Buy.com — Another Bad Experience
I placed an order with Buy.com on 12-June for a cell phone. It has been nearly two weeks since I placed the order and I’m tired of waiting for it. So, I decided to cancel my order. In a previous posting I talked about how Buy.com confused me by email. Well, now they are confusing me on their web site too. Here’s what they told me when I cancelled the order.
“We’ll eMail you within the next business day to let you know if your item has been cancelled.”
Are they really telling me that it will take one full business day to know if the order was cancelled? Are you kidding me? My cancellation request is hitting a database, not a person or group of people. Either the item has shipped or it has not. If it hasn’t shipped, then I should be able to cancel it and get immediate confirmation of cancellation!
Maybe their site isn’t database driven. Maybe it is Powered By Little Squirrels. I just don’t get it. Really, it confuses me.
Buy.com’s response is especially bad for me because now I have to wait up to one day before I can take my business elsewhere. I can’t wait to go some other place to get my cell phone. At this point, because I am so frustrated, I am willing to pay a premium for the item, and I’m going to expedite the shipping too. My cost will be higher but it is worth it to counteract the frustration I fell right now with Buy.com and their Squirrel-Powered web site!
You might be thinking that I am just ranting and raving. Maybe you are right. But think of this. I’m talking about serious business issues and profits. I’m taking my business to another company because I am not happy with my experience. If your web site frustrates people that directly translates to lost sales, lost opportunities, and lost profits. If you are in business, you should care very much about these “little” complaints. My transaction is small — just a drop — but those drops add up on the bottom line.
(I help companies like Buy.com all the time. It is shame they didn’t get professional usability help!)
June 24th, 2004 at 11:32 am
But John… aren’t you talking about organisational and process changes? Certainly design and usability doesn’t apply to those kinds of things.
Mmmm, early morning sarcasm…
June 24th, 2004 at 7:53 pm
We’ll eMail you within the next business day to let you know if your item has been cancelled.”
This sentence is confusing - they’re talking about an item being cancelled, whereas you’ve presumably just cancelled an order.
June 25th, 2004 at 3:18 pm
I think John is talking about the overall experience as usability.
I worked for a Telco where we built a very usable website where customers could order and change services and products. However, being a telco, the back-end ordering systems weren’t connected to the web apps. So “little squirrels” in the background had to process the orders.
Solving the manually order process so it still looks on-line is not simple.
Kevin
October 16th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Buy.com site does not work when one wants to unscribe or find a contact email or number that works. Very slow, clumky when page does decide to come up, often blank.
March 1st, 2007 at 12:26 pm
i too am having a bad experience i am writing these while im on hold with them 18 min so far. i purchased a Tv on 2/10/07 according to their website they shipped it on 2/13/07. it is now march 1st and still no TV. THey cant even tell me where it is. all they say is that someone will be emailing me within 48 hours. No emails . That was 3 days ago. i will NEVER buy another item from buy.com and anyone reading this who is thinking of doing so please think again. Very unsatisfied customer.