When you have a problem with a vendor
 

Over the years I've bought a ton of camera gear (I'm a full time photographer), and a hell of a lot of parts for a GTI build and now an FRS. Every know and then a vendor pulls a bullshit move like refusing to issue a credit for a returned item, and I've learned that there are a few important things to say to a recalcitrant vendor. Remember, never make a threat unless you plan to follow through. In my experience, it never gets that far as they always cave.

1. You won't issue a credit? Fine, I will file a dispute with the credit card company. Have fun sorting that out. With any luck, they will revoke your cc merchant account.

2. At the same time, I will file a complaint with the Consumer Protection Agency and the Attorney General in your state. That will be even more fun than the credit card company.

3. I will also be sure to warn others on the numerous forums I belong to avoid your company.

4. I will write an accurate and scathing review on Yelp.

True story- I had an Epson 4800 printer- it's a big and expensive printer and i must have gotten a lemon. Constant problems, made us crazy. This thing cost $2500 and the ink alone was $900 in addition to the $2500. After screwing around with support at Epson for months, I finally got to the right guy and calmly said" I will paint Epson Sucks on this in big block letters. I will take it to the roof of my building. I will set it on fire and throw it off the roof. My videographer will capture the whole thing. It will go viral on youtube. I'm that mad."

He said "Can I put you on hold?"
5 min later he came back and said, "How about a new printer?" I said "right answer!"

I swear, the next day a new printer (100lbs) arrived from CA. I live in Maryland.

Moral of the story, if you have been screwed and you can prove it, stand up for your rights as a consumer and and hold them accountable. It's much easier and cheaper for the to do the right thing then to fight.

900 dollars for ink. what the fuck.

As crazy as this may sound coming from me... this post may have had much more value in the photography section in the Off Topic Lounge.

Sorry, I didn't mention this was written because of an issue with a vendor related to the FRS...

big printers, big cartridges

Sounds like every example you gave was a threat lol.

Glad everything worked out for you. My advice with these situations is to skip the middle people and go straight to the top.

Judging by his post, it sounded like he had every intention of following through. Threat away...

WOM in the marketing world means everything nowadays because word can spread so quickly across social media and reach a much broader audience. If the situation warrants it, the types of threats he listed above can make a huge impact quickly... especially in a niche market like this one for 86 enthusiasts. Just avoid using them on small issues before the vendor has had a chance to make the situation right.

If you have problems with many vendors...maybe the common denominator is you

fixed

At our HQ, we run thousands to fill these lexmarks every month- thousands per unit, and there's 6 big boy elevator style and a handful of small bastards. On top of other leasehold fees related to these things. 5 year industrial leases in which the printer itself will be good for about 2/3 of that max- then they just keep breaking down, and breaking down. Lost efficiency and at the end of the day, revenue yet we still send them a sub fee every month to be THEIR customer.

The printing industry is ridiculous now. New world sham. Inkjet is the same- non-refillable pieces of crap that are more spendy than the plastic dust printers (source: accounting manager for top 3 West coast printing and industrial equipment/supplies distributor :bonk: )

/threadjack

.

This.

As a consumer you're entitled to get what you paid for. Not to be a flaming asshole. Just my opinion though.

what is it that I heard a while ago... consumer printer ink is the second most valuable liquid on the planet per unit of weight?

I usually just curse under my breath...and then decide whether to shake or not to shake.

http://washingtoncouldlearnalot.com/.../Vending-1.png


It's almost always shake. Followed by more barely audible curses.

I hate it when I have a problem with a Bender!

Very much so- it is literally powdered plastic. I don't care about their "proprietary mix"... We at West Coast Paper Company have been around since 1930 serving the West Coast and specifically NW region in seven states and started off as a printing business before moving into distribution of industrial and office supplies/equipment. It's absurd, almost a racket, how low tech and un-proprietary these goods are. :'(

Dude is that your letter head?

Dunder Mifflin

I've had a bad experience with a vendor here. It happens, you get over it, they go on doing business.

I understand that there are some consumers who think they're entitled to everything as a consumer, but at the same time, a business has a responsibility to stand behind their product and service to a reasonable degree.

