Disappointed with gotvapes customer service

[RamblinREK]

This will be a long, thorough complaint. After seeing how some customers interact with them, it's obvious that suppliers, gotvapes included, are not always treated fairly on this forum. While customers who come to this sub forum never feel that they have been treated fairly, bad customer service is something everyone will experience, and treating a retailer the same way you think you've been treated is just asking for trouble. /soapbox. I have no personal grievances against those mentioned in this post, and will give them, as a company, what I think is the opposite of a trolling/flaming/ignorant complaint post; a detailed account of what happened from my perspective. This post is to share with the community my bad experience with gotvapes, in hopes that they use it to become better consumers. It is also to provide Daniel with an answer to a question he asked that I was unable to answer in my customer support ticket.

On November 19th I placed an order on gotvapes, totaling $40.93. To the best of my recollection the order was placed sometime between 6 and 10 p.m., and included a Vision Stardust Clearomizer & Vision Mini eGo battery kit, a Kanger T2 coil head, and a Drip Tip.

I want to say quickly that this post is NOT about the products that I ordered. Prior to placing this order, I already owned the Vision Stardust & Battery Kit from gotvapes, was not impressed with the clearomizer, and am still using the battery as a reliable backup. Overall, not a terrible quality product. Back to the order;

Not long after placing the order, I decided that I was not impressed enough with the clearomizer to drop another $33 on it. Without the sugarcoating, it was an impulse buy, it was irresponsible as a customer, and it can/will cost the retailer money. I opened a gotvapes customer service ticket at 22:49:38 (10:49) in hopes of catching them before the order was shipped, or maybe even packed. The conversation went as follows (this will be directly copy and pasted, with no editing on my part, apart from some interjections made for the purpose of this post which will be *marked each time with two asterisks, and bold font, like this*;







*After reading this, I thought I must have mistakenly copy & pasted the wrong order #, and chalked it up to a loss on my part for being careless. Two days later, I read this message again while looking through my email, and realized that regardless of any mistake I had made, I did not appreciate being treated in what I feel was a condescending manner by a customer service representative. I felt it at least warranted a response, if only to show Max that I did not receive an order, use it for 5 days, and think "I should cancel this order!" I also decided that I was going to return my order. I didn't like the tone set by this rep in his first response to me, wanted to get as much of my money back as possible, find a new retailer to do business with, and move on.*


*Max now realizes that he made a mistake, and apologized (for asking what he did, mind you, not the way in which he asked it). I want to make it clear that my issue is not the fact that the mistake was made, but with how it was handled. Before I even opened the ticket I was most likely not going return the item if I couldn't reach gotvapes before it was sent out, as evident by the two day period that I did not respond to Max's initial message.
Here is the return policy that gotvapes has listed on their website
Shipping & Returns
GotVapes™ Shipping & Returns
· All orders received by 3:30PM EST will have a goal to ship that day, this is not a guarantee but a goal.
· We provide first class and flat rate priority shipping.
· All orders over $67.00 receive FREE First Class Shipping (calculated after your 5% Newsletter VIP discount or other discounts, if you qualify). Otherwise you will have the option of choosing Reduced flat rate Priority shipping for $2.50.
· Returns accepted on cartomizers ONLY if DOA (the atomizer doesn't fire) and we are notified within 24 hours of the receipt of your package. Battery kits are warrantied for 7 days. This is strictly enforced.
· Please use our ticket system at GotVapes Help Center and Knowledge Base if you have any customer service issues.
· CUSTOMER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR RETURN SHIPPING on all RMA requests.
Notified gotvapes within 24 hours. I notified them before my 24 hour clock started ticking (assuming it starts upon the packages delivery), so, check. The main item that I wanted to return was a battery kit, check. None of the other small items I ordered are addressed here, and I seem to be clear to return another item, so I don't think it will be a problem to credit me for the two small ones, so, uh…check?

*Everything seems to be back under control, and it looks to me like I can return the package, get some money back, and be done with it. Max even apologized for his lashing out, and I didn’t even make a comment like I had in my second message to him. The next few are pretty boring, but I feel obligated to include them so as not to compromise the integrity of my copy & pasting skills.*

*This was the final message of the ticket which was closed after it was sent. My account has been denied access to gotvapes, even after Daniel warned me to "be careful when ordering from us (them) in the future". This message, the first message from Max, and the message in which Max informed me of the removal of my gotvapes buying privileges are the three that I have the biggest issues with. I’ve given most of my thoughts on the latter two, which only leaves Daniels message. One problem I have with his message is that I am for the second time thus far questioned about my motives.*

Daniel, since the ticket was closed before I could respond, my answer to your question is this;

