I'm a frequent online buyer and I have never come across a company with such poor customer service. First of all, don't even bother to email them - they simply never respond. I attempted to purchase a sony LCD tv and used usawholesaleclub because they had an unbeatable price.
I placed the order on Tuesday 11/20 and received a confirmation email of the order but there was no shipping info. I tried calling for days, calling each of the 3 DIFFERENT 800 #'s listed on their website and in the email, as well as a local # (212 area code). There was no answer at any of the numbers, except the 212 #, which was answered by someone who could hardly speak english. She answered the phone stating the business was "LCD Plasma sales dot com" and when I inquired about an order I purchased through "usawholeclub.com" she told me I had the wrong number and hung up.
Now granted, it was a holiday week (Thanksgiving was on 11/22), so I tried again on Monday 11/26 and finally an automated message answered the phone and I selected "shipping" and spoke to a real live person. After I provided my order # and sat on hold for a few minutes, the man told me that my TV was not in stock and was being shipped from sony. I inquired about the time frame and the best he could tell me was "about a week" for it to get to them from sony and then "7-10 days" to reach me after that.
So I waited until 11/29 (9 days after order was placed) and called again to find out the status of my tv. This time I spoke to a different person in shipping and all he could tell me was that the tv wasn't there yet and he had no idea when it would be and, frankly, he didn't really care that I was upset that things were taking so long. I asked to speak to someone in customer service and he said, "What for? They will just tell you the same thing I did." He could not tell me where the tv was and refused to give an estimate on how long it would take to arrive.
Since I had already scheduled our cable guy to come out and upgrade us to digital cable on 12/8 (I figured a full 2.5 weeks after placing the order was sufficent as there was nothing on the website that suggested it would take more than 10-14 days), I then asked the guy if there was a chance it would arrive by then. Well, at least he had an answer for that - NO CHANCE.
Now, by this point, any normal person would've been able to sense my annoyance (even though I was civil). But, did he acknowledge my frustration? No. Did he apologize? No. Did he offer to find out more specific info? No. He did at one point say, "Alright?" and I said, "No, it's not alright, but what you're telling me is there is nothing I can do about that but wait for my tv to show up sometime in the next month and simply never order from this company again." To this he replied, "Right."
So, I hung up, thought about it for a few minutes and called back, this time selecting the "customer service" option. Strangely enough, the guy who answered sounded very much like the one I just spoke to, though it might've been just that they had the same accent. This conversation was short and sweet and simply consisted of me asking to cancel my order, which the guy did without any question or hesitation. He stated there would be no charges placed on my credit card and I rececived a confirmation email of the cancelled order.
Call me an inpatient, spoiled American for expecting a modicum of civility and helpfulness from a business. Heck, it is called customer "SERVICE" afterall. Is it too much to expect a business that just accepted a $1500 order to answer some emails? How about just answering the phone? Save yourself the degradation and skip ordering from this company, no matter how good the price is!
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