I ordered something from Gadgets and Gizmos early on the morning of March 27. By late the next night, two full business days later, I’d received no shipping notification. I sent them the following email. I’ll let it and the subsequent exchange I had with them speak for itself:
To: support@shopgadgetsandgizmos.com
My order was placed two full business days ago.
This is the first time I’ve purchased something from you.
You are not exactly a major Internet retailer.
I’ve received no shipping notification.
Your order tracking page (http://www.shopgadgetsandgizmos.com/track.php) can’t find my order.
Your order tracking page has a typo in the header (“Tack” instead of “Track”), a pretty reliable sign of a fly-by-night operation.
I’m beginning to be a little nervous about you.
What’s the scoop?
Thank you,
Jonathan Kamens
From: support@shopgadgetsandgizmos.com
Sorry to disappoint you. Our Fly By Night Operation does quite well Thank you. We have 4 Stores in Major Mall in the Long Island Area as well as 2 internet sites that do quite well. Thanks for your concern. Anyway your order was placed on 3/27/12 at 7:00am and shipped to you on 3/27/12 at 12:20pm via www.usps.com with delivery confirmation # [elided] . You were notified of this by email. Maybe it went into your spam folder?
Sincerely
Sam
To: support@shopgadgetsandgizmos.com
Sorry to disappoint you. Our Fly By Night Operation does quite well Thank you. We have 4 Stores in Major Mall in the Long Island Area as well as 2 internet sites that do quite well. Thanks for your concern.
In case you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of crooks and liars running sham businesses on the internet. It is reasonable for a customer to be suspicious when there are red flags. It is not reasonable for a merchant to be rude in response.
I’m glad to hear that you “do quite well.” Now you’ll be doing it with one less potential future customer because of the rude way you’ve treated me.
Anyway your order was placed on 3/27/12 at 7:00am and shipped to you on 3/27/12 at 12:20pm via www.usps.com with delivery confirmation # [elided] .
Thank you for the information.
You were notified of this by email. Maybe it went into your spam folder?
Or maybe you never sent that email.
The difference between me and most of the customers you choose to treat flippantly is that I run my own mail server, which means I have full visibility into the mail server logs which show exactly which messages came into my server, regardless of whether they ended up in my spam folder. I checked my spam folder, and there’s no shipping notification from you or the USPS there. I checked the mail server logs, and there’s also no evidence there that one was ever sent.
So either you’re simply not telling me the truth about sending a shipment notification, or you entered my email address by hand at www.usps.com and typed it wrong.
Which you could have just acknowledged and apologized for, even if it was I who was actually wrong, and kept me as a customer, instead of pissing me off and driving me elsewhere in the future.
Just some food for thought.
Jonathan Kamens
From: support@shopgadgetsandgizmos.com
Thanks for you imput [sic]. It is so much appreciated. Hope you Thoroughly [sic] enjoy your [purchase]
Sincerely
Sam
i purchased a password lightning round game last week.but still have not received it and have not recieved a shipping number so that i can track the item.the order number is 374855.i would appreciate any help that you can give thank you very much in advance.
Did they fill your order properly and promptly?
Just a word to the wise: if your goal is to resolve the problem with your order, and not to abuse some stranger on the internet, it’s most effective to take a polite and professional tone, and to be as concise as possible:
“I placed order #nnnnn at hh:mm:ss on dd/mm/yy and to date have received no confirmation. Is everything in order?”
There might very well be *one* overworked person handling *all* the business at the website; approaching them as a fellow imperfect person who made a mistake is going to be as effective, and far kinder, than immediately accusing them of dishonesty. (and if they truly are trying to pull a scam, are you healing the world by helping them proofread their website?)
When communicating online, it is so very easy to forget that there are real live people on the other side of the screen.
Lest you think mine was an isolated experience, see: http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Shop_Gadgets_and_Gizmos, http://www.yelp.com/biz/gadgets-and-gizmos-inc-bay-shore, http://www.ripoffreport.com/miscellaneous-electronics/gadgets-and-gizmos/gadgets-and-gizmos-misreprese-108a2.htm, and most notably http://www.bbb.org/NYC/business-reviews/gift-shops/gadgets-and-gizmos-in-hicksville-ny-88387/ (an F rating from the BBB! I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen one of those before!).