My original intent was to stop the package from being packed or shipped, which would have made this entire exchange unnecessary. Your customer service rep incorrectly and rudely asserted that I wanted to cancel a previous order that was already paid for, and delivered. If this mistake had not been made, whether it be the fault of your companies personnel, your servers, or something else entirely, the rest of this exchange could have again been avoided. After reading and being insulted by Max’s message I decided to return the items, as is my right under your own policies which are clearly listed on your website. I was fully willing to incur the return shipping cost, any restocking fees you deemed necessary, hell if you had simply explained the difficulties that returning the smaller items would cause, I would have paid for you to ship them back to me. Unbeknownst to me, "Daniel will take care of it" meant in this case that you would reluctantly return my items, after sending me a message informing me of what I'd done wrong as a customer, and how negatively it impacts you. I would certainly encourage that in the future you "make (things like) this more clear on the site", and reinforce these policies to your representatives.
Unfortunately, I found that my experience with gotvapes left much to be desired. Between your unprofessional disposition, and your unwillingness to communicate an effective solution to the issue, I think that you have a long road ahead of you as a company. I hope you find a way to travel that road that omits the trial and error strategy that seems to be in practice now. I also wish the best to your future customers, and hope that their experience far exceeds that of my own.

-Ryan

I've just been told that posting PM's is against the forum rules, and I should edit my post to paraphrase them. Honestly, after searching around the forums for a while I found many PM's being posted, and I didn't think I had to worry about it. Either way, I don't have time to fully paraphrase the messages right now, and I think removing the PM's would take away from my post anyway. Mods, sorry if I broke rules, please edit or delete this at your discretion.
Also, I'm surprised that or if this rule extends into this forum. I don't know any businesses that has the convince of keeping their customer relations private. I think that the above messages are a reflection on gotvapes as a whole, and other potential or current customers have a right to see how they operate. I couldn't find the above messages referred to as PM's or private by gotvapes in anyway, and did not consider them as such when I made this thread.

 

[spaky]

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/ecf-forum-rules/51178-forum-rules.html

10. Communications considered private
Posting the content of PMs or personal emails on the forum is not allowed. All PMs and emails are deemed to be confidential and cannot be made public except with the prior written consent of the author.

 

[RamblinREK]

Thanks for the edit spaky, I'll come back hopefully tonight and edit in a summary of the deleted part. And sorry, didn't look at the overall forum rules specifically for this, just checked some of the stickies in this sub forum.

 

[badkolo]

while you like to ramble on , my repsonce will be short. the above is not a reflection on a whole on us but on you.and you just seem to like to complain, the fact that you cant except rules and rather moan tells us what we need to know, you will be handled and then removed from our system. our service is exceptional and we go out of our way to handle customers, you seem out of line and your post confirms it for me.

 

[woody55]

Ryan, I did not reply to you in any bad way. I simply asked why you would want to cancel an order that was delivered to you 5 days earlier. You waited 2 days to reply and came back with a znippy remark and It went downhill from there. I apologized several different times. I was under the impression that everything was settled when the ticket was close.

 

[dannoman]

To be quite honest we can all get into a huge morass here over soemthing, that to be quite honest, is very small on the grand scheme of things. We all are very very busy and this essentially is a case where you wanted to cancel an order and we were not able to cancel it for you. We can't always cancel orders.

As far as our policy...NO...the 24 hour time period has to do with DOA cartomizers. You must notify us within 24 HOURS after receipt of a package if you have a faulty cartomizer. The policy has nothing to do with (A) receipt of an entire package that you have decided, for whatever reason, "Hey, um, I don't want this anymore." And also (B) Cancelling an order with 24 hours. NO, we do not have an open 24 hour period with which you can cancel an order. If you put in a cancellation request we will try our best to honor it if we can get to it in time, but if the credit card has been run and the package has already been packed and ready to go or even already out the door, we cannot cancel.

We of course cannot, as a regular policy, promote a customer coming into a store, buying up certain amounts of product and taking those items back simply because the customer decides they don't want it anymore. We are not WALMART. When you return a package for no apparent good reason and not because it is defective or something, you harm us:

1. When we originally run your credit card it costs us around 7-8 percent in credit card fees that we do not recover.
2. When you return the package it has to be inspected and then put back in stock. IN the case of eJuice we would not restock that but simply have to throw away.
3. We then have to issue you a credit - did you realize that we are charged the same percentage of fees on processing a credit? So...not only have you tied us up in customer support and NOW in this forum, you cost us about 16% of your original intended purchase. This is why some sites post that there is a 15-20% restockgn fee on anything returned.

For this reason you were removed from our system for future purchases. I had told you, "Sure send it back, even though it is against our policies, but because you have violated that policy we of course cannot continue to take orders from you."

 

[RamblinREK]

while you like to ramble on , my repsonce will be short. the above is not a reflection on a whole on us but on you.and you just seem to like to complain, the fact that you cant except rules and rather moan tells us what we need to know, you will be handled and then removed from our system. our service is exceptional and we go out of our way to handle customers, you seem out of line and your post confirms it for me.

