Online Purchases - good and bad experiences

[Mallacai]

I just had a good online experinence with Ribble.

Can read about ithttp://www.bicycles.net.au/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=21889&start=50

[queequeg]

I am curious to know if anyone has actually returned anything to them before (such as wrong product sent). Aust Post charges like a wounded bull for postage, so I would hate to think how much it costs to send 2 tyres back to the UK for an exchange.

I had to send an item back to the UK, I had ordered mismatched rack colours, black and stainless steel. It was $50 to send that back..... But then I looked at my Ortlieb large pouches and was about to install them on my pannier bags and I read the instructions Not suitable for panniers, oh well I now have 3 items worth $200 to send back. Posted it back for $73. Did lose some $$$, but our aussie dollar had weakened against the pound so I got a little bit more back

tried selling them localy?

Will most likely do just that regardless of whether I get free replacements, since I don't have any need for Marathon Plus MTB Tyres.

[Nobody]

CRC this time.

I ordered a fairly large order at the beginning of this month ~$500. Everything was in stock at the time of order. My credit card was billed, then on the weekend I noticed they have refunded all the money. Sent them an e-mail to see what is going on, on Monday. No answer. Sent another e-mail tonight. I'm now concerned I may be waiting for months for one single item to come in which is holding up about 26 other items! It looks like I ordered 2 of one item and got the last one so the other one is out of stock.

I'm going to have to call them after I call my telephone company to get the international bar off my phone. Either that or be very patient. Too bad I ordered for a friend as well...

An update on this.

After sending about 5 e-mails over days and with very limited success, I decided to call. After waiting in a queue for more than half an hour, I got is sorted out quite quickly. So as it has been said before, don't bother with e-mails, pick up the phone if you want it fixed fast. Now to see what I end up getting...

[clarinetcola]

good luck and hope everything turns out fine and you'll get all your goodies. I've been there once and ended up ordering the same stuff elsewhere 6 weeks later.

[saywot]

It would be nice to know what the norm is.

I ordered tyres 11 days ago,

today I got email saying they would be in the shop within the next 2 days and they would be sent out shortly after

Today is Tuesday, + 2 days = Friday (these days being Wednesday and Thursday)
depending on what time they receive deliveries on Fridays they could be ready to be taken to the Post Office on Monday

The Post Office will sort this package on Tuesday and load it on the back of a Van and drive it to Sydney from Melbourne, on Wednesday it will be transferred to a smaller van and taken to the local parcel depot

It will hit my front door sometime on Thursday next week

Which is a total time from ordering from a shop in Melbourne to delivery in the Hunter Valley of 20 days

I bought a pair of pedals last Thursday from an ebay shop which were delivered this morning - total = 5 days

[Supe]

I've had to return stuff. I had the misfortune to deal with incompetent nincompoops (how rad is that word?) at Chain Reaction. In the end, I kept a set of Ultegra 6600 cranks rather than get a refund (minus postage costs x2) as I could not be arsed sending them back because of the drama and aggravation. Which reminds me, I should see if I can sell them in the Marketplace. I got to talking to a Lecturer on campus where I work and we ended up swapping our horror stories with CRC. Other folks swear by them though.

I've had no problems with Wiggle or Ribble. PBK were super fast on shipping, though the packaging of the Knog Nerd I ordered was disgraceful. The packaging had 'exploded and bits and pieces of the Knog were scattered everywhere. Fortunately, it was ok.

[HAKS]

CRC this time.

I ordered a fairly large order at the beginning of this month ~$500. Everything was in stock at the time of order. My credit card was billed, then on the weekend I noticed they have refunded all the money. Sent them an e-mail to see what is going on, on Monday. No answer. Sent another e-mail tonight. I'm now concerned I may be waiting for months for one single item to come in which is holding up about 26 other items! It looks like I ordered 2 of one item and got the last one so the other one is out of stock.

I'm going to have to call them after I call my telephone company to get the international bar off my phone. Either that or be very patient. Too bad I ordered for a friend as well...

An update on this.

After sending about 5 e-mails over days and with very limited success, I decided to call. After waiting in a queue for more than half an hour, I got is sorted out quite quickly. So as it has been said before, don't bother with e-mails, pick up the phone if you want it fixed fast. Now to see what I end up getting...

