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Isaac's Blog


March 21, 2006

From the wtf dept.  

buy.com customer service numbers

Let me begin with... I've used buy.com previously with no issues, and loved dealing with them for years. But heres my story..

I'm on ebay, shopping for the best deal on a WMR968. So i "buyitnow" from a guy who states he has 170 items. 2 days later i get an email saying he's out of stock. Long story short ...

we exchanged heated emails, I got my refund, he ended up stopping the auction early.

Thats where buy.com comes in. I go to the website and the inventory check states they still have some in. Knowing they have decent inventory controls, i place my order and have the warm and fuzzies of tracking the order. This was last thursday. Every day I check the status "sent to warehouse". ok, cool, they have to drop ship it, no biggie. every day i reload the product page, still in stock. So then its monday morning "out of stock" and still "sent to warehouse". After looking for a friggin number all day, i find an 800 number hidden in some guys blog.

DO NOT BOTHER CALLING THE 1-877-780-2464 NUMBER!

You will end up in an India call center with people who actually do a pretty good job sounding american. I'm not talking the obvious guy who isnt named "Joe" saying hes "Joe" either. After about 2 hours of the run around with this number, I left the call with the corp mailing address. All I wanted was three questions asked. 1) what is the ETA on the new shipments from the supplier, 2) why wasnt I notified of this backorder status, 3) and why cant you put me on hold and find this information for me? The answers i ended up with was 1) "it could take 3 hours, it could take 3 days" to which my response was "using that logic, it could take 3 weeks or 3 months, give me an estimated time, not your formletter answer". 2) "we normlly send out notifications, i dont know why you didnt get one, maybe it got lost" to which i asked "who do i contact to verify this information" and i got "I cannot give you that information" 3) "i've answered every question you asked, i have been very helpful".

So anyways, I google the street address for buy.com, I end up at this ripoffreport.com page where a guy has basicly run into the same issue, but he gives up the corp number! You know that angelic sound you hear on shows when something good goes right? Im hearing it in my head.

THE CORP NUMBER IS 949-389-2000

So today, I call up this number, the operator asks who i wanna talk to "Fulfillment manager please" "are you a suplier or a customer" "a customer wanting to know real information on a backorder". So i end up talking to a REAL guy named doug. I tell him the india call center is worthless and a waste of my time. I give him my order number. without even asking he goes "there seems to have been a problem in the inventory reporting on this item from the supplier. they state they ran out on thursday, but didnt report that to us for a website update until monday morning. Can I get your number and i will call the supplier and get an estimated date on the new shipment" omFg, a real guy reading my friggin mind. so i pretty much go "thank you, thats all I ever wanted to hear, that customer service number gave me a headache in what you just solved in 10 mins."

So now we wait for the call back...