Yes it is ;)

(back of my card, pic taken with a potato)

http://i.imgur.com/rI4Kc17.jpg

Close enough!

This. I used to buy and resell stuff on Amazon to help cover college expenses. If I ever got a return request that was valid, I took care of it and had no qualms about it.One day, this guy sends me a return request for a GPU I sold. That's fine, I tell him. Mail it back and I'll refund the money. He then tells me that the GPU is not in Florida like the order said, but it was in South America. He didn't want to lose money on shipping it back, so I paid for the shipping and a bit extra for his trouble.For the next 6 months he'd email me weekly asking why he hadn't gotten the money. I had proof that Amazon processed the return, charged me for it, and sent it out. Every time he emailed me I'd tell him the same thing, and to file a report with Amazon if it still hadn't shown up. He had the gall to tell them I didn't communicate with him at all and they were looking into it. The next day he said he got the money, but no one from Amazon ever contacted me about it.Also, the GPU was busted up in the return shipping, so I couldn't even find something to do with it. If my job was to deal with people like this all of the time, I'd probably be in a deep depression. So I try to be as nice as I can to vendors, even when I have an issue.

lmao, exactly this

At my work people draw blood. There is a phrase "difficult stick" for patients you have a hard time to find veins to draw blood or put IV lines.

So when I see people who frequently use that phrase I tell them: If you always have a lot of difficult sticks, maybe you don't know how to use a needle?

:lol:

I work in retail and after several years I am convinced that many many people have a problem with self entitlement. I'm all for vendors/companies holding up their agreements, but thats all I expect from them.

ie: If I was sold a printer with zero warranty and it broke, I wouldn't expect that company to send me a brand new one for nothing.

I always try to be nice and reasonable as well, even when they start getting upset. You never know if they had to deal with a difficult situation before you, and they're already on guard - I mean, I run a business myself (as a photographer also), and any time you have a business dealing with people...well, life is like a box of chocolates...

AFAIK oz for oz, printer ink is more expensive than human blood, or something like that - pretty ridiculous lol

Our wide format ink cartridges cost around 200 a piece. There are 8 cartridges, one for each color. Our digital press toner runs about 1200 per color. We can easily go through two of those a day when busy. Crazy money. Not to mention the cost of parts for these dang machines. The one year warranty on the digital press cost 80k... press was 800k...

Just because a merchant doesn't have an express warranty does not mean you don't have a warranty on the merchandise you buy. In the US, the Uniform Commercial Code says that products sold by merchants under normal circumstances carry an implied warranty of merchantability, which means the product has to be fit for its intended purpose. If it's not, the merchant is held responsible regardless of whether they published a warranty with the product.

Rarely do you have a product with "zero warranty." If you buy a printer from a merchant under normal circumstances, use it normally for a week and it breaks, that printer was obviously not fit for its intended purpose. If the merchant says, "Sorry, we don't carry a warranty on those printers," your response should be "Bullshit! You will repair or replace this printer at no cost to me." Then you consider all the courses of action noted in the OP's post.

The only way a merchant gets out of the implied warranty is to conspicuously disclaim it before the sale. They can't just say it's sold "as is." They have to specifically state that they are disclaiming the warranty of merchantability. But some states do not allow the warranty of merchantability to be disclaimed, so not even a disclaimer is foolproof.

Yes, but obviously when used for commercial purposes those prices are just a cost of doing business.
If you could get all the materials cheaper would you lower the cost of the finished product? Highly unlikely I would say.

Sometimes I wish I could return a meal...AFTER I have eaten it. You know, when you get that weird i-gotta-find-a-toilet-pronto feeling in the pit of your stomach.

I bet you're so popular at parties... :thumbsup:

Shaky is the shit. He always is the one who ends up faded enough to fight a bush tho

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXSTCZIt1sM"]DRUNK KID FIGHTS BUSH - YouTube[/ame]

Wait.

Wait. Wait. Wait.

WAIT.



FLAMIN' HOT FUNYUNS?

Where do I need to go so I can buy these? WTF. They must be fantastic.

vast majority of vendors are great. I always guarantee my work, and put my client first. Just hate getting jacked around

I'm a vendor. I do whatever it takes to insure that whatever someone buys from me they are 100% happy with it. No less.
There are no excuses for blowing off a customer, not issuing credits or not standing by their product. Doing the right thing is not hard.

