Sloane Winston from TP Supply phoned my company and was directed to me. He told me that he had spoken with my general manager and mentioned him by his full name. Sloane said he had told my GM he was closing his doors in Nampa, Idaho, and relocating to Arizona. He said it would be cheaper to sell products out of the Nampa warehouse instead of moving them to Arizona. According to Sloane, my GM had given Sloane his blessing for me to purchase his office supplies.
Sloane mentioned all the supplies he had available for sale, by the gross. The prices were unbelievably cheap: hi-liters, pens, sticky notes, scotch tape, and paper clips. He even threw in a Rolodex Palm Pilot for free to thank us for our order.
A week or so later, we received six boxes of supplies, weighing a whopping 210 pounds. There was no invoice. And they were shipped from Arizona, not Idaho. We left the supplies in the box; I wanted to wait for the invoice to arrive.
When I finally received the invoice, about a month later, I practically fainted when I saw the cost and what a "bargain" I was getting. I noticed the statement at the bottom of the invoice that said RMA's for merchandise returns had to be authorized within 7 days of receipt of invoice.
I called their phone number and got voice mail. The message said to leave your name, number, company name and the invoice you're calling about, which I did. The first time I called, I did not say I needed to make a return.
The next morning I called a second time, as I did not have a return call yet. I decided to search for TP Supply on the Internet, and this website was actually the first site to appear in the search results. I can't tell you how appalled I was to see these reports; they are identical to what happened to us.
I called a third time, about two hours after the second call. I did say that I needed to make a return. I went back to these reports and read one that said they left a message that they would be keeping the products as a gift if a response was not received.
So ten minutes after I placed the third call, I placed the fourth call and said that if I did not have a call back by the end of business, I would be keeping the products as a gift.
I had a call back from Patricia within an hour. I found her to be defensive and argumentative with me, but I'm sure I fed her attitude as I was quite ticked. I told her I felt that they misrepresented themselves to me, that I don't believe they ever had a warehouse in Idaho, and that the shipment came from Arizona and not Idaho.
Patricia was offended that I questioned their integrity, and she stated that she didn't owe me any explanations. I demanded RMA labels, and she said she had them but she wasn't going to give them to me without an explanation as to why I wanted to return the product. My number one reason was misrepresentation, which did not seem to satisfy her.
Patricia offered to let me keep half the product for free and I refused. I again asked for the RMA. She told me she'd give me the RMA but that I'd have to pay for the shipping myself. I persisted in my unhappiness with their misrepresentation, and Patricia finally conceded to paying the shipping charges. She gave me the RMA number and told me she'd ship labels out to me that day.
I received the labels today, and the postmark indicated that she did put them in the mail when she said she would.
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