justlearning
09-20-2005, 04:15 PM
I posted this into the Bargains forum but thought I should cross-post it here as well, so here goes...
I just wanted to warn all of you about what you may encounter with punkinbutt.com if your experience is anything like mine. First of all, let me say that I have always been a big supporter of small businesses, especially those owned by WAHMs, and have encouraged my friends to buy from them as well (e.g., fleecebaby, snugtuckpillow, and zolowear to name just a few).
Unfortunately, my first experience with punkinbutt was the worst experience I have ever had with an online retailer and thus I will not be buying from them again. Although the story is lengthy, I'll try to summarize my experience here. (If you want more info., email me and I can send you a copy of my correspondence with them.)
* I ordered a puppet theater from them, which I have been really wanting to get my son for Christmas. At that time, the shipping was showing as $20 for the puppet theater alone but I was willing to pay that because the total cost was still a good deal. I then looked around the website and found (similar to another poster's experience on here) that adding more items increased the shipping by less than $2. Thus, I decided to go ahead and order 7 other items, ranging from $5-$10, and paid a little less than $22 for the total shipping.
* They ended up sending me an email saying that my order had shipped. The next day, though, they sent me an email saying that the puppet theater was out of stock. The following day, they sent me another email that another item I had ordered was out of stock. They refunded the actual prices of the two items and $8 in shipping. Thus, I was charged over $13 for shipping the items that I had expected to pay less than $2 in shipping.
* According to their website policy at that time, they had stated: "If an item is backordered, we will make every effort to notify you as soon as possible. You will have the option to wait or cancel part or all of your order." If they had notified me in advance and told me the shipping for the 6 small items in stock was going to be $13, I would have told them to cancel my order.
OK, so that was the situation. What I described so far wasn't what actually bothered me. What bothered me was the way that I was treated by Trish and later by Natalie (one of the owners) when trying to email them about the problem. First, they were slow to respond to my emails--I had even offered to refuse shipment of the delivery of the items but had no response back for around 4 days until after the box already had arrived. More importantly, they did not take responsibility for their mistake, they continued to insist that I pay the shipping charges for the items shipped to me, and Natalie even used what appeared to be deception in one email (I was hoping that it was just inaccurate information but she didn't respond to my pointing out the inaccuracy). After making a phone call (not returned) and sending 4 or 5 emails, Natalie did end up refunding $5 but I was still left feeling very dissatisfied with my experience.
Based upon my emails with Natalie, she did change the policies on their website. If you still want to order from them, please read those carefully. You should be aware, though, that they're still having computer problems regarding their inventory. After seeing a post here, I tried to go onto their system to purchase a puppet theater (which I still really want). Their system allowed me to put it in my cart and start to pay for it. I called Natalie right then to say that they need to send that to me if they were back in stock now. She told me that they were having problems and that things were showing up as being in stock (including the Learning Tower and puppet theater) when they actually weren't in stock.
So, the bottom line is I would advise being very cautious when ordering from this company. They definitely seem to have computer inventory problems but more importantly have problems with their customer service as well. In fact, Natalie just hung up on me when I was talking with her...not a person I'd recommend ordering from, sadly.
I just wanted to warn all of you about what you may encounter with punkinbutt.com if your experience is anything like mine. First of all, let me say that I have always been a big supporter of small businesses, especially those owned by WAHMs, and have encouraged my friends to buy from them as well (e.g., fleecebaby, snugtuckpillow, and zolowear to name just a few).
Unfortunately, my first experience with punkinbutt was the worst experience I have ever had with an online retailer and thus I will not be buying from them again. Although the story is lengthy, I'll try to summarize my experience here. (If you want more info., email me and I can send you a copy of my correspondence with them.)
* I ordered a puppet theater from them, which I have been really wanting to get my son for Christmas. At that time, the shipping was showing as $20 for the puppet theater alone but I was willing to pay that because the total cost was still a good deal. I then looked around the website and found (similar to another poster's experience on here) that adding more items increased the shipping by less than $2. Thus, I decided to go ahead and order 7 other items, ranging from $5-$10, and paid a little less than $22 for the total shipping.
* They ended up sending me an email saying that my order had shipped. The next day, though, they sent me an email saying that the puppet theater was out of stock. The following day, they sent me another email that another item I had ordered was out of stock. They refunded the actual prices of the two items and $8 in shipping. Thus, I was charged over $13 for shipping the items that I had expected to pay less than $2 in shipping.
* According to their website policy at that time, they had stated: "If an item is backordered, we will make every effort to notify you as soon as possible. You will have the option to wait or cancel part or all of your order." If they had notified me in advance and told me the shipping for the 6 small items in stock was going to be $13, I would have told them to cancel my order.
OK, so that was the situation. What I described so far wasn't what actually bothered me. What bothered me was the way that I was treated by Trish and later by Natalie (one of the owners) when trying to email them about the problem. First, they were slow to respond to my emails--I had even offered to refuse shipment of the delivery of the items but had no response back for around 4 days until after the box already had arrived. More importantly, they did not take responsibility for their mistake, they continued to insist that I pay the shipping charges for the items shipped to me, and Natalie even used what appeared to be deception in one email (I was hoping that it was just inaccurate information but she didn't respond to my pointing out the inaccuracy). After making a phone call (not returned) and sending 4 or 5 emails, Natalie did end up refunding $5 but I was still left feeling very dissatisfied with my experience.
Based upon my emails with Natalie, she did change the policies on their website. If you still want to order from them, please read those carefully. You should be aware, though, that they're still having computer problems regarding their inventory. After seeing a post here, I tried to go onto their system to purchase a puppet theater (which I still really want). Their system allowed me to put it in my cart and start to pay for it. I called Natalie right then to say that they need to send that to me if they were back in stock now. She told me that they were having problems and that things were showing up as being in stock (including the Learning Tower and puppet theater) when they actually weren't in stock.
So, the bottom line is I would advise being very cautious when ordering from this company. They definitely seem to have computer inventory problems but more importantly have problems with their customer service as well. In fact, Natalie just hung up on me when I was talking with her...not a person I'd recommend ordering from, sadly.