On August 3rd, I ordered a pair of shoes from BellaScarpa.com. I'd never used their site before and I noticed that it was a bit amateurish-looking and quite poorly set up, but I could not find the shoes anywhere else and I was willing to give this small store the benefit of the doubt.
I received a very spartan email confirmation of my order, and was charged not 24 hours later, which is unusually fast for online retailers, at least in my experience. Normally, online sellers send some sort of email confirmation when products are shipped. After receiving no word on my order for a week, I decided to give them a call.
The main corporate number listed on their site didn't work, which made things even shadier. I called one of their stores and got a rather nice young lady on the other end. I asked her about my order and she checked up on it with some difficulty over the course of a couple of phone calls. She had trouble because their online ordering system was always down or broken, it seems. It turns out that they did not have the shoes I ordered in any of their stores. She apologized and told me that she would let her boss know that I needed a refund.
After a few business days and no sign of any refund, I called again. I got the same girl and she told me that it'd take 7 to 10 business days for the refund to go through, depending on my bank.
I waited patiently for the 10 days to pass. After that, I called a couple more times, always being told that they'd get me my refund when their online ordering system was working again.
The last time I called was today, the 2nd of September, nearly an entire month after I placed my order. I called again and, tired of being jerked around so much, asked if they could simply refund me through the store's register rather than through the online system. The girl called me back with word from her boss: I should just dispute the charges with my credit card company. After talking with my bank, I know exactly what happens when this is done: the bank pays off the customer to keep them happy, and the company basically gets off the hook. I told her as politely as I could that I knew what he meant and that I did not appreciate them trying to get away with stealing from me. The girl became flustered and basically told me that it wasn't in her job description to care, and she quickly got off the line.
At this point, I fully realized the futility of trying to get my money back from such a corrupt company. I just wanted to post this story here so that no one else makes the mistake of doing business with these people.
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