OT: A positive story concerning EXTINCT ATTRACTIONS club shipping
[Start of merged topic 3385 "A Positive Story Concerning Extinct Attractions Club Shipping" dated 30 August 2007 - 09:04 AM to 06 September 2007 - 02:09 PM —Admin]
Okay, the Extinct Attractions club has it's detractors. From those who don't see how they can sell copyrighted material contained in their DVD's to those who've had a bad experience with their shipping. For whatever reason Disney doesn't seem to mind that they're using certain copyrighted material; and they seem to even support them with some terrific access to people like Marty Sklar. Now I don't want to try and change anyone's mind about whether it's right or not for them to use any of he copyrighted material. We all have our minds made up about that, and if it bothers us, we wouldn't order from them. Now, the story I am relating has to do with SHIPPING. I have previously ordered from Extinct Attractions and had to wait much longer than the web site stated for my DVDs. I've read about even worse shipping problems here and elsewhere. I've read about poor and even rude communication when trying to get a shipping problem resolved. The kind of stuff that definitely gives one pause before ordering. A couple months ago I ordered smoe DVDs. 5 weeks went by. Nothing. Their site had said that they had gotten an outside party to handle their shipping and that orders should be processed and sent out same day. Sounds great, but where's my stuff? So I check the site, which has been revamped to now make it easy to check your order status and send emails. I find that my order's status is something like "ORDER BEING PUT TOGETHER" Not sure, but I figure it means it's about to be shipped. So, I wait another week. Nothing. I recheck the status. Order Complete. I see that a tracking number is present. Great. I check it with UPS. "BILLING INFORMATION RECIEVED" HUH? Apparently that means EA sent them the info for the order, but not the actual package yet. So I email EA through the site. I get an immediate response, saying that this shouldn't be happening and that they will resend the info. I wait a couple days and recheck UPS. Same news. I figure, well the NEW shipping must not have affected my order in a positive way, but at least their communication is good. So I send another email. This time I get a call from Dave O'neal. He is flustered about the order. He is polite and apologetic. He says that the new shipping has been working so well, he's been getting great emails about how fast stuff is working. He promises to take care of it right away. So, I wait a few days, expecting the order to show up. It doesn't. I recheck UPS, same message, send another email to EA. They send me another email saying they don't understand why this order is continuing to glitch and say they've resent it. They give me a new tracking number, which I ignore... I wait a couple days rechecking UPS using the tracking number from EA website ad keep getting the same message. I am getting angry, because I've defending these guys on several boards. I send an angry email out to EA. I reread my previous emails from EA and realize that the tracking number I've been using is the WRONG ONE. Now I'm the dope. So I track my order with the corrct new one they sent me. Surprise, the DVD is set to arrive THAT DAY. So, now I feel the need to apologize for my nasty email, but must point out that their ORDER STATUS never got updated, hence my freaking out. I send the email to EA, expecting no response, since it was just an apology on my part as well as pointing out a small but significant glitch on the website. I get another email apologizing, and thanking me for my finding the glitch along with a generous offer that more than made up for my original order being late. So right now I couldn't be happier. The point of this long-winded message is that for those who've not wanted to risk getting some of the EA DVD's for fear of shipping nightmares, I want to say those days are over. I received prompt, polite responses to my emails, and the situation was resolved. My order was probably caught in the middle of their transition to the new shipping. And now that the website does have that STATUS page you really can find out what's going on right away, which is a big improvement. My biggest problem was that I didn't read the correct tracking number, and I waited far to long before I started checking. And honestly, talking to Dave O'Neal, I got the sense that this kind of stuff truly bothered him and that he wanted to fix it. He seemed to me to be very genuine and sincere. So there you go. A positve shipping story.