Talk about frustration...

[Morgbug]

My latest two orders online for Star Wars stuff have been a fiasco.

EE - Sith bust ups case.

SSW.com - chrome bust and stormie bust ups

Background: I've ordered from both of these retailers before with great success, using one of two credit cards, depending on varying factors.  I've always listed the delivery and billing address as the same, chuckles address in Minnesota.  Why?  Simply because both organizations pretty much rape Canadians on shipping, then we get bent over again for customs and/or brokerage fees.  It is (SADLY) cheaper for me to get them shipped first to MN and then on to me here via USPS.  That is first order pathetic.  I've ordered from EE about 3 times and a good half dozen from SSW.com. 

Situation: Both of my credit cards have been rejected by both retailers this week.  Two different credit cards, two different retailers.  They are telling me that the issue is with the bank.  Nuh-uh, not buying it.  I called both card issuers, explained the situation, both in terms of what I'm ordering and where it is being shipped.  No big deal they say, do what you want, we're not declining anything, you spend way too much money. 

Why it's ******* up: Back during the Gentle Giant Luke Stormie bust fiasco, same thing happened.  Their own software would not allow them to ship goods to a delivery address different from the billing address.  I gave in on that one and got biatched for $30 in brokerage fees.  I also was utterly annoying to GG's customer service department and they've (supposedly) resolved the issue.  Monday will tell on that one.  Now I suspect that both have changed their software quite recently and that is causing the error. 

Remember, I ordered and have received the chrome stormtrooper bust from SSW.com in the last couple of weeks and ordered my series 1 bust ups from EE. 

The worst part, I called EE today to resolve this.  They put the card through while I was on the phone.  It was approved and processing. I received a confirmatory email from them and an apology from a CS rep for the trouble. 

Now I have to continue the fiasco, probably going to happen with Gentle Giant on Monday too.   

And oh yeah, Amazon had no problem on Tuesday of this week doing just what I always do.  Gggggggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

[JediMAC]

Sounds like you need to move to the U.S dude.  We'll rent a room out to you if you want Brent, but you'd have to leave your girls behind though...  Cool?  LMK.

[jokabofe]

Brent - working for a company that does some e-tailing business (and being the person solely in charge of said business, thank you very much) - here's what you need to/should do.

Contact your credit card/cards and have them add Jim's address as an alternate shipping address in the notes section of your account. When you place orders online, use your billing address but put Jim's address as the shipping. When the retailers question it, just tell them to contact your credit card company and that should straighten everything out.

The reason behind this is simple - fraud. If these e-tailers don't check out the billing/shipping address stuff, it's very easy to get ripped off. Our website system automatically checks a customer's billing address against there credit card with the issuing bank. If anything doesn't match - street, zip, phone number - the order automatically gets flagged as fraudulent, and sent to me for investigation. 99 times out of 100 it's fraud, but there's also those times when people are buying gifts and shipping them to someone else. I need to contact the credit card companies and ask for the alternate shipping address, and then I can process the orders.

[Morgbug]

Thanks Dave. 

I appreciate why they're doing it, really I do, it's pretty much exclusively (or at least mostly) for my benefit.  And that's great, no bones about it. 

The difficulty comes when they start changing rules, midstream.  SSW.com shipped something to me less than two weeks ago.  My frustration with EE comes from making a long distance phone call, having them put it through and then getting a subsequent rejection, after having put it through and confirmed it while I was on the other end of the line.  Huh?

It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't have such retarded shipping rates, both of them, to Canada.  There's no way on earth Jim should be able to re-label these things and pay a low enough amount from MN that when added to what I already paid from CA to MN it's still cheaper than their cheapest (surface) shipping rate.  That's just wrong.  Yes, I know why they do it, they get a bulk rate from a particular shipping agency and it's predominantly suitable for the bulk of their client base - US customers. 

But honestly, I can go buy this **** off ebay and pay less.  Why?  No brokerage fees, air parcel post with USPS (not done on a flat fee rate) and nobody is using some bull**** brokerage agency (like UPS, FedEx, DSL, etc.) and dinging me an additional $30 in the end.  My GG Luke bust cost me $50 US plus $15 shipping to Canada plus that $30 CAD I keep bitching about in brokerage fees.  I won one on ebay shortly after the Con and paid about $78 USD shipped - no other fees.  A retailer can't beat ebay?

Anyway, thanks for listening to my rant.  I'll contact both companies tomorrow (CC) regarding the additional shipping address.  I really appreciate the information.

[JediMAC]

So I take it that's a "no" on renting a room then?   

[jokabofe]

The difficulty comes when they start changing rules, midstream.  SSW.com shipped something to me less than two weeks ago.  My frustration with EE comes from making a long distance phone call, having them put it through and then getting a subsequent rejection, after having put it through and confirmed it while I was on the other end of the line.  Huh?

Well, I don't have an answer for that. Unless they just changed their policies after getting ripped off. That's pretty much what happened where I work (before I was in charge of it, thank god). When people would place an order, we would just ship it out. Then, some days later, the credit card companies would call up and say that customers were disputing charges, that they hadn't made purchases from us. We would check the shipping addresses of said customers against the address on record with the CC companies, and - surprise!! - no match. Sorry, we're not paying you that $XXXXX that this person charged. This happened for about a month or so, until people's CC bills started rolling in and they saw these charges appearing on the bill. My boss estimated that we got ripped off to the tune of about $10K that first month. Rough way to start an e-business to be sure.

The funny thing is that when someone does enter fraudulent information into our system, the system flags the order for review, but charges the card anyway... that I can't understand. If you're telling me that this order is most likely fraudulent, why are you charging this person's card? And the person who places the order just gets an email confirmation telling them that there order went through without an issue. So of course, 9 tiimes out of 10, once a single order goes through, we get another 6 or 7 from the same person... usually with several different CC numbers. And then they get real stupid, like try to order 5 40GB iPods and get UPS Next Day Air shipping on them.... that's a dead giveaway, right there  

[Morgbug]

Well, the situation with EE is squared away and the bust ups are on the way. 

Thanks for the advice Dave.  It baffled the hell out of the credit card company to add a different delivery address for a little while, but we accomplished the goal anyway.  I just hope my bills don't start going to Jim, cuz I don't think he's going to pay them for me (though they are just Canadian dollars )

I'll say this for EE, the customer service department is pretty good and efficient.  No generic form responses either unlike somewhere else out there...