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Barnes and Noble customer service ?
INeedNoSalt
with blood on my teethRegistered User regular
with blood on my teethRegistered User regular
Okay so I guess I'm a little shakey on this, and mostly I'm curious whether I need to call and yell at somebody or if I'm just being hasty. Thus is my situation:
I make an BnN account (my first, so this isn't fraudulent) because they have a coupon for 25% off one item if it's your first online purchase with them. Well, the DnD 4e books costs some hundred bucks, and even discounted for the preorder it's seventy dollars in change, so I'm going to buy it from Barnes and Nobles because I can use this coupon to get it down to about $45. I do all the fun stuff, slap the coupon on, and set my debit card as the payment type.
Okay, so for some reason, my debit card is declined. I call the bank, they can't give me a reason, so I decide forget it, I'll just a credit card (my mom's credit card, because I don't have one.) I write her a check to cover it.
Somewhere in the process of changing my payment type from the debit card to the credit card, the coupon, which is worth $22 on this order, gets removed. Why? I have no idea. I briefly entertained the idea that maybe my mom's credit card is recognised as having been used on the site before, but no: my mom has never bought anything online from B&N, either.
So I call customer service that same day and the person tells me that they cannot modify the order, but their supervisor can, and they'll forward it to them -- this is this past Wednesday -- and that I can check in on Friday and the coupon should be applied. Well, I check online and also call in to verify the price of my order, and alas, it is still uncouponed. So I call them back, and talk to another woman, who says that the coupon was applied and the total of the order was $46 and etc. I check online and through the phone to see if the order information has been updated, but it has not.
That was about twelve hours ago, and my order is still saying it's going to cost me $68. I am getting kind of annoyed.
tl;dr/question: So I am wondering this: Should I wait another day or two to see if there's some huge delay? Keep in mind that it's a preorder and ships June 6th, and that once the ship date is 3 or less days off, I can no longer cancel the order. (And if I can't get this coupon, then I will buy it from walmart, because it will be cheaper.)
Or, alternatively, should I call them up, yell about talking to a manager, explain that I will never shop with them again, etc?
edit: This quote ["You can review your Order Status at any time, but be aware that changes you have made to your order may not be reflected for up to 60 minutes, particularly during peak shopping periods. "] has me convinced that they are simply lying to me.
I make an BnN account (my first, so this isn't fraudulent) because they have a coupon for 25% off one item if it's your first online purchase with them. Well, the DnD 4e books costs some hundred bucks, and even discounted for the preorder it's seventy dollars in change, so I'm going to buy it from Barnes and Nobles because I can use this coupon to get it down to about $45. I do all the fun stuff, slap the coupon on, and set my debit card as the payment type.
Okay, so for some reason, my debit card is declined. I call the bank, they can't give me a reason, so I decide forget it, I'll just a credit card (my mom's credit card, because I don't have one.) I write her a check to cover it.
Somewhere in the process of changing my payment type from the debit card to the credit card, the coupon, which is worth $22 on this order, gets removed. Why? I have no idea. I briefly entertained the idea that maybe my mom's credit card is recognised as having been used on the site before, but no: my mom has never bought anything online from B&N, either.
So I call customer service that same day and the person tells me that they cannot modify the order, but their supervisor can, and they'll forward it to them -- this is this past Wednesday -- and that I can check in on Friday and the coupon should be applied. Well, I check online and also call in to verify the price of my order, and alas, it is still uncouponed. So I call them back, and talk to another woman, who says that the coupon was applied and the total of the order was $46 and etc. I check online and through the phone to see if the order information has been updated, but it has not.
That was about twelve hours ago, and my order is still saying it's going to cost me $68. I am getting kind of annoyed.
tl;dr/question: So I am wondering this: Should I wait another day or two to see if there's some huge delay? Keep in mind that it's a preorder and ships June 6th, and that once the ship date is 3 or less days off, I can no longer cancel the order. (And if I can't get this coupon, then I will buy it from walmart, because it will be cheaper.)
Or, alternatively, should I call them up, yell about talking to a manager, explain that I will never shop with them again, etc?
edit: This quote ["You can review your Order Status at any time, but be aware that changes you have made to your order may not be reflected for up to 60 minutes, particularly during peak shopping periods. "] has me convinced that they are simply lying to me.
INeedNoSalt on
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Posts
It's equally likely the people who talked to you were just sloppy / doing something wrong.
Call them again, explain what's happened, tell them you're still seeing $68, you're tired of going back and forth with this, and you're concerned that if you wait around, you'll end up paying too much. Tell them you need them to send you some kind of proof you'll only be charged $46, and if they can't do that, you feel like you'll be better off canceling the order & waiting until you can get the books cheaper from an Amazon Merchant.
This tells them exactly what they need to do to help you, the solution shouldn't be too demanding for them to handle, and you remind them there are viable competitors who could be getting your money. Carrot & stick. 8-)
Now, don't let them push you off until you talk to someone who can verify the order's price. Get them to email something to you and get their personal phone number. Thank them for their help and let them know that if they do charge $68 to the credit card, you will contact them personally to have the refund filed.
Murphy's Paradox: The more you plan, the more that can go wrong. The less you plan, the less likely your plan will succeed.
When I try to check the value over the phone, as well, it gives me the same number -- and it's now been 24 hours since they said the coupon was applied.
@E. Coyote: They should -- when I first put the order through, the coupon worked and the total was $44.32. After I had to change my payment type (they declined my debit card, although I called the bank and they told me there was no reason the debit wouldn't go through), the coupon was mysteriously gone and the cost of the order had jumped to $64.82.
I'm kind of in a hurry to get this solved -- I don't want to pay $64 dollars, and if they can't get the coupon applied, then I need to be able to cancel the order in time to get the pre-order discount somewhere else (like Wal-Mart, where it's fifty-some-odd dollars.)
I will call them back shortly ... The people I've talked to from their customer support have all been very polite, so I don't actually mean to be rude to them, I'm just concerned because they haven't actually gotten anything done.
I think it is a good idea that the information be accessible to the customer, anyway, it looks like it's also not updated on their end of things, because when I called just to ask for the total/if a coupon had been applied, after they looked up my order, they put me on hold. I don't even get it.
Edit: Okay well they said that they are forwarding something through and the thing will be adjusted by the time it ships, I will trust in them and wait the week to see how that goes (for some reason the coupon just won't apply correctly, I guess, so I'm thinking maybe they're going to manually apply a 25% discount?)
Also: Don't yell or make threats at the first person you talk to, they won't be able to do anything more for you than what they have done already. Only do something like that if you've talked to a manager or someone one or two positions above, and then only after politeness hasn't worked.
It's a preorder item and they don't charge the credit card until it ships (in 5 days)
So I'm going to wait and see -- and call them back if the credit card gets charged the uncoupon'd price
Murphy's Paradox: The more you plan, the more that can go wrong. The less you plan, the less likely your plan will succeed.
I don't have any advice for dealing with their customer service people, because what you've done is pretty much what I would have done in your place. With the option to simply cancel the order though, at this point (if I were you) I'd just cancel and be done with them.