"CALLED CUSTOMER SERVICE TO INQUIRE ABOUT SHIPPING CHARGES- THEY WERE OF ABSOLUTELY NO HELP. THE CSR TOLD ME ONLY THE WAREHOUSE KNOWS AOBUT SHIPPING CHARGES- AND SHE WASN'T EVEN WILLING TO CONFIRM MY ORDER HAD BEEN REC'D
WHEN THE ORDER CAME- IT WAS SHORTED- BUT THE PACKING SLIP WAS LISTED AS HAVING SHIPPED COMPLETE-
- POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE, INCLUDING APPROX 30 MIN HOLD TIME (LONG DISTANCE- NO TOLL FREE #)
- POOR ORDER FILLING"

"This order was shipped Oct. 6, 2004. Every item I ordered was confirmed "available." When the shipment was received, two of the items ordered were missing, although the packing list did not indicate that. I immediately notified ABC Dist. via their web site of the missing items. I received email confirmation on Nov. 17, 2004, that the missing items was available and ready to ship. I then received email a month later, (Dec.15, 2004), that one of the item had shipped. As of Jan. 22, 2005, I still have not received the item! I received email confirmation mid-Dec that the other missing item was available and would be shipped. That item finally arrived the week after Christmas - it was ordered the first week of October! I've emailed ABC Dist. several times to inquire about the whereabouts of my missing items. I also sent two emails asking for a refund of the item price. Each time I got back only an automated response asking that Customer Service be given 48 hours to respond to my email. The last automated response I received was Jan.3, and I've yet to be contacted by customer service regarding the missing item, or a refund! I've also called ABC's customer service phone number numerous times. Each time I am placed "on hold" for no less than 15 min., and have waited as long as 28 min. before I hung up. Keep in mind that ABC Dist. does not provide a toll free number, so these long "on hold" calls are at the consumer's expense! Jan. 21, 2005 - I finally reached a customer service member, (after being "on hold" for 17 minutes), who has now informed me that my item apparently was never shipped even though I received email that it had, and over three months has now passed since I placed the order! She said she will give a refund for the item price, but it will take 21 days to process it. That is a time lapse between placing the order and obtaining my refund of almost 5 months! After speaking to her, I then asked to be transferred to a customer sevice supervisor, and was again "on hold" for 14 minutes! To add insult to injury, someone then picked up the phone, said "hello" and hung up! ABC Distributing has the worse customer service I've ever encountered in the retail business!

UPDATE: As of March 5, 2005, I still have not received a refund from ABC Distributing for my missing items, nor have I been contacted by them to explain the delay. I've submitted four requests via their web site, plus two phone calls to their "customer service dept." asking for refund since November, 2004 to no avail. My advice regarding ABC Distributing is: Buyer Beware!!!"

"The shipping practices are not explained in any published material. My order had 9 items. One they eventually cancelled. One I cancelled after never receiving. Of the other 7, 3 were shipped in the same box. The other 4 were shipped separately. Total cost of mercendise: $55.10--total cost of shipping: $29.53!! All items were small and could have fit in one box. Tried to contact them and they threatened collection. Would not consider compromise on shipping costs. Left several msgs for Cust Serv Manager, no response."

"Horrible Experience with ABC Distruting!

I placed my order in early November for Christmas gifts and cards.Ordered in late To date (1/10/04) I still have not rec'd my orders. When you contact the company you are on hold (long distance, b/c they don't have an 800) for up to 45 minutues. Then you get a "customer service" worker who is VERY rude and lacks people skills. I can understand that packages get lost, but not 2 at the same time.

I asked to have my packages tracked and was advised that this option wasn't availablem even though a tracking number was provided. (It wouldn't work b/c the option wasn't purchased by ABC). After I called to say that I would not pay the bill (b/c I didn't rec'v the order), they said they would track it and let me know where it was! Go figure. I asked why they wouldn't do this before and they said b/c "The package wasn't lost at that time".

I am cancelling my account."

"I've ordered from ABC in the past and had problems and vowed not to use them again but I decided to give them another chance. I should've stuck to my guns. You can NEVER get through to them, they have no email address on their website for customer service but guess what? I've saved my emails from when I had problems in 1997 so here it is: ****@****. The order I placed on December 8th was supposedly shipped but when I track it, it doesn't show that it's gone anywhere. I called FedEx and they said that it shows they've printed information but have not released the order to FedEx. After this order, I promise I'm done with them for good this time. I said that 7 years ago but I mean it this time. I'd had an invoice for about $103 and I sent them a check. It was about a month and the check never cashed. I then sent a money order for that amount and was in the process of stopping payment on the check when it had already cashed. I know it's my fault for not doing that first, but I'd assumed since it took so long that it was lost. I contacted them about returning my $103 and never got a response and you can never talk to anyone so in reality they stole $103 from me. Stupid me for giving them another chance, right? Obviously they don't care one way or the other as from what I've read, they do the same things to a lot of different people."

