Thread: Buying On-Line Problems...

I never really had any problems buying online before...
but recently i've had a lot of problems, completely the wrong stuff sent, broken items,
even things that are basically secondhand, and then sent out again as new

currently got 3 boxes of stuff to be returned,
one cheeky vendor has even sent my address to the person who got wrongly my stuff sent to them, to post it back to me...

looks like i had a good run for nearly 20 years

Dave, what you are experiencing is normal.

I've been through stages that can last a couple of weeks where every parcel delivered has to be returned for one reason or another.

So frustrating and such a waste of time, money and resources, and a total lack of care that can be attributed to every part of the supply chain from QC pass stickers on items that were clearly faulty at time of manufacture, damaged items that were clearly damaged before they were boxed, damaged items that were damaged during shipping, and finally products that have been designed so badly and so cheaply they are just a waste of the earth's resources and are no good for anything but landfill.

I would estimate that 25% of what gets delivered to me has something wrong.

I've just finished renovating the living room so all the following are fresh in my mind....

Today a perfect example as the appointment was made to repair the 8 separate faults on the brand new 3 piece suite we've just had delivered from a well known furniture store.

Yesterday I was on the phone to a curtain company who sent our new blinds with only 1 fixing bracket (meant to be 8).

A couple of weeks ago it was 4 pieces of wooden furniture, 2 had minor but annoying marks and the 3rd, a coffee table, had a 3" chunk broken off one of the legs.

A 10m LED lighting strip that I spent 2 hours carefully gluing into decorative wall panels, and 24 hours later a couple of bulbs stopped working, and next day some more bulbs, by which time it looked ridiculous so had to spend a further 3 hours ungluing whilst trying not to damage the £600 panel I'd attached it to!

Then there's the scams.... Had to hang a 7'x5' 35kg mirror so bought 14 pairs of heavy duty aluminium French cleats off Amazon, and when they arrived they were plastic and I could literally snap them with my fingers.



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Originally Posted by RS2OOO

Dave, what you are experiencing is normal.

I've been through stages that can last a couple of weeks where every parcel delivered has to be returned for one reason or another.

So frustrating and such a waste of time, money and resources, and a total lack of care that can be attributed to every part of the supply chain from QC pass stickers on items that were clearly faulty at time of manufacture, damaged items that were clearly damaged before they were boxed, damaged items that were damaged during shipping, and finally products that have been designed so badly and so cheaply they are just a waste of the earth's resources and are no good for anything but landfill.

I would estimate that 25% of what gets delivered to me has something wrong.

I've just finished renovating the living room so all the following are fresh in my mind....

Today a perfect example as the appointment was made to repair the 8 separate faults on the brand new 3 piece suite we've just had delivered from a well known furniture store.

Yesterday I was on the phone to a curtain company who sent our new blinds with only 1 fixing bracket (meant to be 8).

A couple of weeks ago it was 4 pieces of wooden furniture, 2 had minor but annoying marks and the 3rd, a coffee table, had a 3" chunk broken off one of the legs.

A 10m LED lighting strip that I spent 2 hours carefully gluing into decorative wall panels, and 24 hours later a couple of bulbs stopped working, and next day some more bulbs, by which time it looked ridiculous so had to spend a further 3 hours ungluing whilst trying not to damage the £600 panel I'd attached it to!

Then there's the scams.... Had to hang a 7'x5' 35kg mirror so bought 14 pairs of heavy duty aluminium French cleats off Amazon, and when they arrived they were plastic and I could literally snap them with my fingers.

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thats a long list there mate

i've been pretty fortunate in the past... though i do try and only buy from reputable stores.

you'd think they must be losing money hand over fist with all the wasted time and resource...
but having recently seen the kind of prices things are bought for wholesale in china, they are still coining it in...

Originally Posted by Whitey79

I was told last year everything is going up in price because container shipping has gone up almost quadrupled in price I said that's good we might actually start making things again the response was no we won't because it still won't be as cheap
I responded with well at least it might not break

Couriers have a lot to answer for on this there a joke

All shipping etc has rocketed in the past few years due to 'covid' but has never gone back down. I used to be a courier and there is definitely examples where boxes are damaged in transit, but ultimately the main reason this happens is because they pack things like a pair of trainers for example in a box that is 1/3 bigger than the trainer box so they can move above and have nothing but air to protect it from bumping into the millions of parcels that get put into the lorries etc when delivered to hubs. That same box of trainers can be next to a mattress in the back of a van and it only takes the driver to apply the brakes normally for the load to slide which means them trainers are crushed between 2 heavier parcels etc.

I'm not saying all couriers are not to blame, but when you see the sort of stuff shipped how it is shipped by customers and businesses everyday you would understand how easy things get damaged just by going in the back of a van. We used to get things like weigh bars with a bit of cardboard tapped around it to stick the label on or chairs with a slither of cardboard around the legs etc.

