How do you deal with misbehaving mail order companies when they screw up your order then don't fix it? Do you rip them a new one or do you keep the two dozen tubes of hemorrhoid cream that they sent by mistake instead of the patchouli bath salts you ordered? What's the worst experience you've had after ordering by mail?

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

Answers

Well, actually I haven't had too many nightmares, and I'm even in the mail-order business. Somedays it seems that suppliers are even worse than some of the consumer places.

Once I had ordered a particular item, and while they sent what I ordered, the invoice had the wrong product code, and yes, the wrong price, which was about 10 times more than what I had ordered (and a lot of it). I didn't give them heck, but I was on the phone right away... and yes they honored my claim. I always assume one tiny mistake is an oversight. I know I have bad days.

Cashing a check after the order was cancelled, however... *ahem* I'd be yellin' a blue streak...

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

Damnit, Sasha, I thought that I told you not to tell anyone about the hemmerhoid cream...erm...I mean...

Yeah. I have shitty mail order stuff, too. I mail the order. Six weeks later I get a package that contains something that is nothing at all like what I ordered, but by that point, the check has already gone through and I'm so tired of fighting with the customer service freaks that I give up.

Yay for closet space.

-Meghan

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2000

I don't do much of the mail order thing for just that reason. However, because I work in a lab at the university, we have to do a lot of ordering of supplies over the phone. One particular company decided that they had no interest at all in helping me with my order, and as it was important equipment we needed for the lab I had no choice but to try to continue to deal with these freaks. I ended up having my boss give them a call because if I couldn't get anywhere in like three hours, then I wasn't going to get anywhere anyway. She started yelling at the operator guy over the phone and then she paused and then put the phone down on the cradle. He had hung up on her.

So much for customer service.

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2000

I once ordered a Nintendo 64 system for a co-worker from a company in California. I live in the Netherlands, and even with shipping and handling it was cheaper to get it there. This was right after the system was released. It took 3 weeks to get here. When it finally arrived all I got was... The box with the addresslabel on it. The parcel was sent tom me via UPS, and apparently somebody stole the contents, and shipped the box. So I called the company to tell what happened and it appeared this had happened several times. They agree to send a new one via another parcel service, which they did, it arrived about 5 weeks later. In perfect condition. Unfortunately the co-worker I had ordered the thing for had decided to abandon everything in his life and took off to Argentina... So here I (still) am, with a Nintendo 64 system which has NEVER ever been used... And he never paid me either.

-- Anonymous, April 14, 2000