed to?
 
i have NEVER ordered anything off the internet
 
I've ordered a few computer bits of www.dabs.com and i've had no trouble with them. I did have a little trouble with the collection of my PS2 to be chipped (they said they'd handle the collection of it) and I got them to refund that part of the bill. I've never ordered something online oversees though.
 
I haven't had any bad experiences buying stuff over the internet. I've purchased $75 worth of stuff from www.ascent.co.nz and $100 from www.overclockers.co.nz all computer stuff, but it's given me the confidence.

Oh yeah, I've also bought stuff from the auction site www.trademe.co.nz including a pxt camera, data cable and ringtone cd for my phone.

I was a bit nervous and scared the first time I bought something off the net, but as long as you read through everything and read between the lines everything should be fine.
 
I've perfomred myriad contractions throughteh net, and haven't had a problem. On default, Ive bought from recommended and respected places.

The Military books may have raised a few eyebrows. In this day and age, with everyone suspected of being a terrorist it wouldn't take much for someone to say "Hey, this guys shipping military books in from around the world. Maybe we oughta take a look." I'd say contact the company with a request to track the items and see where they are.

AO
 
some dick ripped me off for a PS2 game on ebay....

i sent him that cash and the bollock kept it and never sent the game...

apart from that i buy online all the time and never had any other negative experiences...
 
Originally posted by Der Alta
I'd say contact the company with a request to track the items and see where they are.

AO
Click to expand...


I have. They have been "shipped as requested". :irked:
 
I ordered a DVD off Ebay and it never showed up. Still waiting for my refund. Also, a couple years ago I bought a DVD player off Ebay and it never worked right. They jacked me around and I never had the time or energy to go to war with them about it. Now it's my garage CD player.

I've learned to only buy things online from places that will ship in some kind of trackable manner. Then you can prove that you never received it.
 
I mostly buy my cd's via the internet nowadays, since the kind of artists I like aren't usually locally available. Once the cd's I had ordered arrived with their cases cracked. I complained about it, and the reply was something on the lines of "Hey, s**t happens. Mmkay?". It wasn't such a big deal so I left it at that.
 
I've made dozens of internet purchases, from something as small as lugnuts to the car I drove to work today. I've never had a deal go bad, really, though some have required extra effort to complete. I've just been careful to choose and learn about who I'm buying from.

Those were private party transactions. If you're talking about ordering online from big companies like Lands' End, Gap, Mac Warehouse, etc. then our internet purchases number in the hundreds at least, with few mishaps.
 
ive ordered stuff from hong kong (sp?) off a site, for a converter for my ps2 controller so i could hook it up to my computer, i was a little weary at first, but a freind of mine had refrenced me there, and he said it was fine, so i went for it, but i still check my credit card statement to see if someone has gotten my account information, other than that, its all gravy baby!
 
I only buy from large online retailers I know and trust. I tried ordering a laptop from pcvideonline or something gay like that. First I placed my order of almost 3000 dollars with some kind of mail in rebate. Then they billed my credit card and emailed me my UPS tracking number...when i went to UPS and put in the number it didn't work. so I called and they said it wasn't shipped yet because of that balck out that happend in NY. so they told me to call on monday and i did, when I called they were like "we just shipped it" I checked UPS again and still no luck. At this point I was pissed, then i get a call from a guy working there. Keep in mind I was laready pissed, and he tells me that the product is "factory refurbished" so I yelled at him for half an hour then hung up on his ass. I called toshiba and they told me that they never heard of this company and that the rebate would not be honored. So i picked up the phone and cut off the A$$ hole who picked up the phone with a prompt: "give me a damn manager" Once the manager picked up I proceded to yell at him saying that not only was I pissed that they tried to send me a used computer the website claimed was new. Not only that but they waited untill the credit card was laready billed and the product shipped before telling me. to add to that they told me I would get a rebate, which toshiba would not honor. The guy basically said that the product was already shipped and there was nothing he could do about it. So I not so nicley elxplained to him that I placed a stop payment with my credit card company meaning they would not be paid and due to their lies and Deceit they will be receiving a call from my lawyer. At which point he was probably pissing himself...All of a sudden he became nice and said they would fix the problem, anyway i hung up on him. that was the first and only time I'll ever buy something from a company I've never heard of.
 
i make it a point to buy only from big sites or from sites reccomended by at least a few people - from friends or from a forum related to what i want to buy.

Also, a lot of big canadian based online retailers are based in the toronto area so if anything DOES happen, i can just drive down to their warehouse/shipping centre. Macwarehouse for example offered to allow me to pick up the merchandise i purchased directly from the warehouse if i didn't want to wait for the shipping.
 
best buy has something like that where you can order online and pick it up at a local store. I always check peoples review of the store though but not on their website because they can easliy fake that.
 
Never had a problem when buying online. I've bought countless model cars, a steering wheel for my PS2, a set of wheels, a few games, etc... You just have to be careful with where you purchase your stuff.
 
I've never had a major problem with an online purchase, but back in '99 I searched for a domain name which I eventually purchased. (I no longer own it, by the way.)

Back then, you had to buy the name from Internic, and host it elsewhere. But a few hosting companies offered a "convienent" method of seraching for a domain name, right on their site, for free. Well, so far, so good. I found the name thorugh this site, but found a different hosting company that the site I searched with.

Well, I sent my credit card number to Internic.com, and they sent me the paperwork. The site where I searched the name from decided to automatiically bill me, since they assumed I was purchsing a hosting service package from them. I used a re-direction company because it cost all of $5 a year to do so, and convienent, too (I had ad-free, cost-free web space at the time).

Well, luckily, I kept a good paper trail, sent about a dozen emails back anmd forth to both to Internic and www.aworldwidemall.com , as well as proof of where my site was hosted.

Four months later, and not too much aggravation later, the whole mess was resolved, and letter of apology was sent to me. So I can't get too angry about it all, because it just involved a lot of cut-and-paste, and sending emails.

That said, I don't think I could trust eBay one bit.
 
I ordered a mirror for my car. I took over 3 months to ship. By the time it had come, the car had already broken down and I had turned in the plates.
 
I've won 4 items off of ebay Australia, so far haven't had a hitch. I sent out the payment for the fourth item today. The only hitch I had was with www.gpstore.co.nz when trying to order the "normal" Vice City for PS2. I enlisted my phone number, and they told me it was private. I said, yeah, I know that...and they wanted another phone number, so I said piss off, and they got pissed. I recommend eBay so far though.
 

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