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2013-02-25
1/5
"Columbia House is a great place to maximize your value if you know how to play their game -- get the most expensive titles for your enrollment, buy the bare minimum requirement to fulfill your account (preferably during a sale or some sort of promotion), then quit and sign up all over again. My friends and I loved Columbia House and bought from them for 5-10 years. But the deals aren't what they used to be, especially when they're still pushing DVDs for enrollment (their Blu-ray enrollment and fulfillment membership is an overpriced joke).
I stopped shopping at Columbia House a long time ago, and the reason is their customer service. The bargains were great when I could get them and the majority of my orders went through just fine without a hitch, but when order errors happened on their end, they became a major headache and hassle that took a lot of time and effort to fix with the customer service representatives I had to deal with.
The first big glitch with them I had to deal with was when the titles I bought for fulfillment glitched on their end and didn't count as fulfillment titles (that's when I learned I needed to make copies of the checkout screen for every damn order to show they were fulfillments and how much I was paying for them). So after I quit I get sent a voucher and charged for the price of two DVDs. Complaining with the CSR didn't help either because she was insistent that the DVDs I bought didn't count and she wouldn't let me talk to a supervisor. Eventually I got ahold of another CSR on a later date and the issue was resolved, my credit card got refunded and I didn't have to buy double the number of fulfillment titles.
Second big mistake was when they declined my fulfillment order for allegedly exceeding some sort of purchase limit (event though we were only talking like $45 here). This is what the CSR even e-mailed me when I asked why my order wouldn't go through: "Certain purchase limitations must be placed on all accounts until payment habits have been established. After these patterns are established, the account is re-evaluated and the limits are extended." So they wouldn't let me buy DVDs from them until I bought DVDs from them? Obviously I complained to them about it and they fixed it... by creating a duplicate order, meaning they were sending me my fulfillment order twice and charging me twice! And trying to get this fixed, you know what they did? Duplicated the two duplicate orders, which meant they were sending me the order two more times and charging me for it! They wouldn't cancel any of this on their end but told me to mark the packages as "return to sender" and they'd take care of it... which they did by flagging and freezing my account for excessive returns! From their CSR: "We canceled your membership because of the excessive number of returned shipments. We cannot ship any additional orders on this account." They actually expected me to pay the shipping costs of all these mistakes, but eventually credited me back for the shipping costs after I jumped through a few more hoops.
Next order they screwed up, they sent me the wrong titles. When I contacted them about it, what did they do? Yup, duplicated the order and charged me a second time. Only this time the second order cost twice as much as the first order because I had made the purchase during a buy one, get one free promo which didn't carry over for their duplicate order. When they credited me back for the returned titles, they actually undercredited me, so that took another round with CSRs to fix.
The final straw with them was when I placed a fulfillment order with them during a buy two, get two free promotion. I get a letter from them in the mail saying the titles I was getting for free were no longer being carried by Columbia House, even though they're still there on their site ready to click to purchase. Sounded like they were trying to get out of their "two free titles" promo. A CSR tried to assure me that those two titles were merely backordered and would be shipped out once they're in stock, but what happens yet again? They create another duplicate order! Fortunately this time I didn't actually get charged for it, but enough was enough. Without competitive Blu-ray prices, this wasn't worth the headaches anymore and I've never been back."
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2011-09-03
1/5
"The NextWorth trade-in program is a scam. Imagine if you were to sell something for $100. The person who buys it says it's only worth $40, won't give it back and only pays you $40. That is how the well-oiled NextWorth machine works, although with them sometimes you get $0 and there's nothing else you can do about it.
I've read stories about how if you've undervalued your item on Gazelle they'll actually increase how much they're giving you back for it. I've only heard -- and experienced -- NextWorth docking how much they pay out, and when they pay you nothing and then refuse to return your item, that tells you all you need to know about them.
When you send your items out to NextWorth you're completely at the mercy of their fraud. There are a lot of negative reviews out there about their deceitful business practices and they far outweigh the suspiciously positive reviews. You've been warned."
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