I was online sometime ago and search of some new furniture for a new home that my wife and I just purchased. I happened onto the Directbuy website and filled out the information. I was contacted a day or so later by a sales representative, who made arrangements to attend their open house. We did attend, and I can tell you that you can feel something is not right. The spokesperson gave several examples of what appeared to be best case scenarios with highly discounted consumer electronics, furniture, and other items. There were comparisons directed related to major club wholesale chains. Although many of thier examples are highly attractive, thats all they are. They are presented in a way to draw you in. Admittedly we joined the membership, we fell for the initial scam, wrote a check for 2500.00, with the rest of the total of 6000.00 to be financed. After we were given our contract and other brochures and the like to take home. After we signed up we were allowed to walk around and view thier catalogs, Directbuy is tiered by a star system. 1 star being value, 4-5 stars being high quality products. I went directly to thier electronics in particular big screens, since I had shopped these extensively I knew where the pricing was at. I went directly to a 1 star catalog in which I found many models that I had shopped and oddly enough these models were NOT any cheaper at Directbuy.in fact you would find a better deal and better models at Major retail electronics chains via thier outlet stores, or sale priced items. Another thing that I found odd was that this 1 star manufacture was actually one of the better manufactures of big screen in terms of quality and picture, again I have researched big screens for the last 6 months. When I questioned the pricing, I was told that electronics is not where I would see my biggest savings, that furniture and other items would net the biggest savings. I also went through thier value catalogs for furniture and found that several retailers/wholesale outlets offered the same if not better pricing on things that I was looking for.
When we got home that evening, we quickly changed our minds. I read the contract and we were given three days to back out. My wife called and put a stop payment on the check the very next morning at 8 AM. I sent an email to thier customer service, and also took back the contract. When the wife dropped off the contract she was told it would take 10 days to get our refund. I immediately called Directbuy and questioned why they would state refund when we wrote a check, and we barely left that check 12 hours before? They claimed that they thought we had used a credit card, then quickly said well we ran your check through our machine last night, we got our money. I then told them nothing cleared my bank and I put a stop payment on the check this AM. She then said hold on a sec, let me check to see if they took the deposits to the bank. She came back and said we will refund you if the check clears, then hung up. 3 days later Directbuy attempted to cash our check, because of the stop payment there were not able to get our money. We consider ourselves fortunate to get out of what have been the worst financial mistake we have made in the last 10 years. Directbuy is a scam, its not geared for the everyday consumer.
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