Computer Support and General Information

I do not plan to get into a habit of using this blog as a soapbox to complain about poor customer service. However, if I can help save someone else the misery of dealing with a company that lacks common courtesy and basic customer service skills, I will do just that. One such company has crossed my radar and they have decided that negative attention is good for them. How unfortunate for them.

Here is a basic rundown of what occurred and with whom:

I needed a stand for a 45″ LCD TV that I acquired from a good friend. He did not have the stand so I needed to purchase one. Since the TV is more than three years out of production, I was only able to find the part at one place online. That company is PartStore.com. I bought the stand for just over $130 and when I received it all I got was one piece. The TV stand was in the box but no mounting brackets or screws were included. When I contacted the company to explain this, they said that all those extra parts are sold separately. Not once did they inform me of this during my purchasing process. The person I spoke to checked on the additional parts and found that they no longer sell the brackets which is absolutely required to make the stand work. So not only are they not very informative and they lack communication skills, but they are selling something that nobody can use. I had them process a return and they sent me a shipping label to return the useless stand. I shipped it back and they received it in a matter of days. When I called them to check on how soon I would get my refund, I was told it would take two weeks for the refund to be processed. This apparently because they had to inspect the returned product. What type of inspection takes two weeks when they had a single part to look at? There were no screws, additional pieces, or anything. It was one solid piece and that was it. Open the box and take a look at it, inspection over. This did not make me happy, obviously, but they did not care. They offered no other options other than to wait. So now not only are they selling parts that nobody can use but they will keep your money for nearly a month (from the time it took to ship the item to when it was returned plus two weeks). It is funny that they withdrew the money from my account right away but now I must wait to get it back even though they have the part back as well.

This company should be ashamed to be doing business like this. Not only did they show they have no communication skills but they also lack the interest in making sure all customers are satisfied. Their motto should be “take it or leave it” because that is exactly how they treated me and probably countless others. I will never do business with this company again and I highly encourage you to follow the same practice. Even if they are the only place that sells a specific part, there are other options available (as I found out) to still use the product you were intending to use. Since PartStore.com does not care about their customers, I am making sure that any future prospective customers know this ahead of time. Buyer beware!

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Mark Blair
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/iammarkblair

Update as of December 22, 2009:

I contacted PartStore today and I was told it might take an additional two weeks to get my refund. This on top of the two weeks I have already waited and also the previous time it took to receive the unusable TV stand. I was not happy with the previous wait but this is going too far. Unfortunately I had very few options for getting a refund outside of dealing with this vendor. Instead of trying to deal with the Customer Service department, I started searching for names and numbers of other more important people. I found that information and after trying to call those people and eventually e-mailing them, I have now been issued a refund. It will take between 24-48 hours for the money to show up in my bank account but I fully expect that will happen. I do appreciate the quick action that was taken by the individuals I contacted today. It should have never gotten to this stage and communication from every level from the purchase to the refund stage should have gone smoother. If a policy exists that states it takes time before a refund is processed I should have known that at the beginning. At this point the issue is resolved. Hopefully others will not need to go through a process like this to purchase something they need or to receive a refund when that merchandise does not work out. Good luck all!

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