"I attempted to buy some gift cards for my team of developers, which included writing personalized notes to each one acknowledging their specific accomplishments this year (so not just cut-n-paste). After submitting my order *and receiving confirmation* I told my team to look for the gift cards in their inboxes. The next morning I woke up and found that "TimmyBot 9000" decided to cancel my order for reasons that it was unable to specifically disclose. Given that they'd already authorized my purchase and sent me confirmation, I had no idea what was wrong. I sent an email asking for clarification and how I could get my order processed. After several hours of no response, I called them, waited on hold for a while, and finally talked to Jen, who despite being very friendly with a genuine interest in helping me, was unable to either a) clarify exactly what was wrong ("Maybe the name or the phone number") or b) pull up the original order to at least get my notes, because by now the order had been *deleted* from their system. Jen offered to help me reenter my order, but with no record of the notes I'd written and no guarantee that anything would work better the next time, I just chose to go the route of Amazon gift cards, since they carry some of ThinkGeek's merchandise anyway. It might've been less personal, but at least I know Amazon is willing to take my money.

Having had such a poor initial customer experience, I definitely won't be back. If this is how they deal with new customers, I can only imagine how they deal with existing customers, and I don't want to know."

"I want to start by saying I never,ever write bad reviews. This is probably the only one I've written.
I hate seeing reviews by entitled people saying that they walked into a store and the employees didn't fall down on their knees and worship them/they'll never shop there again, yada yada.

However, if the company makes a mistake and the customer pays the consequences, I don't like that; it's bad business.

This was my first time ordering from Thinkgeek, and they have this ridiculous method of charging your account AFTER your item ships (must have a crap inventory team, I guess?).

So I made my original order for over $100. A few days later, I received an email stating that my item could not be sent until I 1.added funds to my PayPal(already had over $200 in there,so...), 2.Use a "different credit card" in Paypal, 3. Try to "use the same credit or debit card" in Paypal, and then step #2 was to contact them after you've done one of those things so that they could ship your item.

So, since I already had $200+ in my Paypal, I decided that their system was just dumb and it'd probably take forever to converse with customer service(this turned out to be true later on) and this was an Xmas gift, so I ignored the email and placed a different order.
I never contacted them to "fix" my original order, so it was never supposed to process. I already had the money in my account, so there was nothing for me to fix.

The next day I received ONE message from Paypal stating that a $100+ charge from Thinkgeek looked suspicious and to approve it. Of course since it was just a message concerning one charge, I approved it.
Later on I checked my email and noticed that Thinkgeek sent me two messages saying that both the original order and the one I approved had shipped.

I was pretty livid, since that $ was the last of my Christmas money and I had never gotten back to them to resolve the apparent payment issue with the first one. It should have never been shipped.

If they would just charge you upon placing the order like any other company, this would have never even happened. That's just a really poor business tactic. Get a better inventory team or break it to your customers and refund them when the item they bought is no longer available because you're a cheap and irresponsible company. Either way, bad business, but it's honestly favorable to being double charged/getting a double order.

I contacted them describing the incident and also opened an unauthorized payment case with PayPal. They state that they normally get back to you in 2 days, but it took them a week to respond to me. In the meantime, PayPal did find that the payment was unauthorized and refunded me a day after I filed the complaint.

However, I guess Thinkgeek didn't get the memo.
I get that it's the holiday season and they're likely swamped with orders and emails(doing horrible business like this, I can especially see how), but come on.

What upset me most was the response that I got from Thinkgeek. 1.They weren't aware that PayPal already refunded my money-great for someone looking to make an extra $100+ but it really just makes me confused as to how this site is so popular and doesn't hire a good team/is still in business, 2.I was told that I would need to ship the item back to their warehouse to receive a refund. Thinkgeek is owned by Game Stop. Anyone could EASILY walk in and return it-though they'd probably have given me $5-10 store credit for it If I tried. They didn't send me a return label or anything, even though this was their mistake. And it's right before Christmas.

I'm so thankful for PayPal because I got my $ back for gifts, but ThinkGeek really needs better customer service, to update their system, and to charge upon orders being placed. If it weren't for PayPal, I wouldn't have the rest of the gifts on my list. I'd have to pay out of my own pocket for a mistake that the company made, for a heavy item, wait for it to be shipped back, and cross my fingers that they'd acknowledge it arriving to their warehouse. Seeing as they're unaware of anything else.

I wish I'd have read the horrible reviews on them before, but I am happy to have my item. I will never order from them ever again though. Thanks PayPal, you saved Christmas.
Never again."

"absolute worst online retail experience, EVER. they sold me a product that was out of stock and when i called about a refund they said oh we have another in stock give us your credit card again and we'll replace it and refund your original order, plus a $10 discount. So i did and they charged me $10 EXTRA. then 4 hours later I get an email that this 2nd order is out of stock. I had to spend FOUR F**** HOURS on the phone with them in a joint call with my bank (bank was only on phone for 15 min) to get my now $300 refunded. HORRIBLE. And, every customer service person i spoke to was a complete ****, so rude to me. Then my bank tells them they need a fax to process the refund immediately (as opposed to me waiting 6-10 business days for my money) and these MORONS tell my bank they dont have a single fax machine! You're an e-commerce business without a fax machine!???"

"I recently bought some Pokemon themed presents for my girlfriend from ThinkGeek.com. The last time I had seen them in GameStop they were $30, but were offered at $20 on the ThinkGeek website. I went to put them in my cart and found that, unlike almost every other major retailer, the ship-to-store option was not free. They charged $3.50 to send the SAME PRODUCT that was already on my local GameStop shelves to the store....something I wouldn't have to do if GameStop price matched their OWN F**KING WEBSITES. I ordered these at roughly 215pm.