Worse one for me, was delivery of a koi that had very obviously been dropped by the courier

Originally Posted by RS2OOO

That is a poor show. Did the Koi survive ok?

It did. There was no obvious damage to the fish when it arrived in the damaged box but it very quickly developed a bad case of pox that has never gone away, even during the high temps last summer.

I haven't bought anymore fish from the dealer because, although it was the courier who caused the problem, the fish was very poorly packaged up.

Originally Posted by RS2OOO

Everyone must have at some time received an amazon parcel packaged in a ridiculously sized box.

Some examples I've had are a 4 cylinder head gasket loose in a 4 foot x 18" x 18" box with no other packaging, and it arrived bent!

Similar sized box for a wiper blade, and most recently an 80cm rubber shower door seal that came in a box that was 100cm x 100cm x 10cm and rammed full to the brim with the big packaging air bags. It could have fitted into a normal large letter envelope.

amazon are well known for thier comedy boxes.
i think it must be a prize winning competition at amazon who can package the smallest item in the largest box....

i've had some doozies in the past..... a quartz watch battery in a 600mm square box with a half a roll of twisted cardboard paper inside as packing.

I was waiting on 2 koi to arrive once, but they weren't delivered by APC in the allotted window.

I later received a call from the courier's own mobile to say he'll drop them off in his car later on.

Turns out the box got damaged in Transit and this caused most of the water to leak out - it was double bagged and the cardboard box lined with polystyrene sheets, so well packaged.

As the box was pissing water all over the other boxes, APC refused to load it on the truck. Which seemed to be a death sentence for the fish.

Anyway, when I opened it fearing the worst, I was surprised to see the two fish were alive and flapping about in a few inches of water.

Credit to the courier for going out of his way, in his own time, using his own car to get the fish delivered. His boot was soaked, so I helped him dry it up.






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These stories remind me of when my pond window arrived.

I'd arranged for my dad to be there to help shift it, but it arrived without notice, a day early.

So just me and the driver had to carry it into my garden.

We just about managed to pick up the circa 100kg lump of glass. But as we were struggling to get it off the back of the truck, the van must've wobbled a bit.

Unfortunately, it turned out my glass had been holding up all of the other deliveries for the day. The driver said he had 7 other drop offs to do

One by one, these massive panes of glass fell over, smashing to pieces. We just looked on helplessly, unable to move under the weight of my glass, whilst they kept tumbling.

I've never seen so much broken glass in my life lol

I was grateful that he hadn't dropped my bit of glass to try and save the other orders, so helped him clear it all up.



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Originally Posted by Twhitenosugar

These stories remind me of when my pond window arrived.

I'd arranged for my dad to be there to help shift it, but it arrived without notice, a day early.

So just me and the driver had to carry it into my garden.

We just about managed to pick up the circa 100kg lump of glass. But as we were struggling to get it off the back of the truck, the van must've wobbled a bit.

Unfortunately, it turned out my glass had been holding up all of the other deliveries for the day. The driver said he had 7 other drop offs to do

One by one, these massive panes of glass fell over, smashing to pieces. We just looked on helplessly, unable to move under the weight of my glass, whilst they kept tumbling.

I've never seen so much broken glass in my life lol

I was grateful that he hadn't dropped my bit of glass to try and save the other orders, so helped him clear it all up.



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tuffex were brilliant with my glass delivery,
they arrived spot on time the driver called ahead twice to confirm the ETA.
my lad was there to help lift it off, but was struggling to lift it.
so the driver offered to help me carry it to the house.

Here's another situation that just came to mind, it is quite funny, but at the time I was fuming.

Years ago had an ebay business, I bought a wholesale lot of aluminium framed integrated LED "strip" lights, i.e the type to replace flourescent tubes. I had bought in at around £15 each, plus packaging, shipping, ebay & paypal fees etc at around £6.50, and selling for £27 each. That's £5.50 profit per unit.

They were 4ft, or 1.2m long. Herme's were the only affordable courier who'd accept that length with 1.2m being their max permitted length.

Posted one off to scotland on a 48 hour service. 5 days later received email from Hermes saying it exceeded their maximum size limit. I argued that it did not but part of me was wondering if they were being extremely petty and had added the thickness of the single skin bubblewrap which might have made the 120cm length closer to 120.5cm.

For a £15 oversize fee they agreed to deliver it, so to keep customer happy I paid up and swallowed the loss.

Another few days goes by and the customer says they've received it damaged, sent over some photos, and this thing was bent at an exact 90 degree angle, so now it measured 60cm long and 60cm wide.

And that I discovered is why I'd been charged extra for it being oversized!

Hermes rejected my damages claim and I got nowhwere with it, had to send a replacement to the customer but this time used Parcelforce who charged around £13, so all in all that one light sale put me out of pocket to the tune of £40 - meaning the next 8 sales were just to recover that single loss.