From: "Movie Mars, Inc."
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 8:29 PM
Subject: Your Amazon Marketplace Order Has Shipped!
Good News!!
Thank you for your recent MovieMars.com order through Amazon.
Your item(s) left our warehouse today and shipped to.....
To: "Movie Mars, Inc."
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 3:10 PM
Subject: Re: Your Amazon
Marketplace Order Has Shipped!
Sir/Madam,
The DVD Box Set "Nero Wolfe, Series 2" ordered from you on 10 December 2005 was received by me today. As expected I had to pay Customs charges of £8.54 on the parcel. I was, therefore, particularly disappointed to discover that one of the five discs in the box set was not Disc 3 of the Nero Wolfe Series but instead a disc of "Jeeves and Wooster, Second Season" (AAE - 70213). The Nero Wolfe discs included in the box set are numbered AAE - 70890, 70891, 70893 and 70888.
I have attached three photos to demonstrate both the mistake and the fact that I have yet to remove the plastic covering to the box set. I look forward to hearing from you forthwith just how this error can be rectified quickly and at no further cost to myself.
From: CustomerService at MovieMars>
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 3:21 PM
Subject: Movie Mars, INC. has received your email...
One of our Customer Service representatives will respond to you within 24 business hours.> > We appreciate your business!
To: Customer Service at Moviemars
Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2006 6:21 PM
Subject: Re: Movie Mars, INC. has received your email...
Sir/Madam,
Although you sent me this note on Tuesday stating that you would send me a reply within 24 hours I have yet to receive a full reply from you.
From: CustomerService at MovieMars
Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2006 6:21 PM
Subject: Movie Mars, INC. has received your email...
One of our Customer Service representatives will respond to you within 24 business hours.> > We appreciate your business!
(No Further Response.)
From: Amazon.co.uk
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 11:57 AM
Subject:
Your Amazon.co.uk A-to-z Guarantee Claim
Dear ......
Greetings from Amazon.co.uk. We are sorry that you are having problems with this order. This e-mail confirms that an Amazon.co.uk A-to-z Guarantee claim has been filed for order #.... because the item you received had missing parts/components............
From: "Amazon.co.uk Payments"
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 10:13 AM
Subject: Refund Confirmation
Amazon Payments has refunded the amount of £45.75 from moviemars-uk to your credit card, for the full or partial total of order ..... Please find the reasons behind these actions outlined below.
Item: Refund for Nero Wolfe: The Complete Second Season (REGION 1) (NTSC)
[DVD] Refund: £45.75
Reason for refund: Other
Memo from seller: Amazon issued merchant-to-buyer A-Z Guarantee refund
Lessons I have learnt from this experience:-
1) If buying from an overseas company do it through Amazon.co.uk so that you have the weight of the company's guarantee behind you. Their service in this matter was excellent; and
2) The mistake was really obvious and must have been seen by the person picking/packaging the DVD box set that was sent to me. Then the company ignored my attempts to resolve the problem. So, everyone must make their own minds up about buying from this company but I won't be doing so again.
8 comments:
Brava! Amazon.com (the U.S. version of your company), requests ratings of the quality of service of the companies who do business thru Amazon. If Amazon.co.uk requests ratings, I hope you give this company a failing grade! Even if you have the chance to give a rating, you might still send Amazon.co.uk a note, letting them know how disappointing this company's service was. Yeah, I know they know. I know they refunded you the money, but you can reinforce how dismal your experience was, and that ought to make you a bit happier, and maybe head off a problem in the future.
Buffy
Buffy,
Amazon.co.uk does ask for ratings also and did for this transaction. So I had some satisfaction in giving the company the lowest marking it was possible to do and in the comments said something like "item faulty, company ignored my complaints" which I hope will help potential future customers to decide whether or not to use the company.
As far as writing to Amazon.co.uk is concerned - well, I don't know what it's like with Amazon.com but with their UK arm it's very difficult to find their e-mail address. There's webpage after webpage in their Help Pages section but finding an actual e-mail address to wrte to them isn't easy. I hope though that by being forced to refund the money to me, which will in a miniscule way affect their profit margin, it will make them think twice about including that company in their Marketplace purchasers.
And then, of course, there is the fact that by posing this anyone Googling that company will find my complaint and I hope will affect their decision whether or not to use them.
I've read a lot about how terrible MovieMars is, but when I ordered a DVD box set from them I got it factory sealed and very fast. Obviously I was just one of the really lucky ones...
Donna, my boxed set was factory sealed as well but it was very clear from the outside that there was a mistake and that box should not have been sent out.
I'm glad though that you didn't have the same problem.
Above comment is spam.
I myself had an issue recently with MovieMars. They send CDs in padded mailers which get crushed in transit. While this is not "their fault" they certainly need to step up their packaging. For the amount of money I spent on this item and the amount of time it took them to send it, they should take some responsibility. They have refused to respond to any emails, so I filed a claim through Amazon. Unfortunately even if Amazon eventually boots them, they will just come back with a different name.
