Horrible Business Policy posted by Brian @ 4:24 PM

About three weeks ago I purchased some Terk wireless A/V transmitter/receivers on ebay from eSellingConsultants. Yesterday I emailed the company because I hadn't received anything. Not an email saying they've shipped, not the product, nothing. Three weeks!

This is the email I received in reply:

The manufacturers distributor has let us know their will be a brief delay on this item as they ran out of stock. It is a very popular item and If your order is time sensitive we understand and are willing to refund your order in full. If you want us to refund it please let us know by replying to this email for the instructions.

As stated in our feedback policy please keep in mind feedback left for us equals relative feedback left for you.

We value your business. Thank you for shopping with eSellingConsultants.

Notice the feedback comment. I'll come back to that later.

Obviously they knew the item was out of stock when I ordered it, yet they never contacted me to tell me. So I reply to them asking what a "brief delay" meant. 3 days? 3 weeks? I get this response:

Well 95% of our backorders have historically been filled within 10 business days.

This is a non-answer. He might as well have told me that the US government typically charges income tax. At this point I decide to cancel, get my money back, and purchase the product elsewhere. I reply back saying, "Cancel the order."

Our Office Manager handles all the refunds on the payments from all online marketplaces and he is usually about 5 business days behind when we send him a refund request, HOWEVER if you can leave us positive feedback immediately such as something gentile like "Offered me a full refund when the product was out of stock, thanks!" I will personally see to it and have it refunded immediately for you. And of course we will leave a positive feedback for you as well.

Please let us know when you have left the feedback and have a great day,

This is a big red flag. He is basically saying, "Give me positive feedback or I will delay your refund as long as possible. I'll also give you negative feedback if you give me negative feedback." First of all, the only reason I would give someone positive feedback is if I was pleased with the transaction. Second of all, relative feedback is not how the system is supposed to work. Finally, I really don't care if these guy give me negative feedback. I don't make my living on eBay.

So, I reply offering to give no feedback since there was no transaction if they give me my refund immediately (which he just admitted he could do.)

Our team of Consultants has forwarded your request of refund to Office Manager. Please keep in mind it is usually 5+ business days.

If you change your mind and you want a immediate refund please leave positive feedback and let us know and then one of Consultants will have our Sales Manager override our Office Manager and issue the refund immediately.

As stated in our feedback policy please keep in mind feedback left for us equals relative feedback left for you.

We value your business. Thank you for shopping with eSellingConsultants.

At this point I'm a little confused as to how someone would think that this is a good way to do business. I send one more email to this guy and basically say that if I don't receive an immediate refund I will leave negative feedback on eBay and tell my story to everyone I know. There's a saying that if someone makes you happy you will tell 5 people about it, if they make you unhappy they will tell 100. This guy apparently doesn't understand that concept.

Anyhow, I would highly recommend staying away from this company. They have horrible customer service and more-or-less use extortion to get positive feedback. In addition they subscribe to the junior-high strategy of "I know you are but what am I" for feedback.

I for one will not play their game.


I even started a new blog and reposted this so our blog doesn't get run over by people from ebay. I put the URL in my feedback on eBay.

escsucks.blogspot.com

I think they messed with the wrong guy. Hehe!