So Sara and I have been fighting with WeddingChannel.com for the last couple of weeks about an order of disposable cameras that we never received. At first they were decent about it and said that the order had been delivered, so they’d have to verify with UPS before re-shipping the order. After something like 10 business days, they finally called Sara back and told her that they’d been shipped to the address that was given, so there would be no refund, but they’d be happy to sell us another batch of the cameras if we wanted! She asked them why would she want to do that, as she hadn’t received the last shipment of cameras that she’d paid for, and their only reply was there was nothing they could do to help.
Before I left work, I asked her to check online to see if I had mis-typed our street address when I originally placed the order and it turns out that I did, so with my fingers crossed I walked over to the neighbor’s house when I got home in hope that whoever answered the door would be an honest person who didn’t just try to keep the mysterious package that had been delivered to them.
Talk about a sigh of relief!
As soon as I asked if he’d gotten any packages he didn’t order, he exclaimed, “Oh – the cameras?! Yes – come inside. I’ll go get ’em for you!!! Honey, it’s the camera guy!” When he came back with the package, he explained – and this is just rich – that after he couldn’t find my name in the phone book or on yellowpages.com, he looked the company up on the Internet and called them twice to explain that they’d received a package that they didn’t order. The response from WeddingChannel.com? “That’s the address we were told to ship them to – there’s nothing we can do.” I replied that Sara had been calling them to figure out where the order was, too, and they weren’t much help either, and all the three of us standing there could do was shrug.
What I don’t understand is why a complete stranger calling in to say that he’d received something that he didn’t order didn’t raise any flags. So the address was wrong – we still had to provide an e-mail address and a phone number when we placed the order – why didn’t they put two and two together and give us a call? Worse yet, allegedly they had an “investigation” open to research where the order had gone – what, do they keep their billing records on assorted wedding napkins lying around the office?!
We learned two things today:
Number 1 – Do not order anything for your wedding from WeddingChannel.com. Sure, it was completely my fault that the address was wrong, but the fact that they completely shrugged off our problem because they weren’t technically in the wrong was deplorable. A company that wanted the good word of mouth, as many brides often tend to share vendors with their other friends who get married later, would’ve made more of an effort to help us find what we’d paid for.
Number 2 –Not all of our neighbors are complete morons. Despite the lasso kid next door and the kid who parks his beat-up Mustang right across from our driveway where it almost gets hit every single morning, there are still some good people out there. I was really worried that whoever had gotten them would’ve either trashed them or used them themselves by now, but other than opening the box to try to find anything to help track us down, our cool neighbors had left everything else in tact. And in a time when we would’ve struggled to find the cash to re-order them with everything else that’s going on, we very much appreciated that kindness.