"What they advertise as free shipping in fact defaults to charging you for shipping when you check out, rather then defaulting to the "free shipping" advertised. Because of the layout of their web page it is extremely difficult to spot this insidious additional charge. Calling customer support is fruitless. You are left with asking for a "return authorization", waiting for the merchandise to arrive, returning it and then reordering, not making the same mistake again.

To avoid the shipping problem, DO NOT PROCEED to checkout if "FREE SHIPPING" does not appear in the price breakdown. Instead, click on the little icon (truck), uncheck "STANDARD SHIPPING" which is the shipping it deaults to for an additional charge of $6.95, and recheck "BUDGET SHIPPING" which is the "FREE SHIPPING" advertised. Then you will see the words "FREE SHIPPING" in your price breakdown and you can proceed to CHECKOUT. Whatever you do do not click on final CHECKOUT or PLACE your order until you see the words "FREE SHIPING" in your price breakdown.
s "

"Buy From Another Merchant.
There are too many good online resellers to put up with the Buy.com version of customer service. The idea of taking care of the customer is just a ruse so they can keep on selling. If anything goes wrong with the product or delivery you are S-O-L and on your own with this company. Their “14 Day Return Policy” is effectively 48 hours. The clock starts when the product ships and “Free Ground Shipping” is 7 to 9 days. After that you just get cut n’ paste emails from customer service saying too bad, so sad, you’re screwed [but your satisfaction is important to us.]
"

"I ordered 2 - 1gig micro sd cards for my new razor phones that my wife and I bought for valentines day. I ordered on the 14th and selected 2nd day shipping. Valentines was a Wednesday this year and I ordered at noon central standard time. The order was not "picked up" by the carrier (Fed Ex) until 10pm Pacific time on the 15th so that places my package 2 day delivery to be delivered saturday. Well the package did make it to my service center on the saturday but wasnt delivered they said they would deliver it Monday by 4:30.

Well I was upset seeing now I would have to wait till monday and I emailed buy.com support to see if I could get a credit for my 2 day now that its taking 5 days to get here. They said they would credit me after I received the item. Well monday came and the lazy fed ex driver I have said my house was "closed for the holiday" or "business closed".

I called fed ex to complain and they called my service center and apologized it was an error on the drivers part and they would have no objection to refunding buy.com for my shipping. I emailed buy.com and told them I talked to fed ex and explained everything this is their reply.

We understand that you are requesting a refund for the shipping charges
of your order. However, we apologize that we are unable to grant request
since FedEx had a holiday on 02/19/2007. Please be advice that the
delivery of packages are only done during business days. Holidays and
weekends are not included.


Fed ex did not have a holiday on presidents day they were open and every one worked the driver didnt want to come to this part of town and passed off my package.

I have only ordered twice from buy.com and will never do it again."

"Worst customer service I've ever seen!!!

Try to cancel an order within the first 5 minutes. Hold me on line more than 1 hour before I can talk to a "real" representative. Then I was transferred to another line and waited for another hour! Before I can talk to a representative or see my order status on line, I was charged!!! However, the lady I was talking to is nice and really trying to help."

"In big letters it said I would get free shipping. It even listed free shipping as a line item, but after clicking through the checkout process a $6.28 shipping charge was added to the bill. I emailed them immediately but got no response. Two subsequent emails got a "too bad, you didn't do it right" response. I will NEVER buy from them again."

" I use to make all satisfying purchases from buy.com.. The last time I ordered a couple spindals of DVR's it was in the processing stage for 11 days.. The items were not at a bargain price, so i decided to cancel my order and headed out the door making my purchase at Frys.. The next day to my surprise after canceling my order, it was sent out.. I find it strange the order was sent out the day after it was canceled, after 11 days in the processing stage, wasn't angry, it was not an expensive purchase, just thought it was strange. My thinking was I could always make a return to frys if i had to many dvr's after receiving my buy.com order..