I think the customer decides if service is exceptional. I have decided that it was not.

Ryan, I did not reply to you in any bad way. I simply asked why you would want to cancel an order that was delivered to you 5 days earlier. You waited 2 days to reply and came back with a znippy remark and It went downhill from there. I apologized several different times. I was under the impression that everything was settled when the ticket was close.

I do not think your first response was becoming of customer service. I think it was rude. I responded in kind.

To be quite honest we can all get into a huge morass here over soemthing, that to be quite honest, is very small on the grand scheme of things.

Not to me, and probably other customers.

We all are very very busy and this essentially is a case where you wanted to cancel an order and we were not able to cancel it for you. We can't always cancel orders.

Understood. "Before I even opened the ticket I was most likely not going return the item if I couldn't reach gotvapes before it was sent out". I decided to pursue the return after rude customer service.

As far as our policy...NO...the 24 hour time period has to do with DOA cartomizers. You must notify us within 24 HOURS after receipt of a package if you have a faulty cartomizer. The policy has nothing to do with receipt of an entire package that you have decided, for whatever reason, "Hey, um, I don't want this anymore."

We of course cannot, as a regular policy, promote a customer coming into a store, buying up certain amounts of product and taking those items back simply because the customer decides they don't want it anymore. We are not WALMART. When you return a package for no apparent good reason and not because it is defective or something, you harm us:

1. When we originally run your credit card it costs us around 7-8 percent in credit card fees that we do not recover.
2. When you return the package it has to be inspected and then put back in stock. IN the case of eJuice we would not restock that but simply have to throw away.
3. We then have to issue you a credit - did you realize that we are charged the same percentage of fees on processing a credit? So...not only have you tied us up in customer support and NOW in this forum, you cost us about 16% of your original intended purchase. This is why some sites post that there is a 15-20% restockgn fee on anything returned.

This is all information that could have resolved our situation before it started. I find this nowhere on the website, and was not told this in our tickets. I was told to send it back, to write a note telling what I wanted done, that you "would take care of it", and that I would not be removed from the store.

For this reason you were removed from our system for future purchases. I had told you, "Sure send it back, even though it is against our policies, but because you have violated that policy we of course cannot continue to take orders from you."

You did tell me to send it back even though it was against your policies. The only message I received about being removed from the store was Woodys, and he quickly reversed that. I don't know why you say that you told me you wouldn't be taking future orders from me. I've not seen a message like that, only the last message in our ticket in which you directly referenced my future purchases from your store. I am disappointed by your lack of communication. I do not necessarily want to dissuade customers from using gotvapes. I want them to read my experience and be wary, for sure, but mainly I'd like to bring these issues to your attention so that future customers do not have these problems.

 

[badkolo]

im telling you your removed from the store just in case they didnt, complain all you like, your out of line and now your not our problem any further, have a great new years

 

[RamblinREK]

im telling you your removed from the store just in case they didnt, complain all you like, your out of line and now your not our problem any further, have a great new years

This is all information that could have resolved our situation before it started. I find this nowhere on the website, and was not told this in our tickets. I was told to send it back, to write a note telling what I wanted done, that you (Daniel) "would take care of it", and that I would not be removed from the store.

Again, if I had read on your site, or been told in my ticket much of the information I've been given in this thread, I would have handled it much differently. I don't get off on costing small businesses money, and I would have avoided it, or at most asked if I could send back the items for a minor refund. This was an uncommon situation, and how those are handled is what sets good customer service apart from bad. Guess we'll chalk it up to a difference in opinion, because I consider this bad service.

Woody, after our initial confusions, you were nice and helpful. The tone of Daniels message being so different from how our conversation ended is really what made this into a forum complaint worthy topic to me. I apologize for ragging on you so hard in my first post.

Happy Holidays

 

[badkolo]

I understand and you could of been this understangning in the first place but things get heated and you had a sisue you wanted to avoid and i get that, we did try to help you out but in certain cases it can be out of our control no matter how hard we try., thats all we want to do is make customers happy and your case is more no difference so lets just toss it up to one of those things and all is good, things do happen but patience is the key, we have overhauled our system months ago to better serve you all and if you come to our forum or look around you will see we have done a bang up job at taking care of our customers in so many ways and bend over backwards in many cases, so your welcome to stop by and be part of the family, i dont think your a bad person or anything like that, this was just a issue that didnt work out and was difficult to meet your needs, but there was no reason to go on a massive complaint thread over this type of issue but again i understand, we want to help you out but as daniel explained it can be very daunting even with help. no worries and i accept your aplogies and i apologize as well. we can speak further in private about adding you back in.

 

[classwife]

closing this now