Buy.com
"Budget Shipping" caused product to come too late to return Aliso Viejo Internet

I purchased a USB flash disk from one of their 'weekly deals' emails. I was pleased with the capacity for the price. I had purchased from Buy.com once before with no problems. I had read and been concerned about the strictness of their return policy before buying the first product (a much more expensive DVD set), but I do not recall the 14 day limit, only that you had to keep all packing materials.

I ordered the USB Friday 12/18/07 and it was supposedly shipped Saturday the 19th. When it hadn't come by about a week later (I don't recall the DVDs taking very long to arrive), I went to the Buy.com site to try to track it. I found that very difficult and cumbersome. There were very few updates. It had been transferred to the USPS. I had no idea when or even if it would come. Since I didn't know what type of packaging it would come in, I didn't know if such a small item may have been lost or destroyed somewhere along the way (it turns out to have come in a large padded envelope, it couldn't have been 'lost').

I emailed Buy.com through their site on Wednesday 1/9/08 and received a very stock, completely impersonal response the next day, indicating to me that no one had read it at all. It was basically a rehashing of what Id already been trying to do on the site to track my purchase, very insulting. I clicked that the email was *not* helpful, hoping, even expecting, that my displeasure would be registered somewhere, but all that link led me to was basically a, 'sorry, too bad' page.
It finally arrived Monday 1/14/08 (the day the person for whom it had been purchased as a gift was going home), 10 business days after shipment (one more than promised on the site), and 16 days after shipment, 2 more than allowed for returning.

None of this would have mattered, if it hadn't been for my astute fianc, the intended recipient, who noticed the specs on the back of the package, which lists (though it is compatible with Windows Vista) that it is only compatible with Windows XP SP1. Both of us have SP2. I went back and checked and no, this information was not on the page for the item. If it had been, we never would have ordered it. I went to the site to get a number to be able to return it, and saw in bold red letters that it could not be returned. At first, I thought this was due to it being the weekly deal (like a sale where all sales are final, and if that had been the case, I never would have ordered it in the first place), but I found it was because of the number of days since it had been shipped.

I emailed them, telling them that I had only just received the item, and that it was incompatible with my system. Again, I received a stock email back telling me that they would not be refunding my money. It was so quick to arrive (literally within minutes), theres no way a human could have read it. Im just glad I didnt bother counting the *characters* in my message (theres a limit of 2,000), I just typed and sent it.

Bottom line, Im stuck with this thing. Im never buying from this site again.

Company: Buy.com
Country: USA
State: Nationwide
Site: buy.com

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