Ordinarily, I wouldn't bother posting
about some random online business in my blog, no matter how terrible
they were, but I just finished a PhD, so I have a lot of time on my
hands, and I've run into this total wreck of a website that's hanging
on to $320 of my money. It turns out they have a D- rating with the state Better Business Bureau. So I'm going the whole route, with a boring
SEO-ed title and everything:
For a bit over a year, I've been
worrying that I'm going blind in my right eye. I've been nearsighted
all my life, but, like, actually going blind. The prescription
definitely needed to be raised -- I can't read road signs with that
eye anymore at all -- but I swear, I kept seeing this blurry patch
when I tried to read things up close, too. I finally got a vision
exam a couple weeks ago, and it turned out that my retina was not, as
I feared, decaying or detaching right inside my eye, but that the
prescription had just gotten so much worse in that one that they
couldn't focus together. I'll get vision insurance starting March 1,
but it's one of these plans where you can only select certain frames,
which doesn't do a picky person like me a lot of good. I found some
frames I loved online, found them at a good price, and ordered.
The next day, I got this email from
"Becky S.":
Dear [me]
I am very very sorry for the delay in
your order. Let me explain what happened.
The item was in stock with a Store
Quantity of 1. Prior to each shipment my team checks each and every
frame to make sure they 100% perfect with no issues or problems.
The item you purchased had contained a
small crack on the frame and I was not comfortable in sending you
this item as it was.
What I did was send the item back to
the Company for a replacement and to order a new one.
We only sell 100% brand new authentic
designer items that are pretty pricey and we must adhere to a high
level of perfection.
I got a phone call later in the day to
inform us that this item is DISCONTINUED.
I did also send out NETWORK ALERT
message to 35 optical stores in my network to see if anyone has this
item.
Please be patient and I will get back
to you within 48 hours to inform you if anyone has this item.
What response and let us know what you
want to do about this situation?
Maybe you want to select an entirely
different frame??
I have noted your account and have
issued you a 15% OFF your next order for this problem.
The 15% is fully transferable to any of
your family friends, coworkers or anyone you know.
You may use this discount on our
website.
Your discount code is : OPTICS-DISC1849
Once again I am very sorry for this
dissapointment
I know what it feels like to wait for
something you really want.
Call us if you have any Questions
Bummer. I replied,
Hi there, and thanks for letting me
know. I definitely want this frame -- I looked for it in that
particular color at several sites online and ordered at opticsfast
because you had the best price. If you can't find it anywhere, I'd
like a refund so I can order it elsewhere. Let me know what you find
out from your stores! Hopefully one will have the frame and I can
get it from you. :)
The offer of finding my frames
elsewhere evaporated quickly. She wrote back,
I already have your lenses so let me
refund you on the frame and then just use the shipping address on
your order from somewhere else to ship to me ok?
Nope. Not ok. I said so --
The lenses aren't much good to me
unless I have frames for them. Anywhere else I'm looking at ordering
will want to sell me lenses and frames as a package, so I won't be
able to use those.
She then said,
The lenses are UNCUT so they can be
used for any other frame of your choice
Any company will sell you glases
without lenses.
Seriously? (And I don't just mean the
typos, misspellings, and missing punctuation.)
I'd then have to find someone to cut
them to fit. I want to get lenses and frames, together, so I'm not
running around or mailing things all over the place. The whole point
of ordering online is that it's easier, after all. If you can't get
the frames within your stated period of 48 hours, and don't process
my refund, I will have my bank charge the full amount back to you.
Explaining that was more effort than
they deserved, but that's the teacher in me.
Why cant you order them online and put
my shipping address if you are so sure that they exist?
I am telling you they are gone forever
not made anymore nobody has them.
Can we just agree on the other color or
style? I don’t want to loose money on the lenses they are your
custom RX
Ah yes, because I now trust this
company so much I'm going to have frames sent to them from someone
else, and expect that they'll put in the lenses and send me my
glasses in a reasonable time frame and without further hitches. Also
because it's totally a customer's role to handle a bunch of B2B
logistics to make a personal purchase online. And because how much
money they make or "loose" is a big concern of mine.
