"Placed an order for a deal of the day item, a TDK MOJO mp3 player with rebates. Links to the rebate forms were posted on their site. Only after I placed the order did I learn that the rebates were for a different model, their mistake. So I decided to cancel my order for the mp3 player and another item. A few days later, they shipped the other item which I cancelled five days ago. Fine, I will RMA the item back for a refund. The status for the mp3 player shows as 'cancellation requested'. More than two weeks has pass and guess what, they still shipped the mp3 player. What kind of service is this? They don't even have a phone number for you to speak to a customer rep. Really disappointed w/ their service, believe me this is the last time I'll have to deal with them. Take my advise, order from a site that provide a phone number for you to contact a live person."

"
Five days after ordering a Rio Nitrus Ultra
on their page which listed will ship in 24
to 48 hours I received what was apparently
a "coded" message stating they were out of
stock. Of course the email didn't explictly
state they were out of stock, it stated the
following:
--------
We are still working on shipping the following item(s) from order #17610617.

You will not be billed until your product actually ships. If you wish to cancel your order for this item, or if you have any questions, please visit customer support or let the Buy.com eXpert below answer your order questions.

Thank you for your patience,

Kelly Johnson
Director, Customer Support
----------
The subject of this email was "Still looking....".

Their web page listed this item as "will ship
in 24 to 48 hours" right up to the day I got
their "coded" email.

Apparently, this merchant is misleading.

This is the last time I give this merchant a
chance."

"I placed an order with Buy.com partly because of their prices but mostly because every item in my order was in stock and would ship within "24-48 hours."

4 days later, only 1 of the three items had been shipped. I received a letter from Buy.com indicating that they were "Still looking" for my items. Upon looking at their web site for these items, I was appalled to notice that they now listed they would ship in "2-3 weeks"! These were Christmas presents and I could not deal with this type of delay. Since they clearly didn't have them in stock to send to me, I cancelled the order for those 2 items.

Another 4 days later I was informed that one of thoses items I had cancelled was on its way! This was shortly before I was going to order a replacement! Upon emailing Buy.com about this (since they have no phone number listed) I received a fairly generic response saying that I had to wait 2-3 business days for order cancellations to be "approved." I question how it is an order that is listed as being 2-3 weeks from shipping needs 2-3 days to be "approved." Approval implies I don't have the authority to cancel an order which I clearly do in this situation. In addition, it is now on day 5 (business day 4) since I cancelled the order and the final item is still listed as "Pending Cancellation." They have not responded to any of my most recent emails demanding that this be taken care of.

Buy.com might be good if you want good (though not excellent) prices. But, beware if you need to deal with Customer Service. They provide no Customer Service to speak of.

----------
My wife just told me about another issue. She had also placed an order with buy.com for Christmas presents. She also had an issue where they couldn't ship it, so she also cancelled her order. Unlike my story she got an email telling her that the order was indeed cancelled on 12/5.

Well, just the other day on 12/29, she received another email telling her that her order had been shipped!!! This after her order had been "approved"!

So, no matter what they say about an order - that it's out of stock, that your cancellation will be processed in 2-3 days, or even that your order has been cancelled - expect that they are going to ship it against your wishes anyway."

"I recently ordered 2 pairs of Pinnacle AC650 speakers (4 speakers total) from Buy.com on Wed, Nov 25th. I am helping my brother set up a home theater. I happened to hear about a good deal on these speakers on Buy.com - $78.75/pair. The catch is you HAD to buy the 2nd day air for $68.60 to get the deal. Well, that's an awful lot for delivery but the grand total of $226.10 was still a good deal for the 2 pairs of speakers so I said, what the heck?

What the heck? I'll tell you what the heck.

Everything seemed to be okay at first. I received the order confirmation e-mail from Buy.com the next day (Wed, Nov 26th). I figured since Thursday was Thanksgiving, I was on schedule to get the speakers on Friday, Nov 28th (The 2 business days being Wed + Fri). I figured "That's what 2 business-day shipping means, right?"

Wrong.I don't hear anything from them on Friday, but on Saturday, Nov 29th, I receive this e-mail from them: "Hello Seann,
We are still working on shipping the following item(s) from order #17495927.
You will not be billed until your product actually ships. If you wish to cancel your order for this item, or if you have any questions, please visit customer support or let the Buy.com eXpert below answer your order questions.

Thank you for your patience,

Kelly Johnson
Director, Customer Support

This really wouldn't be a problem normally. Small delays sometimes happen. My problem with this delay is that I had paid almost SEVENTY DOLLARS for 2nd-day shipping. They gave me the option to cancel my order in this e-mail but I still wanted the speakers, so I figured (with fingers crossed) that it was just a small hiccup and the speakers would soon come (Oh, how I regret my decision not to cancel the speakers having seen how this would unfold!!!)