Funny as i was emailing CRC on Monday night with some questions about postage and got replies within 5min of hitting send everytime.

[Nobody]

good luck and hope everything turns out fine and you'll get all your goodies. I've been there once and ended up ordering the same stuff elsewhere 6 weeks later.

Thanks. I haven't go the stuff yet. Should be in the next few days I hope. Not the first time I've had trouble with CRC though:

Don't they reimburse shipping when its their mistake? That sucks!

Didn't know that. Thanks for telling me. My mistake then. Oh well, too late now though.
Below is a excerpt of the e-mail receipt of the order. It even said the same on the paper receipt I got with the order. Looks like I'll be trying the competition next time.

Update on this. I e-mailed CRC who replied asking for a photo. I sent a photo and they have apologised, refunded 20% of the price and said they would update the picture and description on their site.
Picture sent comparing the silver Tiagra and grey 105.

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=19640&start=50

Funny as i was emailing CRC on Monday night with some questions about postage and got replies within 5min of hitting send everytime.

As far as I can remember, all my e-mails were sent during their business hours so maybe it was a busy week for them last week. As you can see in this thread, I'm not the only one to have problems with e-mail replies. Maybe they give priority for customer questions over purchase problems.

[jules21]

Funny as i was emailing CRC on Monday night with some questions about postage and got replies within 5min of hitting send everytime.

email "i want to buy XXXXX - can you clarify something for me before i send you money" = INSTANT REPLY

email "you screwed up, i need a refund/you need to send the parts i paid for etc." = IGNORE

[Supe]

Funny as i was emailing CRC on Monday night with some questions about postage and got replies within 5min of hitting send everytime.

email "i want to buy XXXXX - can you clarify something for me before i send you money" = INSTANT REPLY

email "you screwed up, i need a refund/you need to send the parts i paid for etc." = IGNORE

haha. Too true.

[HAKS]

Anyone know a guy called Steven in Julia Creek, QLD? If so tell him his PBK order is sitting on my kitchen table. I ordered some goods Sunday night, Monday got a dispatch email, all seemed fine. Tuesday I got another dispatch email and today his order rocked up at my house. My order hasn't turned up yet, fingers crossed it will be here on Monday. If he gets it then he clearly wins as his was worth $60, mine was $300

Add to that my UPS International Express order from CRC which took 24hrs to get around the world and arrived in Sydney yesterday morning........is now still sitting in Sydney and won't be delivered till Tuesday next week.

Just to make it 3 out of 3, ordered a Helmet Wed lunch, website said order before 3pm for same day dispatch. Got an email today saying it got sent Thur hence won't get to me till next week.

Weekend =

On the plus side and slightly off topic, I did buy a new phone last weekend and the shop sent me two phones, both with full receipts & separate serial numbers

[casual_cyclist]

Our CRC group order has arrived - 17 items and they all seem correct. I have not done a detailed audit of all of the products but they seem right. Order placed 08/02, dispatched 10/02, arrived at my local PO on 17/02. There were two packages - my wheelset and the rest in another box. The other box was almost 13kg but the order qualified for free shipping, so they shipped it free.

[chill]

Ordered wheels and extras from Wiggle on the weekend. Arrived in 5 days. All good.

[Nobody]

As an update to my previous post. The order was dispatched on 12th Feb and I received it today (19th Feb). All appears to be there so satisfied with the final result other than the delay and extra cost/time in phoning.

[HAKS]

PBK - Ordered Sun 14th Feb - Dispatch Tue 16th Feb - Arrived Tue 23rd Feb (standard free postage)

Wiggle - Ordered Mon 15th Feb - Dispatch Tue 16th Feb - Arrived Tue 23rd Feb (Standard free postage)

CRC - Ordered Tue 16th Feb - dispatched Web 17th Feb - Arrived Syd Thur 18th Feb - Arrived Cbr Mon 22nd Feb (UPS express international post)

[jules21]

received a wheel from CRC, with a nasty ding (see photo, 1 Mb) . no skewer included. have spoken to them and will see if they come to the party.

life is never boring ordering from CRC. i feel like i know most of their phone operators

[casual_cyclist]

received a wheel from CRC, with a nasty ding (see photo, 1 Mb) . no skewer included. have spoken to them and will see if they come to the party.

life is never boring ordering from CRC. i feel like i know most of their phone operators

That is a nasty ding!

