House of Staunton Says Too Bad, Your Problem and Not Ours

So here is what you do. Call your credit card company and put a hold the payment to the vendor. Save all your paperwork and details. This will wake the vendor up right away.

So KnightsForkCafe is ranting while you're just making a passing comment. You expect me to fall for that? Yours was just shorter than his. And look up the term 'rant'. 

Have you gotten a return label? Still nothing from them. My 3 month return window is up in a month. If I don't hear this next week I'll pay the postage myself and send it off demanding they reimburse to my account. 

My plan for future orders (from any continental-US vendor) is to require UPS-only or FedEx (maybe DHL if offered).  It'll definitely be more expensive but I've had enough of USPS incompetence that's just getting worse and worse.

Finally heard back from Raphael Neff at Chess House. He was very apologetic that it took so long. He issued to me a return label. I'm relieved! I am disappointed however that I have to pay a $10 fee to return a set that (for me) is unusable. Oh well. 

This place is becoming as bad as trustpilot ! It pains me

House of Staunton and the chess house are fantastic retailers and would not knowingly be ignoring any of their customers
It is very true that the Netflix blockbuster has caught a lot of the chess retailers off guard as the sales have been astronomical, that of course also means customer service will take longer than usual but it certainly doesn’t warrant those spitting their dummies out to venture over to review platforms and now here to discredit these companies

Some chess companies here in the UK have suffered a similar fate of getting a truck load of negative reviews due to not being able to meet with demand

I do understand the customers journey may be affected but there seems to be a zero tolerance which of course is quite unreasonable and unrealistic

Just my opinion of course

I think a notice of delays due to overwhelming demand was called for on their front page. That may have helped buyers to show more tolerance. 

The Chess House, Official Staunton and Noj have near perfect records on this forum.  We have seen a very limited number of issues with The House of Staunton over the years.

I was very surprised of the problem mentioned about The Chess House.  They are a small and quality operation.  I am glad Raphael responded with sincere apologies.  Today is Sunday which means Raphael was on this either Saturday or Sunday when they are closed.  He obviously is working extra.

The House of Staunton also refunded the money spent for that faster shipping which never happened.

We are all human and no one is perfect.  I see both of these problems coming from the perfect storm of the post Netflix rush, the pandemic shipping delays and the holiday shipping delays.

I will still feel confident buying from either place no matter what shipping they use.  Of course I will wait some time for these shipping snarls to clear.

I have a shipment coming in from HoS. ETA is Jan 5. I ordered it on Dec 29. Tracking says it's in Koln, Germany right now. It looks like it's well within up to 10 days shipment (free shipping). Considering the situation all the freight forwarders are facing for a long time now, I'm pleasantly surprised. Even if it would be delayed I would still understand the situation and never would cross my mind to blame HoS nor the freight forwarder.

Hope you don't have to deal with post NL, as it going to be sitting there for even more days that what it took to ship from the US

While my issue with HoS service had nothing to do with shipping, I’ve strangely had no issues with USPS delays. Nevertheless, companies shouldn’t advertise shipping times unless they are using a service with guarantees!

 

My day job is logistics. The demand created by the Corona virus has given the handful of shipping companies the ability to re-set terms to their customer accounts.

There are no guarantees anymore. Doesn't matter what services you paid for on your account - if they say because of Covid we no longer do X for you. Tough.

If you have an issue you can call them, they'll just say "Covid - blah blah - too bad wait longer", in a very polite way.

Relying on 2 day shipping during the holidays in the year of the lockdown is laughable. Plan ahead.

And none of these companies will hire any more people than they need to to keep the ship afloat. They want to minimize personnel costs so that they can really rake it in while the iron is hot because this won't last forever.

The shipping companies have been handed a near monopoly position and they are cashing in. And they are all doing it. So jumping ship from Fedex to UPS will make no difference as they both have more business than they can handle.

Plan ahead and have your patience caps firmly on. It will be this way for a while.

I haven't had a problem getting refunds due to impaired shipping from multiple vendors (not related to chess) and directly from DHL in another case, so all you say may generally be true, but it isn't always the case and it is certainly possible for a vendor to change their own terms and promises based on the general situation you describe. And the latter depends on the integrity of the vendor as much---more even---than the shipper.

No response yet.  I've sent a second 'email' via their web site.  My next step is to notify my credit card company.

I believe there's a 3 month window to return. The label they sent to me costs $10. 

The mistake was theirs, so they should pay return postage.  

That's what I thought. Good luck.

Personally, I would call and ask to speak with Raphael.

Instead of him not charging you the $10.00, I would go bigger.

The smallest thing I would ask is for them to send you a FlexPad board completely free.

If you see something you like on their site that costs more, I would ask for no less than a $25.00 to $30.00 credit.

 

@Eyechess I may do that. I'd be happy with not being charged for shipping. We'll see. Thanks.