Last April I ordered double-paned vinyl windows from Wholesale Window Club, a company I found on the internet. During the ordering process, I communicated frequently with Dan Thompsen, their sales rep. He was very helpful and made sure I was ordering exactly what I needed.
My Visa was charged for the whole amount ($2100) at the time of the order; as Dan explained, these were to be custom-made windows and had to be paid in full in advance. At one point, Dan even charged back my Visa for a small amount of overpayment I had made.
The windows were promised to arrive 6 weeks later, approximately mid-May. That's when the problems started. I wrote Dan every few weeks from that point, asking for the status of my order. He replied to every email, asking for my patience, explaining that the manufacturer was behind in the orders and my windows should be received in a few more weeks.
By August, I was extremely frustrated at not having received my windows. I wrote Dan and asked him to cancel my order and send me a full refund. He replied after a week had passed, and said that it was not company policy to cancel orders (these were custom-made windows, after all) but they had decided to make an exception and issue me a refund (this was pretty funny to me—I had no windows and they had my money. Why wouldn't they issue a refund when they hadn't delivered a product?)
The refund was promised to be charged back to my account by Sept. 1. It did not happen. Emails from Dan said that the company was short of money but expected to have the funds in two weeks, and thanked me for my understanding and patience. These excuses went on into October. After that, my emails went unanswered and the website was no longer available on the internet.
I filed a grievance with my Visa company, but they will not investigate because it has been longer than 60 days since my account was charged. I have filed a complaint with the Chicago Better Business Bureau, also.
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