When the package arrived ,a smaller the expected package was left on my front porch .When i opened it only half my order was in it.. The box was to small to hold the whole order so i figured buy.com sent out what they had on hand and the other half would be shipped when it came in stock.. I Then took a look at the receipt which said the whole order was sent, I had faith that buy.com would resolve this problem with ease. Expecially since the weight and size of the box didn't match

When i called buy.com they said they would put in a claim. I explained the box wasn't even big enough for the whole order.. after another week my claim was denied, I don't know why but it was,. I told them i would return the item in the original box for a refund.. a buy.com rep said it was past the 14 day return period..

I have spent more money at buy.com in the past since the first year buy.com went into business then i wish to share with everyone. I hope The runaround to steal less then $20 from me was worth it.. Buy.com has gone from a dependable retailer to a scam.. "

"I have purchased from buy.com in the past without issues, but this order may prevent me from ordering in the future. I placed an order a week ago and the product page stated it qualified for free shipping. During the order process, the shipping charge was zero. After I completed the order (payed them), the invoice then showed a shipping charge. I immediately sent an email to customer support regarding the issue. After two days I never heard from anyone, so sent another email. After a week of no response, I called on the phone and waited about 25 minutes. The customer support agent admitted to a problem with the web site and said there was nothing she could do. She was basically no help and kept repeating the same thing. I asked to talk to a manager, which she pretended to do, but never did. I hung up and tried calling back again later in the day, but it was the same result. So, this is still on-going.

Looking at other reviews here, it appears that buy.com has gone downhill. There was a time when they had mostly good ratings."

"No complaints. The rebate drew me to purchase here despite the low ratings here."

"My saga is still ongoing. I have had great experiences with buy.com. However, this is the first error I've experienced, and after all the problems I have been through, it seriously has me considering never using this company again.

I ordered 2GB of RAM on January 16th. The product was shipped and arrived when they said it would. The problem? There was only 1GB of RAM in the box and the shipping information had the wrong sku number. After an e-mail exchange the day of receipt, I got a UPS slip and was told to send the stick of RAM back and they would send the correct order. This did not make a lot of sense as the item itself was correct, just in the wrong quantitiy, but I sent the item back anyhow. It was sent via ground shipping.

It took 11 days and two calls to the California number where I spoke with a helpful person named Michael. He got my order out, gave me a new order number and it arrived early via UPS, but still via ground. Michael said it was not company policy to expidite shipping, even if it was their mistake. By now, it was February 16th, so I was getting a little anxious.

When I opened the box, I was very upset (but not all that surprised) that once again, I had only been sent one stick of ram. I called Michael up again and he said he didn't know what to do and that he would have to discuss it with his manager. Seeing as it was late on Friday, he told me he would address the issue and call me back on Monday. He verified my phone number and I waited for his call. It never came.

It's Tuesday, February the 20th (35 days since I was charged for 2GB of RAM) and I haven't heard from anyone at buy.com. I have tried to call Michael this morning, but he has not answered his phone yet (and no voice mail). So I assume that 8:00am is not their start time.

I still don't know the outcome but this has been enough for me to want to warn others of my experience. I don't know if I can provide an update, but the moral of the story is clear, you're simply taking a gamble with this company. It may work great 9 out of 10 times, but that one time is a complete disaster.

---UPDATE!!! 2/22/2007---
After not hearing back from Michael, I filed a BBB complaint on Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday, I received a call from the customer rep, Michael. He told me there had been an error with the sku number, that it was fixed and he had contacted the vendor about getting the product out to me within the next day or two. After I requested it, he even stated that the package would be sent with express 2-day shipping. He also issued an RMA, saying that they wouldn't wait for buy.com to receive my return, and would ship out simultanious with me shipping to them. The order hasn't shipped yet, but I got my second RMA information from buy.com. So, although I am skeptical, and will probably not ship my return back until I actually receive the correct product, I am glad this finally seems to be solving itself. I recommend calling the California office number, Michael was available at extension 2283 and was also polite and courtious on the phone (when he was in the office).

---UPDATE!!! 2/26/2007---
What a beautiful, final twist. Michael called this morning and let me know that now the vendor buy.com gets the RAM from does not have this product anymore. He can only offer a full refund. Since I want this whole sorry affair to be over, I agreed, but said I would ship back the RAM I originally received (the 1GB) only after I saw the money in my account. I think I can say now that this has ended my RAM saga as well as my desire to every purchase from Buy.com. It's off to New Egg to look for RAM."

