Annoying shopping experience
I have done some research on some art supplies stores, both online and local ‘real’ stores. Unfortunately, there is not one store in Holland that offers all products in my shopping list. So through the Everyday Matters group, I got some names and links to online stores outside the Netherlands. I finally decided to order the products at Jerry’s Artarama. It seems like they are the cheapest one. I read their customer service page and information about shipping carefully. Put all selected products in the shopping cart, registered payment method, filled in address, and chose ‘the Netherlands’ as country. It all went OK, I even got an e-mail confirmation 2 minutes after I ordered. Next day, I checked out my order status online and freaked out because suddenly ‘United States’ was listed as the country of the shipping address instead of ‘the Netherlands’. I just got to call them to make sure that they would ship it to the right country. After telling a customer representative my order number, she dropped the news. My order has been canceled. CANCELED????? ( what is she talking about? I got a confirmation. Under order status on the website right in front of me, while calling, says that payment method is accepted. So how can it be CANCELED????) I didn’t cancel it. ‘No mam, we just no longer ship to the Netherlands’ Since WHEN? The website does not specifically mention anything about shipping to the Netherlands (Ok, I was half yelling and felt irritated, frustrated, etc. etc but I am not going to repeat the whole conversation here)….Finally she said that the supervisor would send me an e-mail confirming that I am not going to receive my order ad that my credit card will not be billed. Feeling very annoyed, I filled in a feedback form on their website and just wrote down my rants. Today, I got 2 e-mail replies from Jerry from two different representatives. One mentioned that the reason they do not ship to Holland anymore is because the high credit card theft that has came from here. (I am not aware of this at all. No news here regarding credit card theft. So I personally think this is just made up). The second mentioned that they do ship to NL but only if the payment is via money order or cashier check. (This make a bit more sense to me, although the reason behind it is a bit dubious. But it is not my concern). Well, if that is the condition, then they should have mentioned that on their website and also to which other countries this condition applies!
After this annoying experience, I decided to order at Dick Blick. I made sure that I called them first to confirm that they do ship to NL. And yay, they do. Now I am waiting for them to contact me about the shipping cost and to get my approval, then the products are on their way. Hopefully they do that soon and that the process will go smoothly.
1 Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
What a frustrating, outrageous situation!
I had to comment on that here, but also to say that your drawings are wonderful!
I love the colors and style.
And I’ve ordered a lot from Dick Blick and was always satisfied.
Comment by Nita — July 21, 2005 @ 4:43 am