Again, I want to repeat that a small delay is NOT a problem unless you are charging exorbitant delivery fees for expedited shipping. If you ask someone to pay 50% of the cost of an item(s) for 2-day shipping then you better deliver it in 2-days. If you can't, then you better either A) not offer that item with 2 day shipping, or B) refund the customers shipping fee with an apology and an explanation as to why the item was delivered so incredibly late.

But, you may be asking yourself, why is Seann so steamed about having to wait a few extra days for his speakers, even though I agree with his ideas Buy.com should use to remedy the delivery problem to make the customer happy?

If it were only the shipping issue, I would be upset. But the problems just got worse. I sent an e-mail on Mon, Dec 1st, inquiring about my order. Their onsite order status still read the infamous "Sent to Warehouse" and we were now 3 business days after my order and no speakers. I got a boilerplate response back stating that my e-mail had been forwarded to their claims department and they would contact me "as soon as
they finish up with the customers they're already working with"

Well, they must either have an avalanche of claims to deal with or they are full of bull because here it is on Dec 9th and still no word back from them. I understand that they went to an all e-mail customer service system to save money (I didn't know that before I ordered, but caveat emptor, right?), but NINE DAYS is way too long of a turnaround time to hear something.

To complicate matters, I received 1 pair of speakers on Dec 5th. So now I had half my order delivered late and the other half nowhere to be found. The website says the order is complete and the tracking says the order was delivered, but there were 3 people present(me and my 2 roommates) to take delivery of the speakers and they only delivered 1 box.

I fired off an e-mail inquiring about the other pair of speakers. Get auto-response stating "You are very important to us. We will response as quickly as possible.Yadda.Yadda.Yadda."

AND MONKEYS MIGHT FLY OUT OF MY BUTT!(My apologies to Wayne) I still had not received a response to my first e-mail sent 5 days earlier. I tried to file a lost item claim, but the website says they cannot help me because I have to wait 13 days after shipping to file the claim. Yeah, that would be right. IF I HADN'T PAID FOR TWO DAY SHIPPING! Their own timetable says you can file a claim after 3 days if you don't receive a 2 day shipping item. The website doesn't see me this way and is treating me like I had gotten free shipping or something.

To make everything 10 times more frustrating, they take forever to make a meaningful response to your e-mail. They claim a 12-hour turnaround time on e-mail, but no sane human being would consider an auto-response (which is all I have EVER gotten from them within a 12 hour window) as a real response. So an issue that could probably be cleared up in 15 minutes on the phone, is taking many many weeks of pain and suffering.

Beware when buying from buy.com. If anything goes wrong, you will end up hating them (and yourself for ordering from them) because of their HORRIBLE "customer service"!"

"I ordered a replacement battery for my UPS. It was shipped and delivered on time as promised. I would do business with this retailer again!"

"Fairly good prices but terrible service. Ordered two items, both shown on website as "in stock - ships within 24 hours". After 4 days of the order status still showing "sent to warehouse", I attempted to cancel. Eight hours later, received notification that one item had in fact shipped with 24 hours, though they hadn't bothered to notify me or update their web-based order status tool. It took two more cancellation requests and another week before they would cancel the second item, despite the fact that it hadn't ever shipped and actually had been removed from their website offerings. I'll never deal with this outfit again."

"Here's a further update to what I REPORTED EARLIER (shown below). I'm still very satisfied with what I received and the turnaround time. I received the DVD player within the 9 day timeframe they stated (actually received on the 9th day). However, Buy.com's on-line tracking system is not very reliable. Although the on-line tracking system did accurately reflect when my camera was shipped, it continues to show to this day the status of my DVD player as "shipped to the warehouse", even though I received it 5 days ago. As for customer service, they do send you an immediate email saying they are still looking into the status of your order, but that email is meaningless. Also, they don't always respond to specific questions like "do you have a telephone number I can call to speak to customer service". They ignored this question in their response to me regarding my order. I would still, however,continue to use buy.com as they did deliver the products on time and in excellent condition.

---------------
VERY SATISFIED CUSTOMER!! 2-day turnaround time with delivery of item!!

Although there were quite a few negative comments about this vendor, there were also quite a few very positive comments about them. I decided to give them a try. On Tues.(12/2) I placed an order for a Fujifilm Finepix A210 Digital Camera (for a very low price of $169). I took advantage of the free shipping by selecting the "budget" option of 7-9 business days. FedExpress delivered my camera on Thursday, 12/4 at 12 noon EST. That's a 2 day turnaround (versus the 7 to 9 days I was expecting). Based on the return-address label on the shipping package, it appears that Buy.Com has a distribution center in Swedesboro,NJ which is not too far from where I live. That may explain, in part, why I received my package so early.