"Buy has unresponsive, nearly useless customer support. I have spent over 1 hour on hold and have yet to talk with a customer service rep, even though they "value my business, and have representatives available 24/7". On the plus side, it only took them 6 days to respond to my email request for help. You may save $10, but it is not worth the potential headache if you have any problems. AVOID BUY.COM"

"I am VERY satisfied with my recent purchase at Buy.com. I ordered a Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB MP3 Player for a friend, I chose standard shipping which was free but my order arrived to me in 1 day after it was shipped. Extraordinarily fast! I will definitely buy from Buy.com again!"

"First, let's give credit where it's due. Buy.com has very competitive pricing, an extensive inventory, a relatively well-designed web site, and they accept PayPal (which in my opinion is a very big plus).

Their shipping policy is the undoing of an otherwise decent business. In the past, I found their shipping to be excruciatingly slow.

Recently, I needed something ASAP and paid an extra $28 for "Overnight Next Day" shipping. I ordered it on a Tuesday afternoon. I received it Friday afternoon. Sound like "overnight" to you?

When I complained about the delay and requested a refund of my shipping fees, here's what I got back from their Customer Service:

"In regards to our shipping policy, items are shipped 1 to 2 business days after your order is placed. Next Day Air and Second Day Air delivery time is in addition to order processing time."

So, to make this short and sweet, be very careful if you're considering buy.com. If you're in a hurry, forget them completely, since apparently they will readily take your money for expedited shipping but give you nothing for it. "

""DO NOT buy from this company" Here is the complaint that I filed and I'll also be filing a complaint with the Attorney Generals Office.I purchased a 32 inch SOVA television from buy.com on 1-25-07.The item was supposed to be shipped in 7-9 days.Two weeks later I call buy.com because on my order status under my account it said that the order hasn't been processed yet.The lady that I spoke with told me that it has been shipped(which was a lie)so another week goes by and I call them back and the gentleman tells me that the order hasn't been processed yet so I cancelled the item.The very next day they decide to ship the cancelled item so I call them back and the man tells me that theres nothing he can do,the item was shipped.When I finally received the item(2-12-07)the box was ripped open and it had a big hole in the back of it so the FED-EX man took note of this.I get the Television out of the box and it was scraped on the top and damaged in the back of the unit.I plug the TV in and the left speaker is blown so the very next day I call buy.com and explained the whole situation and the man tells me that its not their responsibility and to send it back to the manufacturer for a refund.I told him that I purchased the TV through buy.com(which I thought I was getting a new TV but they sent me a refurbished one)so how could a manufacturer refund what I purchased through a retailer? he had no answer and gave me the number of the company(SOVA)Well,that was the wrong number so I called buy.com again.This gentleman(his name was aldi)told me that he was going to speak with his manager and call me back(which he did)I even told them that after all of this I was willing to have them send me another TV and when FED-EX gets here,they can pick up the damaged TV.When he called me back he said he was sorry for the problem and that they are sending me out another TV right away and I'll receive a return # for the TV I'm sending back.I just checked the status on my account to see when the TV is getting here and it says,claim denied.I am done dealing with buy.com.They sent me a refurbished TV which they advertised as new."

"I have ordered on 3 different occassions from Buy.com and each one has been flawless. Great prices, fast shipping. I have not had the need to utilize their Customer Support, so I can't comment on that. I have heard stories of people having errors or shipping delays, and I can honestly say that I have not experienced any problems. I am quite pleased with Buy.com and will definitely be ordering from them again."

"Clearly buy.com state for not-in-stock item that you can buy now and you be the first one to receive the item when it's in stock again, so I made a purchase. They didn't even game me the notice and just told me that I requested order cancellation, which I NEVER did. On following day, they just processed cancellation. I sent them 2 emails, but kept saying very same insincere excuses. I wouldn't feel this bad if they made an excuses that they had to cancel the order due to whatever the reasons. It make me sick that they keep dumping their fault to customers. Customer service is almost non-existing. I'll never purchase anything from buy.com again. "