In brief: MovieMars-UK (with its US associates MovieMars and MovieMarz) put up an item on Buy-It-Now in May. I bought and paid for it using Paypal. Almost immediately I began receiving "there'll be a delay" messages from a US source (the firm is in North Carolina). These non-responses continued unabated without regard to my complaint, for example, that I was charged an overses shipping rate for an item being sent to New York from North Carolina. ("So order it from the US site" - and pay twice as much as I had paid for it - was the "helpful" reply.)
This continued for a few weeks. Every MMars response was along the lines of "Sorry for the delay - we're doing everything we can." Then the firm unilaterally refunded my money after only 3 weeks; I was so notified by Paypal, and since then this has been given as the reason for MMars's inaction (and eBay's refusal to pursue any action whatsoever).
Now it gets good - I looked back on eBay, and MMars-US AND MMars-UK were suddenly selling the IDENTICAL item for at least twice the price I paid (and for which I never received it). NOW I was angry. I wrote numerous complaint letters, receiving boilerplate replies. [At one point I wrote a 3-word e-mail that received a pathetic and pointless school-marmish slap on the wrists for my language. I replied that 1) at least I had finally managed to get something like a human reaction, but that 2) the firm's treatment of me was far more obscene than anything I'd said.]
The brutal joke/kicker is that I went through the eBay-US complaint process and got several weeks of runaround. Ultimately eBay said it was "continuing" its investigation, that it could not tell me how it was proceeding (allegedly because of "privacy" considerations), and that it would not give me a phone number to try to sort this out instead of continuing to keep the wall between a customer and the apparently sacrosanct eBay/seller relationship stronger than anything R. Waters could have imagined.
I apologize for using your personal blog to rant, but anything I can do to make clear that MMars has committed an illegal act that in a storefront retailer's case would elicit a legal response with teeth, AND that eBay has abetted this behavior with the same kind of stonewalling as its seller, will I hope spur others who are ripped off by eBay and its sellers to "speak" their mind in as many forums as possible. I no longer expect restitution - but anything I can do to keep people warned about this "dynamic duo" will have been a small victory. Thank you.
Moviemars cd is no more than an empty wharehouse that uploads every item that is avaliable from onestops or factory dist. MOVIEMARS "ORDERS" your item WHEN YOU PLACE YOU ORDER.This why you have to wait or get canceled orders because their suppliers Don'T have it in stock!!!They have no inventory to speak of.They are a Drop-shipper. I have seen the white plastic flimsy mailers too with little protection. I have also seen them ship out cracked cd cases instead of repairing and re-shrinking them. It is a no more than a low paying sweat shop ruled buy Asian women with "NO talking" rules and non-stop pulling and packing(mistakes will happen) of new product that is ordered from AEC,Baker-Taylor and other dist.A friend and co-worker worked there for 2 days. They were a professional record wharehouse worker with over 30 years of experience in the music business in fulfilment/shipping/buying & returns. He/she was dismissed because they were a threat to the current supervisors(dragonlady) with who barked(spoke in broken english so fast with an accent you could barely understand) at every turn and anything possible.The employees all looked stressed and afraid to hold their heads up to confront and alert the management about a cracked CD case or bent box-sets.Because it would slow down the machine.I thought Amazon required sellers to have the product in stock. Not just upload someones inventory,Order it and re-sell it.This employee was over qualified at the job assigned.He/she had 2 perfect days with NO Mistakes.They were let go(for no reason? racisim?).They would rather order one copy at a time of a new release, instead of buying a boxlot.Their computer program keeps their inventory automatically at a lower price but not to lose a profit.
This business pratice is not fair to the other AMAZON sellers that invest real money by having the stock on hand.Look at their feedback and you will see the late deliveries and the cracked cases that is left by buyers.I felt sorry for the employee that had this job. They(he/she)were the perfect employee to help improve sales bring the old school ideas,quality control, from years of day to day music business experience.They would help improve there fills & have more happy customers.So if you order from Movie mars expect the item not to arrive quickly & to arrive barely within the time allowed by Amazon.They also they make a profit on their shipping cost because of the flimsy cheap mailers with no reinforcement to protect.No wonder the CD's arrive cracked and CD/DVD box set come with bent corners.Their phone # is 704-821-3654 Indian Trail, NC
Thank you for the phone number. My previous blog concerns (see above) are echoed in other experiences here. What infuriates me most is that the umbrella firms (Amazon, eBay) tolerate this kind of thing consistently. Again, no responsibility in this pass-the-buck world.
There are other companies who pull MovieMars stunts, but somehow this bunch of criminals stands out. (In virtually any state or city, they would be liable for numerous breaches of consumer law, so I choose my word precisely.) When a small dealer pulls something like this, it seems that it is sensitive to negative feedback, so there is usually some sort of explanation (valid or not) if you seek it.
The way MovieMars does business (warehouse syndicate) is besides the point - and a failing grade will not do much to the average score of a company that does so much business. All I can say is - with this crew of jokers, you pays your money and you takes your chances. There's usually a similar price from a reputable dealer available, anyway.
Post a Comment