Interesting enough, 1 day prior to placing the order for the camera, I placed an order for a DVD player as well. When I checked the Buy.com site (today 12/4) to check on the status of this item, I saw that it had not yet left the warehouse. I'm thinking that this item will not be shipped from the Swedesboro, NJ location. I'll do another writeup once I receive that item."

"We am very disappointed with buy.com and their lacking of concern for customer satisfaction. We ordered a 17" PyxScape monitor which was their "Featured Item" on their 17" LCD monitor web page. This was advertised with the price of $299 after two rebates. However the rebate offer for $50 dollars from the manufactuer ends if purchased after 12/07/03. I placed the order on Nov 28 and the "Featured Item" showed it usually shipped in 24 to 48 hours. After the fourth day I started getting the email replies asking if I wanted to cancel this order. Then the blame shift to the manufactuer saying they are not providing stock. Yet they still advertise it as their "Featured Item" at an "Amazing Price". They even charged our debit card for the item on Dec 2 and then shortly thereafter credited me back. The charge included a $14.65 shipping fee for an item that is advertised to ship for free! Bottom line, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is."

"This is my first purchase from this company. I placed my order for a DVD and two playstation games on Saturday. As of Tuesday morning, the status is still "sent to warehouse". They seem kind of slow.

Update: It turns out the DVD was shipped on Monday, but the status wasn't updated until Tuesday afternoon. The two playstation games are now (Wednesday) shown as "processing", even though they are still shown as being in stock. How long does it take to process two games?

Update 2: Wednesday evening I received an email apologizing for the delay in shipping the rest of my order. The email said that I could cancel the order if I preferred. Out of curiosity I checked to see if these two items were still shown as "in stock" - they were. I went ahead and used the "cancel order" link at the web site, thinking I would order it somewhere else. Today (Friday) I got an email saying that the order can't be cancelled because it has entered the shipping process. I'm not surprised, since it's been almost two days since I requested the cancellation. Do they have one person doing all the work there?

Update 3: As of Monday (Dec. 8) the order status still hadn't changed. I emailed them asking why the order hadn't shipped yet if it had been too late to cancel it on Friday. They responded saying that they were able to cancel the order after all. I'm done with this episode, and there probably won't be another with this company. The only good thing I can say is that they didn't charge my credit card for the items that didn't get shipped."

"I've dealt with bunches of online companies and I am truly disgusted with BUY.com. I recently purchased a DVD player that was obviously used and was shipped in the manufacturer's original box with zero packaging besides that! To make matters worse, the remote was loose and banged around inside AND the styrofoam was not of that model because the unit was not even snug and in fact was quite loose in the box. Needless to say, I shipped it right back - at my cost, for a refund but not before taking plenty of pictures of the condition of the unit and box. Also got a router which did not operate. Worse online experience in 6 years. "

"I recently purchased an item under the buy.com 10 dollar off promotion. After placing the order I found out you must place a coupon code to get the discount. I tried contacting buy.com but they have no customer numbers to call and their email response took 48 hours. I emailed them 3 times regarding this problem and I have recieved a statement of their policies and their condolences but no help. Their website is circular and constantly points back to their policy page. My only conclusion is that they really just don't want to hear customer complaints."

"I am very unhappy with them, for a few reasons.
I purchased a dvd player on nov 15th, paid the $20 bucks for 2 day delivery, no problems.
I waited and waited, checking the site, and by the 18th, which was 2 full business days later, my item was still pending delivery. This is not acceptable. I paid for 2 day shipping and needed my player by this evening, as this was a gift for someone. Actually the worst part about it is that after researching and finally finding a phone number for them, I find out that i cannot simply cancel an order. I have to get "approved".
Excuse me? You guys messed up, didn't ship my product out in time and I can't simply cancel?
Not good.
Unfortunate thing for buy.com is that myself and around 40 IT friends and collegues, ALWAYS have shopped there. Now, after this, they lost a nice piece of change. (I.T. guys are very supportive of each other)
Sorry buy.com, you beefed."

"bought a Fuji 3800 digital camera...excellent value, shipped promptly. Will buy again. I was a first time buyer."

"Order entry was easy. Very good product selection (watch-out for out-dated pages, there was a $40 difference in the same item that was purchased). Will use again."

"Updated: I've avoided this company for a while now(2 years) because of the inability to contact them thru the phone however I took a dive when they had a promotion on an order that I couldn't past up. I'm very satisfied over an ordering dilemma which happened. Still no way to contact them on the phone but I received a response within 24 hours and everything was settled without a fight."