Tuesday, March 01, 2005

De other Skymail story

I don't know if things are like this with other skyboxes because this situation has never come up before.
I recently ordered a DVD from an online merchant. It was taking rather long to arrive so I thought that it perhaps got lost (like another DVD I had ordered) so I wrote to the merchant to ask about it. They said they would send another one. Before the date they said they would ship, I received the item so I emailed to tell them not to send the other DVD. They replied that the shipment could not be stopped at this point but to just mark "return to sender" on the box and all would be fine.
This would have worked well, had I been residing in the US! But of course, it's only my skybox that resides there, so I contacted them to explain the situation, that there was a package that they needed to refuse. The local dept referred me to the Miami dept without actually acting as a liaison (1st wrong thing) and I was told to send them an email. So I sent them an email explaining what I had previously explained to the local dept. They never replied. When I noticed a DVD clearing my account, I sent a reminder email about the package that I did not want delivered. Again no reply. (My mistake, I should have followed up) The first DVD to come after that turned out not to be one that I wanted returned so I got complacent and thought perhaps the package had been stopped after all....I was so wrong.
My next mistake was not thinking to inform my family who are normally at home that there was a DVD I wanted sent back. The DVD came and was opened. So now I am stuck with the DVD that I should have returned and I have to find a way to get it back to the merchant, at minimal cost to me.
I was of course disgusted that my emails had been apparently ignored so I called the local dept and attempted to find out what had happened. The CSRs were as unhelpful as ever so I finally asked to speak with the manager. I was told he was not in but that he could give me a call when he got in. I ended up being the one to call first. The manager listened to the situation and promised to look into it. He asked me to forward the emails I had sent to Miami which I did.
Eventually he got back to me to say that the people in Miami had received the email but they said they had no way to check all the packages to see whether one was the one that I wanted returned.
I countered with "they have to check the packages anyway to see if they are going to Trinidad or wherever, so there is no way it could be that difficult..." I seriously doubt the volume of packages could be so great that on a daily basis it would be so hard to look at the labels to do what I needed them to do.
The manager then agreed to refund me the shipping and customs. He said he needed to find out how that could be done and would call me back the following week.
It has been two/three weeks since he promised to call and I have yet to hear from him.

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