"This unfulfilled purchase has been a terrible experience. I ordered an expensive item from them on December 30, 2005. The web page said it was in-stock and would ship within 1-2 days.

One week later, on January 6, 2006 I emailed their customer service dept to see what the hold up was. I received an email a few days later that said, "We experienced an unforeseen delay in shipping the products from your order. We will send you an email, once your product is shipped." Well thanks, that tells me a lot.

So I thought I would call their customer service number to see if they could give me some idea when it would ship. But wait. There is NO number on the web site. In order to call them, you have to email them and ask for their phone number. Eventually, I received it and called, still on the 6th.

The customer service representative said they'd had a problem with supplies of the product, but that it had been resolved and my item would ship within 1-2 days of that date. He had no explanation for why, if they didn't have the product, their web site continued to say 'in-stock' and 'ships in 1-2 days'.

I waited another week. By now it's January 13 and the customer service rep cannot tell me anything about what happened, why there was a delay or when I would receive the item. Was the other guy just making up that story about a supply problem? Why wouldn't this person have at least the same information? I asked to speak to a supervisor and was told none would be in until later that day.

While waiting, I checked a few other online stores, found one that had the same item and asked them if they were in-stock and would ship the same or next day. They said yes. So I called buy.com back again and asked to cancel my order. The rep said he could request a cancellation, but that it would take 24 hours for it to take effect.

By the afternoon of January 16, the order was still not cancelled, so I called again. This time the rep said it would take 10 days to cancel the order and in that time it was still possible for the item to ship. I asked to speak to a supervisor and was told they were all too busy to talk to me. I insisted several times and received the same answer several times. In the end, I spoke to someone who claimed to be a supervisor, but I don't believe she was. I was told earlier that the supervisors were located in California while the regular reps were in India and this supervisor had the same Indian accent of the regular reps. I can't prove it, but I believe she passed me along to another rep, who also refused any sort of help, just to get rid of me. In the end, I can do nothing but sit here and hope that their shipping people are incompetent enough to continue delaying my order until the cancellation takes effect.

If you are smart enough to come here and check this out before doing business with these people (as I was not), then do yourself a favor and do not, under any circumstances subject yourself to this company.

I've actually done a lot of business with them in the past and did not have a complaint before. However, you never know how good a company is when things are going well. You only learn how good a company is when you see how they handle a problem. On that score, buy.com fails miserably.

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Followup: It's two days later (Wed, 1/18) and my item arrived today from the other online retailer (ordered Fri, 1/13) while buy.com still hasn't cancelled my order.

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Final followup: It's 1/31/2005, 32 days after I placed the order and 18 days after I asked to cancel the order. They finally cancelled the order today after one more very 'assertive' phone call yesterday. I am grateful to finally be done with this company. I will never buy from them again."

"After ordering from them 5 times, I can only conlude that buy.com does not care about their customers.

While my first few experiences with them did not require any customer support, two subsequent orders did did due to delay in shipping. For absolutely no reason (none of the items were backordered), my orders were shipped 1 week and 2 weeks after I had placed my order.

No reason was given for the delay and no token or apology that would keep me as a customer was offered for the delay.

With so many online retailers that can do a much better job and provide good customer support if things do go wrong, there is no room for a company like buy.com.


"

" I'm very surprised the reviews of Buy.com are so low. I have made numerous purchases from this site in the past few months, I have been extremely happy with all of my orders. I understand when dealing with high volume online stores like this, if you do have issues with your order you can probably expect a painful return process. Luckly I've not had to return anything. My last purchase was a Digital SLR Camera I had found cheaper on a few of those "NYC Camera shop web sites". Avoid at all cost. I ordered 3 days ago, did not pay extra for the quicker shipping. All of my purchases were received in 4 days or less. Including the orders made the week before Christmas. I was disappointed to find a reputable site selling this same camera for $50.00 less than I paid while searching on this site. All in all, I will shop buy.com without hesitation."

"I ordered a sandisk memory stick pro duo which was priced at $139.99 + free shipping - 10% email coupon from them. They then overcharged my paypal account, said they couldnt verify I was who I said I was, cancelled my ordere, and said look for a refund in a couple of days, and we're not honoring our price. So I'm out a 10% coupon too. The supervisor melina gardner was very rude and unhelpful and acted like I was bothering her."

"I first want to say that I was very satisfied with my purchase. I had found in a deals forum the Kingston Elite Pro 2 GB CompactFlash Card for a MUST HAVE price. I was only hesitant because of the mail in rebates that made it such a hot price. The first mail-in was through Kingston and I had no doubts with that one but the other mail-in was through buy.com and I had never delt with this company before. I looked here and noticed the lower score and still wasnt sure. I decided that even if their rebate never came in I would still be getting a decent deal so I ordered. The package came in 7 business days with standard shipping. Almost 3 months later I received both rebates. So all is well and this experience has definitely been satisfactory."