At 730pm, I went into one of my local GameStops and found the same item for $15. I thought, "Great, I can get these in store, not worry about shipments getting lost this time of year, and save about $10 over the BS website cost." I logged into the website only to find there was no way to cancel my order without contacting customer support. I got into a chat session and asked to cancel my order. I was informed that they would put in the request but that it would likely not be cancelled. Kudos to them on the speedy turn around on my order, I guess, but if it's still in the Processing stage, wouldn't that mean it's not been sent out for delivery? Why can this not be cancelled before it's sent out?

I then asked what the policy on returns were. On top of the fact that I would lose the ridiculous ship-to-store charge, they were going to charge me to return it to them if the item was non-defective. I had to stop for a minute to let that process as I've never had any online ordering experience like this from a major retailer. I then asked what would happen if I simply didn't pick up the item within the seven day window. Between what the support representative told me and what the website states, ThinkGeek (GameStop) would basically return the item to their warehouse but not issue me a refund. Essentially, they would charge me for absolutely nothing.

I feel bad for ThinkGeek because I'm guessing they were a pretty solid company before GameStop bought them out. For now, until their return and/or price matching policies are reviewed and updated to reflect the modern market, I will NEVER purchase from them direct ever again and will likely not buy their brand in stores, either. With companies like Amazon and Walmart dominating the online seller space, this business model is archaic and inexcusable.

tl,dr; They charge for ship to store, charge you to return a product unless it's defective, and will keep your money and their product if not picked up from the store within seven days of arrival. If you like being treated like a complete nuisance as a consumer, ThinkGeek is the website for you."

"They send coupons saying you get discounts, then they exclude items without saying,and they could care less about you as customer. John W the supervisor actually said he would rather lose me as a customer forever, and the pending $160 order, than put a $5 discount per what is stated on the website. In a time when sites should want to compete against amazon, I think its time that they should look at how to compete. Consumers have no time for sites that think just bc they have cool products we should buy from them. If they ****, give a difft gift and let them go out of business. Look at the reviews of ThinkGeek. Let's make them dinosaurs."

"They sent me the wrong item, told me it was my fault, then told me I had to pay to return the item. Terrible customer service. "

"Well I ordered something and wanted to returned. Talked to customer service and she said that she will email me but still waiting for my email. I am now calling and have been waiting for 30 minutes and holding. Guess they realize I am not too happy. Well I will send it to the address with a return receipt. I will have my credit card follow up. I kept pictures and got the RMA#. Lesson learned I will not order anything from them again."

"Customer service ****. Didn't bother responding to my emails and never received my order. Still waiting on my refund."

"They claim items shipped (ups only shows a label created, not picked up) but never did. These were gifts, ordered with ample time, and nothing a month later?! Chatted with customer service and still nothing! What happened? You guys used to be great, I've been ordering from y'all for years and never been treated like this."

"I ordered something for my son's birthday almost 6 weeks ago and I still have not received it!!!!! The money was taken from the bank, and they said I could not cancel my order. It stated the money would be taken out only when the product was shipped. I did not receive the package, so I called the company. I exclaimed the situation, and said I want to cancel my order, they said I could not. They could not find my order and did not know when it shipped. I received an email saying it was shipped sept 15th. It is now sept 28, and nothing. I called 5 times, and the customer service people are clueless. Each promised to call me back after they looked into it. Nothing!!!! This afternoon, I received an email saying they ran out of the product. So I paid for something that they could not provide and will take over $400 dollars from my account , which I will not get for another month or Now my son will be dissapointed on his 10th Ibirthday. I WILL NEVER BUY FROM THIS COMPANY AGAIN. Shame on you and your lousy company"

"Ordered an item at ThinkGeek that got stuck in a UPS warehouse due to a damaged invoice. I've had contact with their customer support three times but the issue still isn't resolved. My package has been stuck in the same warehouse for well over a month now. To make matters worse UPS has already stated that I will have to pay an additional €25,- by the time the invoice papers are cleared in order to release the package.

Long story short, terrible customer service, definitely not worth ordering here if you live outside of the U.S."

"thinkgeek is a very very odd store"

"So basically I ordered a gift for a friend's birthday, I'm in US, my friend is in UK. I paid extra for the package to be delivered express. There was an additional fee (tax as I was told) that my friend had to pay when he got it. Like who has to ever pay for their own gift? He had to deny the package cuz he didn't have enough cash on hand to pay and had to turn the package away. It went to the warehouse. I contacted think geek who told me I had to contact UPS. I contacted them and they said I had to contact think geek. Got the run around and told them that they are responsible for contacting their carrier, UPS. They said they can't get the package and oh I'm lost out on the money I paid, all I get is an apology, no chance to redirect the order to me or to be returned. I don't feel they properly made me the customer away of a fee to be charged and or the opportunity to pay prior so the person getting the package doesn't have to shell out more cash when they get it. Just a way to take advantage of their customer. Never again will I use them.

P.S I ordered a stupid Star wars bb8 waffle maker, the back panel of the hinge broke off the first time I used it so quality rating: 0"

"First of all, they have a really cool selection of stuff. Secondly, everything I bought two years ago is still in use, and is no longer on the website. This makes them very unique"

"I ordered a ThinkGeek exclusive pop figure to be shipped to the U.K. (I'm a sticker collector and had to have this one). On the Sunday night I put my order through, and low and behold it was on my doorstep by the Wednesday. I'm not sure if the delivery speed is a recurring thing but I was so happy when I got it!

When my Funko Pop was delivered it was packaged perfectly and resulted in a mint condition pop. I'll definitely be ordering from ThinkGeek again. Great service."