Recently a friend wrote to us about her experience on group buying website TeamBuy that she was not very happy with.
Although she has been a customer with them for a while now and has not had a bad purchase until now and despite her understanding of TeamBuy’s inability to control their vendors, they do have an obligation to ensure that the vendor is reputable and in good standing.
Her story goes something like this where she had purchased a cosmetic item on TeamBuy which was heavily discounted, but when it was time to deliver, the vendor, Cosique, was unable to despite their assertion that the product had been shipped out.
After waiting for about two months and playing the email game and phone tags, calling TeamBuy to see what was happening with the order and TeamBuy responding in a way that was pretty much saying they were on the case, please wait, and they are contacting the vendor to see what is going on.
Basically it seems like that the vendor, in this case, oversold and could not fulfill their promise, but from a customer point-of-view, it’s not the customer’s fault. The vendor, Cosique, in this case, should not have sold something that they didn’t have or could not easily get their hands on.
So after many phone calls and emails, the buyer decided to cancel the purchase, TeamBuy, to their credit, refunded the money for the product, but let see what is going to happen with the shipping charges that were charged to her credit card.
Consumers should be wearily not just of TeamBuy and this particular vendor, Cosique, but other group buying websites such as Groupon and Living Social as they should think twice about purchasing something that is too good to be true.
We are not saying that it’s a fraud on the group buying websites or the vendors, but some vendors should not oversell because instead of getting that consumer to be a loyal follower for future purchases, the vendor just created an irate customer. And as the saying goes, word of mouth is the best form of advertising, don’t deliver and you can kiss your customer goodbye.