[HAKS]

Very nasty indeed. I spoke to CRC recently about their postage and seeing if they would offer free postage on a smaller amount. After chatting to them in Oct 09 and them promising something was in the pipelines they still had nothing to offer . So until then my business where ever possible goes Wiggle, PBK or Ribbles way.

[slowrider]

Just completed two online purchases.

1st one was for two sets of Coolstop Salmon brake pads from CS West Bikes in America, completed order online, brakes arrived on my doorstep in 5 working days. Got the brakes for 1/2 the price including delivery that I could get them here.

2nd on was fro Chain reaction Cycles for 2 Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tyre - Smart Guard. price including postage from UK $113 AU all up. Arrived in 8 days. Price of a single tyre here $90 each.

Both the above had great communication and customer service.

Slowrider

[Nobody]

Very nasty indeed. I spoke to CRC recently about their postage and seeing if they would offer free postage on a smaller amount. After chatting to them in Oct 09 and them promising something was in the pipelines they still had nothing to offer . So until then my business where ever possible goes Wiggle, PBK or Ribbles way.

Sometimes it's worth comparing whole prices as CRC is quite cheap for some things at the moment. In the example below, the price difference is about the postage cost, but adding other items - often also cheaper at CRC - doesn't add much to the postage cost.

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Shima ... 360029483/
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mode ... elID=46021

[HAKS]

Very nasty indeed. I spoke to CRC recently about their postage and seeing if they would offer free postage on a smaller amount. After chatting to them in Oct 09 and them promising something was in the pipelines they still had nothing to offer . So until then my business where ever possible goes Wiggle, PBK or Ribbles way.

Sometimes it's worth comparing whole prices as CRC is quite cheap for some things at the moment. In the example below, the price difference is about the postage cost, but adding other items - often also cheaper at CRC - doesn't add much to the postage cost.

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Shima ... 360029483/
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mode ... elID=46021

I found the opposite true last week when shopping there. I bought quite a big item and then added a small tool that weighed practically nothing and could easily go in the same box, funnily enough the postage doubled . Whenever I buy goods I usually do the same order at every shop to compare prices. 95% of the time CRC postage is what makes them more expensive.

[jules21]

I found the opposite true last week when shopping there. I bought quite a big item and then added a small tool that weighed practically nothing and could easily go in the same box, funnily enough the postage doubled .

are you sure about that? i've found they usually seem to charge shipping by the largest item - smaller stuff can often be added without any additional shipping charge.

[Max]

I like Wiggle, but sometimes their freight charges are off the planet. I wanted to order a backpack cover from them. Cost was around $40 from memory. They wanted to charge me more than that for shipping! I ended up putting it into a larger order to qualify for free shipping. And whaddya know, this backpack cover could've fit into an A4 envelope/satchel, and was light as a feather. And for this, they wanted $40-something to ship it! Other times, it's the reverse. Some large item (say, a tyre) costs under $10 to ship. Go figure.

Overall, I've been very happy with Wiggle. Every order I've placed has arrived in just under a week.

Max

[HAKS]

I found the opposite true last week when shopping there. I bought quite a big item and then added a small tool that weighed practically nothing and could easily go in the same box, funnily enough the postage doubled .

are you sure about that? i've found they usually seem to charge shipping by the largest item - smaller stuff can often be added without any additional shipping charge.

100% sure. I emailed them about it and they looked into it and said it was an error on how the system was calculating postage and thus would rectify it. That is besides the point though as I'm not going to email them every time to check. It wasn't the first time I had noticed it either.

[Nobody]

Another thing to watch out for with Wiggle is ordering things not in stock (probably applies to all online shops). Although it says shipped in 2-7 days, as of tomorrow I would have been waiting a month at which point it times out and I have to reorder (which I won't be doing). Easier to find someone who has it in stock than getting mucked around by shops that don't.