"I was surprised to see the low rating for Buy.com.
I have done business with them for about 6 years, purchased a variety of items, and never had any significant problem.
I don't think I've ever even had to call customer service, so I guess I can't say anything about that.
Their site can be a little annoying sometimes.
Also, there were a few occasions when they did not ship very quickly.
But on the plus side I feel that I can actually trust their reviews, because I see a lot of bad reviews on certain products. I don't think they censor much. They usually have good prices, especially on sale items and with coupons.
Very good store overall: Trustworthy, although not always extremely prompt.

EDIT: I see a lot of people reviewing various stores and complaining about slow shipping in the 3 days before Christmas.
Come on.
You have to see that coming..."

"half their products are broken in one way or an other. they deliver fast"

"Excellent experience. Exactly as ordered and shipped in a timely fashion."

"Ordered Sony Cassette adapter for iPod. Item was shipped next day by UPS Ground. I was surprised when I received shipment the next day after shipping date. As I found, order was shipped from the nearest warehouse. Very good! "

"I'm amazed at all of the negative reviews that have recently appeared here for Buy.com
I've been a satisfied customer of theirs for some time now, and just recently received a 2GB CF card at a tremendous savings quite promptly.
In spite of the recent scathing reviews, I highly recommend Buy.com!"

"I ordered a Canon iP8500 from Buy.com on December 18th (with 2 day delivery ) as a Christmas present for my mom. The website indicated that it would ship within 24 hours. Come Christmas, no printer. The website then said "Usually ships within 1 to 2 weeks".

Oh, did I mention that I never got an email saying it was now backordered? Well, I didn't.

Now, on Jan 8th, *still* no printer and it still reads 1 to 2 weeks. There's no phone number on the website, just a web form. In fairness they answered quickly, but only to say they don't know when it will ship. Gee, thanks. Maybe they're ok if products are in stock, but these jokers clearly can't track their inventory and certainly don't communicate to their customers. I wouldn't waste my time on these guys."

"I purchasd 3 fans and only received 2. I Wrote the store about the problem and received an automated reply about my request being considered. I finally found a phone number to call Buy.com and called. The woman said there was nothing she could do as I had filed a complaint. They wouldn't let me cancel the order and since I was in the middle of building a new computer I needed the fan ASAP. Over two weeks later I finally received the missing fan. All other service was good but I will not use them again."

"I've bought lots of items from Buy.com and never had a problem before. However, this time I ordered a cellphone and it was a horrible experience.

1. I purchased a Sony Ericsson W600 on 12/21, which was priced at $150 but it had $250 in rebates. So in the end I would actually make a $100, which at the time was a better deal than amazon.com had (which is where I buy my cellphones usually).

2. I selected overnight shipping (at $16). According to the site it would take 1-2 business days before the phone would be shipped. So with the overnight shipping my hope was to get it before Christmas, or maybe the day after.

3. After not hearing anything for a few days I checked the website and it said that the phones were backordered, and that it might take upto an additional 72 hours before it would be shipped.

4. A few more days went by and the status on the website didn't change. I send an email to customer support but did not hear back from them.

5. Finally I checked the website again on 12/31 and it said it had shipped 2nd day with Fedex, NOT OVERNIGHT AS I HAD REQUESTED AND PAID FOR.

6. I emailed customer service again, asking for a credit on the shipping charges but again didn't hear back from them.

7. I finally received the phone on 1/4 (10 business days after ordering).

When I opened the box I found only one of the two rebates there (buy.com doesn't let you print the rebates from the website, they actually ship it with the product). The $150 'customer appreciation' rebate was there but not the $100 Cingular rebate. I had to go to amazon.com to print that form.

When checking the $150 'customer appriciation' rebate I was SHOCKED to see that you can only submit the rebate between 180 days - 210 days AFTER activating the phone. That's between 6 - 7 months!!! Who goes through the trouble of keeping this piece of paper for that long and thinks about submitting it 6 months into the purchase? THIS IS CRAZY! This rebate was CLEARLY designed so that customers would forget about it so Buy.com doesn't have to write the check. It is very misleading, because you they won't accept early or late submissions, so you have 30 days to submit it after having to keep all the paperwork that they want included with the form for 6 month!!

I found out that buy.com doens't actually do anything besides sell the phones and the plans. The actual processing, etc. is all done by another company with a website called www.whereismyorder.com. They obviously suck at what they do since I received my phone late, received no replies to my 2 complaints, received incomplete rebate materials and the 'customer appreciation' is misleading and useless to me, although I don't know if that rebate is provided by buy.com or the processing company.

My advise to others: think twice about ordering your cellphone through buy.com. While I've had great experiences with other products at buy.com, this was terrible and I will never do it again. Go to amazon.com, they've been pretty good with cellphones and you can at least submit your rebates right away."

"deliberately misleading information specifying parts that are not part of the package specifically aw920 outdoor wirless speaker. Their verbage follows: 'Includes 1 speaker, RF transmitter and AC adapter '. Transmitter not included sold separately for 60 dollars. Not that they care, but I'm done with them..."

"Ordered (2)Crucial Gizmo 512Mb devices. They shipped quickly and sent an email with tracking number. I used the tracking number to follow the progress and know exactly when they would be delivered. Great product and great service. Yes, I'll order from them again."