Had an issue with a vendor on this board lying to me, taking my money and leaving me in the dark... so I left them negative feedback, stating as much. So, what do they do? Leave me negative feedback as well, despite me doing everything I was supposed to do as a consumer. No idea how they're still in business with customer service like that.

I am inclined to help you if you don't act like a spoiled child in a toy store when you don't get what they want. People need to learn that customer service isn't your personal punching bag.

OK, I need to clarify this. I make my living producing prints among other things. The printer I mentioned cost more than $3000. It was so faulty that one day it took four people and more than 6 hours to produce 4 workable prints. Not a typo. 4 frickin prints.

The staff had logged 20 calls to Epson service, who blamed the software company who wrote the driver s/w.

This was not a temper tantrum, this problem was brewing for months. My company was bleeding because of this issue, it was Christmas and everyone HAD to have their prints. I'm paying 4 people to stand around with thumbs up their butts and not be able to print and not enough time to go to a lab.. You can't believe the stress when you cannot deliver what you promised, and you have to explain to the client that your printer is down. Again.

Turns out I was not alone either. the model was discontinued a year later after a tidalwave of complaints.. I did not ask for a new printer, the company did the right thing (finally ) by replacing it. I couldn't sell it in good conscience, so I really was going to throw it out. I figured it would be more fun to set it on fire and throw it off the building first.

Honestly, I was shocked they offered to send me a newer model, but that was not what I was angling for.

Glad it worked out for you.

Here's a long story of what happened with me. :p

I was asking for my deposit to be returned because it was past delivery date, and he was still not ready to deliver. He kept giving different stories why it wasn't available, but I was like - that's really too bad - I just want my money back - it shouldn't be hard, since nothing was shipped to me.

He said he would lose money because the item was already being made. If I cancelled my order, he would have to strip the paint from the part, and repaint it, and then sell it to someone else, yadda yadda yadda. I smelled BS.

I said that if it was in fact, really that difficult to refund a part that was made yet, I said that in the group buy - any number of people wanted to buy the part in the color it was being ordered in, so it wouldn't matter - he could just send them the part, have them pay, and refund me. Or just have them pay me, and then send directly to them, since nothing was shipped yet.

I couldn't get PayPal to help, because I had placed the deposit more than 60 days before asking for my money back, and PayPal has a period of around 30 days or in which you need to file a claim.

He wouldn't refund and he had a bucket of excuses not to help. So I posted about how I couldn't get my money back. I feel like I wasn't asking for anything unreasonable, and I wasn't flaming him on the forum.

Eventually I get a nasty message saying that here's your money back, and you're causing me all kinds of money loss, and pain, and don't ever come back to me wanting my business. Naturally, I was happy to get my money back, but I it was too bad how there were bad feelings involved. I didn't retort, only just confirmed the money return, and thanked him for returning the money.

Oddly enough - despite how he had to strip the part and repaint and change his records to send it to someone else, about a month and a half later, I received my order. LOL. When I was looking at the part, I was thinking to myself, that this in fact confirms all the bullshit, and that he's just out of sorts with his business.

I honestly considered keeping it for a couple of weeks or so, but after thinking about it, I decided to contact him and tell him that I received my order in error and if he'd like to get it returned to him.

He got mad at me! He's like, "why didn't you return it sooner? I'm gonna send you an invoice. you have to pay for it!"

I'm like, "Uhm you realize I didn't have to say anything to you. You can't make me pay for this - you sent it to me after I canceled my order - it's really your error."

Finally, I got him to agree to taking it back if I sent him pictures that I did not abuse it. :P

It's funny, but I felt I was doing him a favor and he was still pissed about it. In my messages to him, I also explained to him how I'm also a business owner, and the recourse is small, but they pay off is big, just refund for no loss, and don't burn bridges, etc, but he was set in being mad about it.

I guess with age comes patience, and I'm only guessing I was dealing with a younger guy. Anyway, it's all over, and I don't have to deal with it any more.

Luckily, in my photography business, I can choose who I work with now - when I sense a pain in the ass, I immediately refer them to someone else who can deal with butt pains. LOL.