"Buyer beware. I was impressed with the catalogue of fun gifts at great prices and immediately bought about 20 items on-line. I placed my order Nov 8- it is now Dec 18 and half of my order has not yet arrived. I was apprehensive when I noticed that the company could not estimate shipping costs. I should have gone with that instinct. ABC shipped my items one or two at a time over a period of weeks; tre bizarre. Not only was this ridiculously time consuming and frustrating, but it also upped the shipping costs immensely. One $2.95 set of magnets was shipped by itself, making my total for those magnets $8. One of my dessert mixes had burst open, getting all over everything in the package. The number for customer service is always busy and there is no answering service or message- just an infernal busy tone. I have attempted to call them at least five times during business hours. After searching the website for about half an hour, I gave up trying to locate an alternate means of contacting the service center. I am resigned that I will not be getting my Christmas presents by Chrsitmas despite the fact that they were oredered Nov 8 nor will I be recompensated for the damaged items. I would not recommend this company; the old adage is true in this case, you get what you pay for. "

"I placed my original order October 2004 for well over $200. I was told most of the items were in stock but for whatever reason they decided to send items out in drips and drapes with outrageous shipping costs. Some items were received damaged and some never came at all, but they continued to bill me for these items. I tried calling them many, many times to no avail. Each time it was stated that the circuits were busy. I faxed them letters but never received a response. There is no way to e-mail them. Shipped items cannot be tracked down if they are mailed from the US Postal Service which most of them are. I mailed them two different letters telling them of my concerns and not to ship anything further that was left in my original order. They completely ignored my request and continued to ship out items one at a time. They send me bills stating that some payments were never received. Payments have been sent to them and when payments weren't sent it was explained to them that the items were either damaged or never received. Packages that they continue to send will be refused and sent directly back to them! It has been a most frustrating and unpleasant experience dealing with ABC. The catalogs contain great stuff but it's not worth it to get involved with them. Each catalog I get from them in the future will go straight to recycling. This is one company that I would never recommend to anyone! I will never order from them again!"

"**VERY SLOW** TO SHIP. Definitely not a company you want to order from if you are in a hurry or absolutely must get an item. What a nightmare! You can order as much as you want, but cannot prepay and they wont ship more than $100 worth at a time. Over half of the items in my $180 order were held due to that limit, but I could not make a payment because their system does not allow ePay payments until after an item has shipped. I had to visit their site daily to wait for items to be marked shipped and then make multiple ePay payments to get all of my held items released (and they charge $1.50 finance charge per online payment!!!). In the meantime SEVEN of the items I had ordered were cancelled with no reason given (I suspect they were out of stock). I ordered Nov 22, yet eighteen days later on 12/10 I still have not received a single item. Their website still shows there is still time to order for items to arrive before Christmas, but there is no way I would risk that with this company.
"

"This company ABSOLUTELY SUCKS. Read ALL the other reviews. They do the same BS over and over and over. They need to be put out of business immediately."

"Where do I start! I do not usually do this, but buyers beware! I never had a problem with ABC in the three years I have been buying-----until I thought I would try E-PAY. I paid on 11-08-04 got a confirmation # thinking all was ok. wrong---a few days later I get a letter from automated recovery solutions. I had given the wrong routing # on my check.so I was charged for my purchase plus 25.00 fee, not even knowing there was a problem. I called A>R>S and asked what was the problem, the lady said you gave us wrong info therefore we charge a fee. I said why was I not contacted by someone and she didnt have an answer.
I have been fighting ever since to get this corrected and good luck with getting through! I bet my cell phone and home phone bill will be out of this world.
I cancelled all orders and ---------yep they sent them anyways! Oh I finally talked to Oscar at ABC on 11-19-04 and he looked at my records and said I was in good standings, he would call ARS and have fee waived and payment. then he turned me over to Sally Bruno and she did e-pay on correct amount. well now I have paid for my order twice so I called ARS again and she has had no call from Oscar from ABC.
I got my bank statement and sure enough was charged!
Why can we not get someone to contact us when there is a problem?
I have even faxed ABC to get this matter solved,
my credit is getting ruined because of this.
hey everyone maybe we should contact The Clark Howard Show. K Schlicher Myrtle Beach SC"

"This company sucks. I have had a order on hold since Nov 9th and they are asking me to update my account. OK so I did it and as of today Dec 3 the account is still on hold. Can I get a hold of anybody? NOPE. Fax, phone, email hell no. I am tired of this company. I even pesonally talked to someone once and she said she would up date it. Signed STILL WAITING."

"I initially was over my credit limit of $100 for purchasing. They accepted the order but would only ship $100 worth of merchandise at a time. I wanted to e-pay the order in full to get the second group of merchandise shipped. It wouldn't let me e-pay for either the first $100 group or the second $100 group of merchandise. Nothing was said about being charged for e-pay. It took a month to get the first group of merchandise and now I'm waiting for the second group to be shipped 12/3/04 and can't pay so a third group can be shipped. Can't get anyone on phone (always a busy signal); can't get anyone by computer/e-mail. Nobody to talk to regarding the problem. This process is very, very frustrating.I don't think I will use ABC Distributing again."

"This company freakin sucks! I never received 2 of my orders, and I have been trying to call this number they call "Customer Service". Thats a bunch of bull. I have tried to call two different numbers and they both give me busy signals. I have faxed a letter, and I still havent received a responce. I tried to report them to the Better Business Bureau but it seems the company dosent exist. "

"Just an fyi to all I believe that ABC Distributing and Ltd Commodities are the same company. At the bottom of the page its listed ABC Distributing LLC and LTD Commodities LLC with the dates of 1998 - 2004. This may not be true but this is just something to look out for.

I ordered one Halloween item from ABC and made the order on October 7 and didn't get it until October 31."

"I never received this order. After several attempts to contact the store by phone, fax, and mail, I finally had to pay for merchandise never received in order to protect my credit rating. They would not respond to my written requests."