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Official "Sellers to avoid" thread

rootabaga

Android Expert
Aug 11, 2014
2,908
7,986
Crazyville, CA
This may not be the right place for this, or even the right venue for that matter, but I thought it might be useful to have a place to share personal stories of vendors with whom we have had horrible experiences, so that others in searching might find the information and be forewarned - or warned away entirely.

This might be really good for companies for which feedback can't be found elsewhere (as me, in the instance detailed below).

If the admins/mods find this to be inappropriate, please, by all means, delete the thread.

What prompted this thread is an order I placed with a company dba mugslove.com (I've since learned they are just an extension of mugslove.in in Delhi....sigh). I had never ordered from them before and did a quick search, but found nothing negative out there. Or positive, for that matter, which perhaps might have been a clue.

However, I had a promo code for a tidy discount, which combined with the free shipping made them the best deal, so I placed an order. The order was placed April 25, 2016 and the site indicated 2-3 weeks for the free shipping offer (my option). I wanted it as a gift to give an exchange student whom I knew I'd see for the last time over Memorial Day weekend.

On May 11th, out of curiosity, I checked order status and it still just showed as "order accepted". I emailed them to ask about more details and got this response:

Free Shipping Time frame: All the items on MugsLove.com are imported from various countries as this helps us to offer you unique products at reasonable price. So, it would take:
Processing time: 5-7 Days
Delivery time: 15-20 Business Day
So, your order was already shipped from our manufacturing facility in Hong Kong to our warehouse in USA. Shortly we will receive it and then we will forward it to your address. This all will happen under promised shipping time frame.

This was the first time I'd heard mention of an additional "processing" time and I replied telling them I needed it as a gift for someone leaving the country.

I got no reply.

Last week I emailed them again and told them if I couldn't get it in time they should cancel the order. I'd hoped to have it to give in person, but...

No response.

Over the weekend I emailed telling them I need it by tomorrow so I can send it to the person before they leave the country.

No response.

For those of you keeping track, this is the 36th day since I placed the order...which is well outside the "promised" shipping time frame.

So...I have no idea if the products you can buy from mugslove.com are good or bad, or if they are junk, or, for that matter, if they are even real.

What I can tell you is that their "customer service" is nonexistent. BS backed up by lies and then silence.

Thus, my suggestion is that if you are looking for something and find that mugslove.com is the seller, just go shop the item somewhere else. You won't be sorry.
 
We were just told the same thing about LG appliances.

Two places I avoid like the plague are eBay and Craigslist. Actually, I think I'd prefer the plague. ;)

I couldn't agree more regarding craigslist,but e-Bay,while it has more than its fair share of garbage,I'm good w/it,especially with the PayPal protection/2-week deferred payouts..............
SD Cards from e-Bay are a good example (in most cases) of an item to avoid like the plague. :thumbsupdroid:
 
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And yet in this case I'd probably have been better off just dealing with ebay. Ironic, isn't it?

I've bought things form importers before. cellphoneshop or something like that where everything ships from Hong Kong. It's cheap crap junk, but it's cheap, it works and it hasn't blown up or caught fire (yet). Of course it could have easily gone the other way too.
 
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I've bought things form importers before. cellphoneshop or something like that where everything ships from Hong Kong. It's cheap crap junk, but it's cheap, it works and it hasn't blown up or caught fire (yet). Of course it could have easily gone the other way too.
I hear ya on the el cheapo' stuff.Non-electrical items are OK to take a shot,if the price is right,but,here's a rule of thumb I use when shopping on-line:
If virtually everything from a seller is depicted in renders vs actual photos/videos,RUN,DON'T WALK,it's almost guaranteed to be knock-off garbage,or worse....
 
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eBay sellers, so far, I have never had a problem with.

but, I look at their satisfaction record, and if it is below 99% then I don't order from them.

Amazon.com, so far, has been spotless for me, never a problem, and they somehow manage to ship faster than anyone else....

so, if the same thing is available on Amazon and eBay, I go with Amazon.
 
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eBay sellers, so far, I have never had a problem with.

but, I look at their satisfaction record, and if it is below 99% then I don't order from them.

Amazon.com, so far, has been spotless for me, never a problem, and they somehow manage to ship faster than anyone else....

so, if the same thing is available on Amazon and eBay, I go with Amazon.
I do the exact opposite,especially if it's direct from Amazon,for one huge reason:
I totally abhor UPS:
If the same item is shipped USPS on e-Bay,they get my business.......
 
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Amazon have a flawless record with me. No quibble refunds in the event of problems. To me, fast delivery times are meaningless. They could get the item to me within 10 minutes of ordering, but if their after-sales customer support is garbage, I will never order anything from them again.
 
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Odd about Samsung products for y'all. I bought a refurb Samsung induction cooktop range from Best Buy 4 years ago and love it. Not one bit of trouble with it. The official original return reason was they didn't know how to release the child safety lock? It was misaligned. One call from the Geek Squad fixed it.

I had a radically different experience with a recent Samsung oven purchase. One of these split compartment models, designed to save energy, but it just didn't work. Basically the oven lied about its temperature, and took forever to get anywhere near cooking temp. Completely useless to us.
And we had a very hard time getting an exchange from the retailer, after Samsung sent an 'engineer' to verify that the oven was operating normally.
 
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