I am writing because I have had a terrible experience shopping with this company. I will never use them again and I intend on telling everyone I know that this company operates on the principal that consumers are idiots and won't fight back.
I heard from a friend that she had found a place with a cheap download of Microsoft Office. I am a student and I thought that was amazing... At first.
I went to the website, sent my order in for "The Ultimate Steal", how right they were! I entered my information twice, which is odd for most web purchases. I began to think this was a strange company already. When I hit the confirm button for the second time which was supposed to send me to the download page, I got an error message I have never seen before! I have been on the internet a lot and I know a common error page when I see one. This was different. It had a nice animation... I wasn't sure what this meant, but I couldn't go back to the last page. There was no way for me to navigate through this problem. At this point, I was sure I would not be charged. Since I did not receive the product the transaction should have been cancelled. This is what would have happened at any other website, if it had bugged out in the middle of a transaction.
So, next day I check my email and have a congratulations! Order confirmed email from a rerouted email source. The kind you use when you don't want people to know you're actual email. I checked my bank account and yup, my anticipated fear was staring me right in my face! They had charged me anyways! I was angry, but I was willing to believe it had all been a terrible mistake on part of the internet. I found the tech support site and entered my order number, but I had never been asked to create a password. So that made no sense to me. It came back order doesn't exist. So I entered my correct email address and last 4 of my CC. I was brought to a tech support email so I sent one. There was no confirmation that it had been sent. So I sent it again, and I believe again. I was pretty pissed at this point. I couldn't find a phone # anywhere on the website.
I waited 4 days and received no new email from their tech support team. At this point I contacted my bank and told them what had happened. They were wonderful! I remembered usacomplaints.com and searched for Digital River. I discovered that they do in fact have a telephone number and so I just gave them a call, right now.
I wasn't going to write a report if they solved my problem. I waited on hold for 10 minutes, spoke to Chuck who was supposed to be from Refunds... I mean that's the number I pushed, so it logically stands that he is from the department I needed. Chuck transferred me to Customer Service, and from there I was so pissed off I didn't catch anyone's name. Lucky for that supervisor. I told him flat out that I wanted a refund. He said it is against their policy to give a refund. I stated to him, "even if you don't receive the product?" He said he would put in a "request" for a refund, but that it is against their policy to do so. He told me that one of the products I had ordered (the hard copy of the software) was out of stock. I told him, that if that had been the case, Customer service should have sent me an email to notify me. I told him I wanted nothing from his company but my refund and that I do not want to do business with a company that operates on such unethical principles.
Here's the deal with Digital River - they are an outsourcing company, a middle man, to business giants like Microsoft - their job is to generate sales on the internet for these companies and save these companies money. This is their statement at the bottom of their webpage. How do they do this? They cut corners on their webpages, use a faulty shopping cart, they have a strict policy of "no refunds", they may not have a technical support team or it is so small that they cannot get to all the emails, Customer service exists, but they are combative or scared. There customer service department does not represent the type of company image say, a company like Macy's, Staples, The Good Guys represent. It is clear from my experience and that of others, that this company can only exist if they operate in this manner. If they actually spent money on their website and employees they could not offer the Big Companies any sort of profit and then Digital River would be out of business. I would like to add though, it costs nothing to give great customer service. I have done business with smaller companies and bigger companies and this fact remains the same. I wonder how they treat their employees, that they would sound so frightened or be so combative? I could postulate that they deal with a lot of pissed off customers and now have become numb to it. They just don't care anymore. Those poor people.
Am xxxxxxx
Carmichael, California
U.S.A.
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