Right.
Her again, before I had replied to that
fully bullshit proposition:
Please help me
What.
Help *you*???? I'm the customer here.
That you got faulty stock from the company isn't my problem. Your
desire to make money and not lose it isn't my problem. Getting the
glasses I want with minimal hassle is my only concern. If you can't
do that, sorry, but I don't want to do business with you.
She claims in response,
I am asking you to choose an alternate
style I will give you a more expensive frame
or just have the item you find shipped
to my facility. I did this and I caused this mess
I will end up loosing my job over this.
If I'd believed that at this point (I
didn't), I would have relinquished that notion as soon as I Googled
these people. It turns out that they have one- to two-star ratings
on every review site that mentions them, but for one that takes down
negative reviews immediately at business' requests. How I found that
out, we'll see shortly. In any case, "Becky S." is
mentioned by name in all sorts of stories -- shipping people the
wrong items and then charging a restocking fee (which isn't
publicized clearly on their website), offering discounts like the one
she offered me and then not letting customers apply them to frames
they want, being sarcastic when customers tried to work out problems
just like this, and so on. I doubt she's in any danger of losing (or
loosing) her job, in any case, since this appears to be her and the
company's standard MO. I bet she had a lot of grandparents die
suddenly while she was in school, too.
Again, being clearer and more
communicative than these people deserve, I wrote back,
I'm contacting my bank to get the money
charged back since you've refused to honor my request for a refund.
I have no desire to deal with you or your company further, on these
frames or any. This is not a professional way to handle problems
with an order, and I don't trust you or opticsfast to refund me the
money on your own.
By this point, anyone would have said,
ok, fine, full refund, here's when it will be processed. Anyone with
a tiny bit of sense, let alone desire to succeed as a business,
anyway. I thought "Becky S." must at least have fit those
categories, because she first replied, simply,
Ok
but 23 minutes later, she wrote me
again, saying,
What we have decided to do is to refund
you the frame and send the lenses separate
the line items on the invoice allow
that these are 2 separate charges hence we can ship the lenses UNCUT
of course
To cut lenses into a frame is very easy
every lab does it and you can of course bring your own lenses when
doing a job
Really? You're really trying this?
This is a behavior reported in reviews of this business online --
sending people items they don't want, and then, because they've
provided goods, the person can't get their money back via credit card
company or bank. Workable scam, although I can think of a lot
pleasanter ways to spend a Friday afternoon that would give you at
least as much money, like selling plasma. (If you've sold plasma,
you know just how unpleasant an experience that is.)
I respond,
I already told you that's not
acceptable. I am 100% convinced you're doing nothing but trying to
scam me out of money for lenses I don't want, and I would be
surprised if you ever had those frames in the first place. If you
send me anything, you'll get the package back unopened. My bank's
going to dispute the charge the minute it posts fully to my account
and I'm so irritated with you that I'll probably use all my bored
minutes at work to post this story to review sites all over the
internet.
"Becky S." goes for another
round --
I am not trying to scam you at all here
are your lenses [she attached a photo of a lens and packaging
material sitting on a desk]
I am very sorry that you think we are
against you, they are not popular lenses that I bought for no reason.
I am trying to resolve this issue but
you are not allowing me to resolve it
No, what I'm not allowing you to do is
to try to force goods on me that I don't want and can't use. HTH.
This morning, while waiting for some
laundry to go through, I did, in fact, go post reviews of
Opticsfast.com to a few sites. One of them, TrustPilot.com, notifies
businesses when they get a new review; "Becky S." leapt at
the chance to get the one I wrote taken down, and if you go look them
up there, you'll see that the only reviews that haven't been disputed
by the company are positive (I'm not linking because I don't think
Opticsfast deserves even the infinitesimal search engine boost).
Other review sites have piles of negative, in many cases outraged
reviews for these people.
She emailed me to tell me she'd had the
review taken down --
I went ahead and cleared out the review
you left I hope you don’t mind this is not fair of what you wrote
as its clearly not what happened.
It was, of course, entirely accurate.
