We are a spa dealership that was "courted" by a Joe from Choose Direct last spring. He did not contact us back though and our emails were responded to by Steve Barbarich. When we sold our first spa through this company in July we emailed Steve immediately and put the order in. His response phone call assured us that the spa would take 12 weeks to make and would be ready by the end of September. When we contacted him mid September to schedule the pick up, the run around started. Several weeks and excuses later, the spa was finally ready to be picked up the first week of December. At this point, the customer we had ordered it for was quite anxious to get his spa (even though it was two months late) and we were anxious to get it for him. We drove down to San Francisco to pick it up ourselves, it was packaged up in a bunch of cardboard and saran wrap. Granted, we should have unwrapped the spa and examined it thoroughly before we left the factory, but we trusted them to give us the right spa, and our customer was anxious to get it.
When we got to his home to drop it off and unwrapped it, it was the completely wrong spa, wrong everything. We immediately called the factory and have had the most unpleasant experience in dealing with them since. Features on this "wrong spa" have malfunctioned, leaked, and generally not worked. Since then, Mr. Barbarich has avoided our calls, emails, and requests to get the right tub to this customer - until we received an email today (1/27/10) which I will post verbatim below. He has instead had a "Lisa" contact us a couple of times and this person has also called our customer. That experience was very unsatisfactory. She told our customer they would do whatever they could to help then turned around and called us, stating she had never said such things, never spoke to our customer, and would not replace the spa with the correct one.
We finally spoke with a Michelle at Choose Direct who assured us she was handling the issue, that she herself had talked to our customer and settled on the following with them:
She promised that Choose Direct would ship out the replacement siding, steps, and cover in the color the customer had ordered. Also send a replacement control board and panel (the ones in this 'new' spa do not work), a new stereo with CD player (the one it came with does not work and has no CD player although they ordered one), two pop up speakers (their are markings on the tub where they should go but they were never installed), and the cover lift that was ordered and never received. The customer also is requesting a $1000 check for compensation for the aggravation they have experienced and for settling for this other spa with modifications.
We were also contacted by a Charles who was an outside technician who dealt with some of Choose Direct's numerous customer service issues, not the least of which was (surprise) poor quaility parts, delays in product delivery times, and orders not being filled correctly. We discovered that the majority of the tubs ordered through Choose Direct were not what was actually ordered and that it was a huge problem with this company. Charles was very professional and pleasant to talk to but his hands were tied by Steve Barbarich and Charles informed us (not surprisingly) that he was stepping down from helping Choose Direct and that a man named Shane would be taking over. We will share the two emails we received from this Shane today (1/27/10) in response to our request to get this issue resolved below as well. Our customer has already had to compromise by settling for a tub they did not order with modifications. It seems apparent that what the customer wants and what they order mean nothing to this company.
From Shane at Choose Direct on 1/27/10:
"Hello Michael, I am forwarding this e mail so they will know to send parts to you as soon as possible. Thank you Best regards Shane Wells."
Later in the day, after we responded with our appreciation, we got this from Shane:
"Hello Michael, Lisa will be handling your situation with the BBB, thank you for youor e mail and if you have any further questions please let me know. Thank you. Best regards Shane Wells."
Then we received this from Steve Barbarich:
"I personally did your order, and you didn't not order the custom Orion. You waited and waited, and then you ordered an in stock Orion II, which would arrive faster. You got exactly the spa you ordered, and we have a signed invoice to prove it. Yet you unfairly filed a complaint to BBB. You have lied to our customer, and are continuing lying to ourselves. We have researched your company and found that you have you have used the "bait and switch" with other customers. We are black balling you from doing any business with us in the future, and we will not be doing any business with you in the future do the gross negligence and dishonesty of your order. Please refrain from contacting our business about this complaint, or our service people. If you remove the unfair complaint, we will talk. I have ordered nobody at Choosedirect.com to speak with you further until your remove such an unfair complaint, including myself. Steve"
Great guy to work with - huh!? We never received an invoice that required a signature, everything was conducted over the phone and email, so anything that Steve claims to be signed is a forgery. "Black balled from doing business with him"? What business person would continue to or want to do business with him after the way his company has acted? Based on the other complaints we have read from other customers who have purchased from him, this is standard operating procedure. We want to see that our customer is compensated adequately and his wishes are met.
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