An ebay story

[Benner]

Not the first bad comment I have heard about them.  Many happy punters as well though.

[Chako]

I have dealt with them before, and it was always top service returned. I am not overly worried. If it is due to sickness, I can well understand, and that will not harm any future business from me.

[sawman]

I just received a response from Gad Zooks promising to re-send my item if it doesnt show up in the next few days.  I'll keep you posted   

[sawman]

Great news - at my door arrived today a brand new Skeletool CX from Gad-Zooks.  I'm willing to forgive, and I left good feedback.  Hope everyone else has a positive outcome with their items.

[Chako]

You think that is bad. I finally got an update from the tracking number on the USPS site about my Gad-zooks order.

Your item was processed through and left our JAMAICA, NY 11430 facility on September 22, 2010. The item is currently in transit to the destination. Information, if available, is updated periodically throughout the day. Please check again later.

 Detailed Results:
  
 Processed through Sort Facility, September 22, 2010, 2:25 pm, JAMAICA, NY 11430
 Electronic Shipping Info Received, August 31, 2010

 

A whole month just sitting there doing nothing! What the....  

This hasn't even crossed the border yet. Dang...I hope I get this before Halloween strikes.

Either way, I will be super happy to get the package. I have a few items I was hoping to use sooner than later in there.

 

[parmenides]

 
 Processed through Sort Facility, September 22, 2010, 2:25 pm, JAMAICA, NY 11430
 Electronic Shipping Info Received, August 31, 2010 [/b]

 

A whole month just sitting there doing nothing! What the....  

 

Chako:

"Electronic Shipping Info Received" just means that the vendor printed a shipping label.  It does not mean that the item was delivered to the PO.

This seems to be a general complaint with the 'zooks lately - they print a shipping label and mark the item as "shipped", which includes a message to the customer as such.  In reality they've just printed a label and your package hasn't necessarily left their warehouse yet.

I received my package today, 13 days after the package was "shipped" US Priority.  In reality, when the package was actually shipped (not just a printed label) and I was able to track it in the mailstream it took 3 days to transit to my house, which is as expected.

[sawman]

That sounds like dishonest practices to me.  I think I will not deal with them anymore. 

[Chako]

I am well aware of that parmenides.


sawman, I have bought items from them before with no complaints. This could very well be something out of their control due to sickness (Illness was mentioned in this thread I think). If they are not well enough and it is a small operation, I can understand the delays and possibly the inability to give their customers a heads up. These things do happen you know. If they were bed ridden for a few weeks, I can't exactly complain and say I will never buy from them again due to circumstances that were out of everyone’s hands.

[Andreas]

It depends on how you define "out of their hands". In my opiniion, in this case there exists systems which would have let them explain this to their customers with about 5 minutes of work put in. They haven't. Also, if the amount og business they do isn't reflected in the amount of staff they have, I wouldn't call it "out of their hands" when someone gets sick and everything breaks down. All companies have to deal with illness, but there aren't many that get total breakdowns like this because of it. According to gad-zooks themselves they ship out 50-80 orders per day (they said so in an email to me) which makes sense looking at the ebay feedback numbers, and I'd conservatively estimate they make at least an average of 4-5 dollars per order between the profit on the items, the shipping&handling charge, and the shipping calculator charging too much internationally. Probably more, considering amazon is cheaper on many of their items and they buy wholesale. With 1200 orders per month that's at least 5000 dollars. Add a more realistic profit marging and up the total orders to add those from the website (50-80 orders per day total means at least 2000 per month assuming 4 weeks of 5 business days) and you'd think they could afford to train a teenager or two to help out around christmas or when someone is sick.

[sawman]

I'm a reasonable person and in the future if I hear that these problems have been corrected and they have gotten back on track I will be more than happy to trust them with my dollar again.  You can't expect someone to hail a taxi that has 3 flat tires on it now can you 

[Andreas]

You can't expect someone to hail a taxi that has 3 flat tires on it now can you 

Indeed, and if there was indeed a taxi with 3 flat tires I doubt very well they would still have the "in service" sign on... which is what gad-zooks has

[Vladimir]

You are forgetting that Gad-zooks,beside ebay shop,also have an online shop in which is almost impossible to shop and that they are not replying to emails referring to that problem

[DaveK]

Christ - you lot aren't very forgiving are you?

Gad-Zooks is what it is - a small enterprise that seems to be growing fast (maybe a little too fast by the sounds of things) as a direct result of the fact that people like / have liked their prices and service.

The problem with small enterprises is that they are vulnerable to things like a key member of staff being ill and similar circumstances. I can understand people not being happy with poor service, and I can understand them wanting to shop elsewhere (and pay more in the process), that's a personal choice.

Surmising that there is dishonest practice afoot though is bang out of order IMO.

Personally, I remember Lyndsey's ebay store and web-site as being one of the very, very few US sellers that were prepared to export Leatherman tools a few years ago (today we're spoiled for choice), and I also remember the fantastic customer service in the rare event that they (or I for that matter) made a mistake. Without Gad-Zooks, I probably never would have started collecting LM tools tbh

It looks to me as though Lyndsey is slowly but surely putting right the wrongs, refunding postage etc and hopefully any suggestion of deceit will desist.

Gad-Zooks is the sort of business that I prefer to support as opposed to big companies that have no clue what they are selling. It means there'll be the odd hiccup, but nobody's going to die, and it'll all get sorted in the end, because they are a legitimate, trustworthy, small enterprise.

[Chako]

Very well said DaveK. 

[sawman]

That's all peachy and when they get their act together I may buy from them again.   

[Benner]

To be fair, this is a feedback forum and a few people here are experiencing problems with the same seller.  Being forgiving or not, the issue still stands.

And TBH although some have had great service, this isn't the first time I have heard bad feedback on them.  It's not the second time either I'm afraid. 

I am sure all will be made right in the end. 

[Andreas]

They're trying to fix things, but the more I talk with this Lindsey character the more confused and unorganized I get the feeling the company is. I said in another thread I seriously doubt they sent out a replacement to me, by that I don't mean they are trying to scam me but rather that they're so epically confused they wouldn't know what they shipped where. They seem to simply have too many customers

[Chako]

I got a reply yesterday. It would appear they had issues with PayPal not informing them that money was received. In most cases, it was a day, in mine, a month!!! Nothing was said about sickness. Shrugs.

If they sent the items and I get them all sometime in the future, I am a happy camper. There was nothing in my shipment that required immediate fondling that I cannot wait a bit longer to get.

To each their own.

[Neil]

I got a reply yesterday. It would appear they had issues with PayPal not informing them that money was received. In most cases, it was a day, in mine, a month!!! Nothing was said about sickness. Shrugs.

If they sent the items and I get them all sometime in the future, I am a happy camper. There was nothing in my shipment that required immediate fondling that I cannot wait a bit longer to get.

To each their own.

I've been having that with PP recently as well.  Its a pain in the bum 

[Andreas]

Strange, that sort of thing is normally on a per-account basis. I remember during chinese news years one year it happened to dealextreme, no-one on the staff was payign attention and it was as alcose to doomsday as I've ever seen on any online store   thousands of orders placed and paid for without the company getting informed

PayPal is skynet? :O

[Neil]

Its not happening all the time just every say one in seven transactions doesn't generate a notification.  Not the end of the world for a small time user like myself.

I have several addresses connected to the account and so far it only seems to affect a couple.  One of which is the one I use on EDCS which did lead to me missing a payment for nearly two days last month

[Chako]

All items came in today.