I immediately forwarded the entire email chain to TrustPilot.com so
they can see that; they may reinstate it, I don't know. There are a
few others out there, anyway, with the same content, verbatim. I
hope "Becky S." doesn't mind! Since refusing to refund
someone's money when you can't give them what they ordered off your
website is, you know, not fair.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to find these
frames elsewhere, and, now that I'm gunshy, emailing places to ask if
they can verify that they have a pair on hand in good condition and
in the color I want. I initially found them at Coolframes.com, from
whom I've ordered before, happily, but they're over $100 more
expensive there. I'm toward the end of a paycheck, too, so I'll have
to wait until Wednesday (payday) to order from someone else, anyway,
because now I only have $200 in my bank account. The $320 I spent
came from my parents -- I don't yet have money of my own to do things
like be able to see well.
"Becky S." also sent me
another new review, one of the very few she hasn't had TrustPilot.com
pull, which is heavily ESL, possibly machine-translated, but
positive. Because I care that someone else didn't get screwed over by
these people, I guess? Oh, wait, they still have my money, so all
that means is that they're capable of not screwing people over,
occasionally, but are still opting to do so to me. I care about that
to the degree that it makes me even more dissatisfied with them. She
accompanied her forward by beating her thoroughly dead horse:
People post good reviews see? this one
I got right after yours.
I am not sure why you are so mad at me
trying to make things right.
Where will I sell your
Single Vision RS=-4.00 RC=-1.00 RA=20
LS=-3.25 LC=-1.25 LA=172 PD=61 LM=Sun-Sensitive Lens (Grey)
This is an expensive lense. You are
going to buy it anywhere at the next location so why not already have
it in your possession
and ask me for a discount on it?
It's a $100 pair of lenses, which she's
now offering to me at a supposed but unspecified discount. (Incidentally: what is this, a street market in Mexico? Are we haggling? No. We are not. Grotesque behavior.) As
prescription lenses go, that's crap! It's the cheapest
transition-style one offered, not super high-index plastic, no UV projection, no anti-scratch or
anti-glare coatings, nothing. Me and my barely-grown-up-type income
aren't into high-end anything. Come the fuck on.
Primarily because it's my money and I
choose to give it to businesses that have their acts together, and
not to people who are either rampantly incompetent or rampantly
dishonest, or both. Secondarily because I have no confidence that
you'd even be selling me the right lenses, or that the prescription
would be done correctly, because you appear to be either rampantly
incompetent or rampantly dishonest, or both. And thirdly because I
don't want to get lenses from you and send them to someone else to
put into frames, or to get lenses from you, frames from someone else,
and then have to find some local optician to put them together. This
is the *best* you can offer me for my money. No thanks.
I already explained all this to you,
but since apparently you aren't adequately capable of or interested
in responding to customers' problems, I'm repeating myself for your
benefit. You're very welcome.
And the internet is full of negative
reviews of Opticsfast.com, many mentioning you personally. If I'd
taken thirty seconds to google you, I would never have ordered from
you in the first place. You have a one- or two-star rating on every
review site that won't bend over and remove anything you ask them to
take off.
You can refund my full purchase price,
or you can get it charged back to you by my bank. Unless and until
you do refund all my money, this will be the last time I bother to
communicate with you.
This, too, was more effort than she or
the company (using the term loosely) deserve, but this isn't me being
a teacher; it's me being volubly irritated. "Becky S."
still thinks she's in a position to bargain, though --
Will you remove your review and I
refund you in full to undo whate each have done?
Highly unlikely.
As evidenced by this post.
I'm done dealing with these people; my
bank can fight it from here. Or I may try the Better Business Bureau, since we're both in NY state. If you come across this post looking
for reviews of Opticsfast.com, consider this a massive warning.
There's a good chance they'll take your money, not provide what you
ordered, lie to you, offer you fake discount codes, be dismissive of
your position, refuse to refund your money when you ask (I still have
nothing from them showing that they're actually refunding anything,
even just the frames price), be peevish the entire time -- and still
try to get you to do business with them. Stay very, very, very far
away and keep your friends from ordering from these losers. The
economy is chock full of people who are willing to do a good job for
you -- be smart, find out whom you can trust, and buy from any one of
them instead.
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