I am in the process of opening a new office location in Southern Louisiana and come across this company on line (csnofficefurniture.com). I review the website and find several items for the office and place about a $2000 order for the office of multiple items.
When placing the order all of the items say free shipping. I think to myself how convenient I can order these items online they'll bring them right to the door and I wont have to deal with going to the store and hauling it around. Well apparantly this is where I went wrong. On nearly all the items they are shipped "Truck Freight-Back of Truck". There is no definition of this term anywhere on my order it just says free shipping "Truck Freight-Back of Truck".
A couple days have gone by and I get an email saying my items have shipped and should be arriving within 3-5 days which is perfect. Very conveniently, a full day after these items have shipped I get an email from Erik Bush stating that these items are arriving "Truck Freight-Back of Truck" and that this means they will arrive by tractor trailer and that if I need a ramp or a service to unload the truck to contact them to arrange payment.
This is the scam. Your shipping is free as long as you don't need the items you ordered to actually get into your office. It's only free in the back of the truck. If you want it to get into your office you need to pay for that. Again shipping terms are on my receipt but an explanation of them is not. That comes AFTER they ship it via email.
Now the items have shipped and I can't get them without paying to unload them. So I advise them that this doesnt work for me and to go ahead and cancel the order. Well they can't cancel the order because they are just a middleman and I ordered the item that was shipped directly from the manufacturer so only I or the manufacturer can call the shipper. So I contact the shipper overnight/Ups freight and they are very helpful.
I speak to them about the shipment tell them of the situation. I inform them that the terms were not properly explained to me and verify what will happen upon delivery. They did confirm what CSN had just told me which was I would need to unload because these drivers just drove and did not unload. They also said that a truck and trailer would need to fit into the parking lot which in my case it would not (very small office complex) which means I would have to go to the terminal and pick it up anyway.
The most important thing they said was the people selling these items to you clearly knew the terms of the shipment when you ordered. Which by now I already had figured that out. They were purposely vague as to hide the real price of the product so I would order goods from them only to charge me more later.
Now its a matter of principle though and I cannot do business with a company that operates this way. So it appears I will pay for shipping on items that never would have made it to my office anyway as well as a 10% "restocking fee" so they can still make their money from the scam.
I guess since they are so unwilling to cooperate in trying to please this customer I will eat this money and post this to provide fair warning to anyone possibly thinking about purchasing something from their company especially if you think like any normal, rational person and think that the stuff you order will be delivered to your office, because if the terms say "Truck Freight-Back of Truck" I can assure you now it will not.
Now on a final note I have told them I will be posting this and I'm sure they will respond with some fancy comeback like "Our freight terms are clearly labeled and our policy is our policy" or something to that effect. Well I can assure you that is not the case and be very cautious before ordering.
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