Rant/Advice: Issue with Coast Appliances
 

Just wanted to share an experience to see if anyone can offer me some advice on how to proceed, or tell me i'm wrong.

I ordered a stove from Coast Wholesale Appliances in early August. I signed the invoice with an estimated delivery date of early October and put down a deposit.

In late October, I still had not heard anything so I called them back, the lady who sold me the stove gave me the new update: The stove will be here in Mid-December and her manager said I can get my deposit back if that's too long to wait.

I think about it over the week and tell her to go ahead with the refund, in the mean time, looking at other stoves to buy.

The following week, after I've chosen a new stove from another retailer (but have not purchased it yet), she comes back and tells me that I can no longer get a refund. I've already made up my mind about no longer wanting the original one so I tell her that she has a week to work it out with her boss, or we'll have to go through BBB.

In the mean time, I purchase another stove.

Today I finally talked to her manager's manager who refuses to give back the refund, and his position is basically: You signed the invoice, and just because the lady said I could get a refund, and checked with her immediate manager, doesn't mean I can get it if it's not in writing.

TL;DR:
I put a deposit down on a stove, I was verbally offered a refund multiple times. After deciding to act on the refund, they said it's no longer available. They're just keeping my money.

Am I screwed because it's not in writing?
What options should I pursue to get my money back?

BBB opens tomorrow at 9, so I'll be giving them a call..

/rant

how was the deposit paid by?

Did you get an invoice/receipt with your deposit? Did it show the estimated delivery date?

Was the stove a special order (not an item they regularly stock)?

If you paid by credit card then contact your credit card company for a refund.

I have an invoice, the estimated date is early October. I can find the exact date when I get home. This was a special order item.

The deposit was paid by Visa. I have yet to contact Visa since I thought my situation wasn't as black and white, since they only verbally promised my deposit back.

I don't know the store policy on special orders, which would trump all since the offers for refund were not in writing.

But I agree that it's shady business practice to tell you one thing and then change their minds later.

Definately call BBB and give them your story.

I'm not a big fan of CWA, my dad was their warehouse manager 15 years ago. There were some real backstabbing assholes in upper management.

If it makes you feel any better, my in-laws bought a couple fridges and hood fans from them a while back. The salesman fucked up the math or something, and ended up not charging them for the hood fans (but they were marked as paid on the invoice). After everything was delivered the salesman tried phoning and threatening my in-laws and they told him to poke it. Free hood fans FTW!

You payed a deposit and received no product. Call Visa.

Call your credit card company. They basically will side you 100% of the time. Since your recepit even said the estimate delivery date too.
If it is off by a few days is fine but by a month is not acceptable.

Yep, I would phone BBB as well, and see what other advice they will give you - but they're not the ones who will be resolving the issue.

Calling Visa is definitely the quickest way to resolve it. Gather as much evidence as possible. Scan the invoice - if you can recall when you spoke to the lady there, what her name might have been, etc. When you call Visa, they will want as much info as you can give them.

Thanks for the tips guys. I called Visa and they said they need more info from the invoice to proceed. I just got home to check the invoice, and now Visa resolutions dept. is closed.

There is actually no date specified on the invoice. I'm not sure if this will work to my advantage or not. On the one hand, I don't have a date to hold them to, on the other hand, they have nothing to prove their original date, only the August date of deposit. And a 4 month wait might not be acceptable to Visa.

This is a special order product, and the invoice does explicitly say that deposits are not refundable, which I knew, but thought that the verbal agreement that explicitly revoked that clause would be held to.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1702713/coast_inv.jpg

I think I might be screwed.

there should be a reasonable time that they have to meet and since the product wasn't supplied when they stated, not even within a reasonable time, they should have to give a refund

if you want the no-hassle way out just call Visa and you're set

if you want to stick it to them talk to the regional manager or straight to the head office
talk to their CFO or someone on the BoD name names dates etc etc

buy 1 share of CWA and complain as a shareholder (even if its just 1 it carries some weight ;) when they hear a shareholder is complaining)

blah blah blah





edit: did you sign it? and just photoshopped out your signature? it also says that this is a "regular order" in the top right

get visa to deal with it

The invoice says "Regular Order" under order type, and there's no signature under the deposit clause...

You definately have a leg to stand on here.

That's the customer copy, so they do have a version that I initialed..

I also already contacted the VP of operations, we'll see what he says tomorrow. Thanks for the advice guys..
Posted via RS Mobile

I feel for you OP.

I hate it when these companies act like tools in situations like these.
I hope you work this out.

I was going to say it may be easier to just suck up the deposit.. But, then it looks like you put down over a gnote..
Small claims court is always an option too I guess? Judge Judy?

And the fact you didn't sign off on the no refund policy will definitely work to your advantage!
This might be good for insurance. Call them and talk to them and get them to say they were supposed to get the stove to you in October. Record the call just in case?

Well, the problem is either you, or coast is going to be out the thousand dollars(give or take). They've already bought the thing, and I'm hoping/assuming its in some sort of transportation here. Meaning, you now want to back out, and they have a very specific model of stove sitting in the warehouse for god knows how long.

Now, whoever you were talking to obviously messed up between it being a special order, with a no refund deposit, and a regular stove that they sell and do returns on all the time.

If you've empowered an employee to be able to make decisions, which everyone with employees does to some extent, you need to stand behind them. At least to the customer, because the last thing you want is them running to a car forum asking for internet justice lol. You take her aside and rip her a new one in the office.

I think they owe you a refund. It's not your fault you heard the magic words. I just hope you got her name at least...otherwise I hope you have room for 2 stoves.

From the look of the invoice, even visa wont be able to help you. You should of taken up on the refund before venturing out to buy another stove from a different company. Everything they promised you should of been documented black and white. Now its their words against yours.

The invoice, while saying that custom orders are non-refundable, also says absolutely nothing about his stove being a custom order. It says "regular order" in the order type, and even says "August 20" in the date allocated (the date of the invoice is in the bottom left as August 6).


I'm pretty sure based on the invoice you have, that you'll be on the winning side of any BBB/Visa argument you make.

That's not a special order or a special stove, for that matter. They can sell it on the floor. They aren't going to lose money.

They just want to see how far they can go with it. When shit like this happens to me, I go ballistic in the store and scare the customers away. Usually solves the problem in minutes. If that doesn't work, my wife gets involved and then all hell breaks loose, LOLOLOLOL.

This is definitely bad practice.. It doesnt take more then 5months to ship something in, especially for a business... They saying mid-Dec is BS... if it takes them that long to get an appliance, they should not be in business selling appliances..

Does the part "Date allocated" means it should be in on that date? If it does and you still dont have your stove until now, then somethings wrong..


The "Non-Refund" part is ONLY for special order units... on THAT form it definitely says "Regular Order", so it doesnt matter if their copy has your initials...

Coast never has anything in stock. They have a big fancy show room but almost nothing on hand to sell. Went to buy a counter top gas stove 5 days before mothers day. Looked at a 5 thousand dollar Wolf stove but would take weeks to get here. Looked at a bunch more but they would take weeks to get here. Ended up with a $1400 paykel fisher and they $3600 in sales.


If all else fails go ape shit on them.

+1 for ape shit. Go when it's busy and get real loud they'll want you out of there. I hate doing it but when I've done it I've always gotten what I wanted in the end. If someone is going to be unreasonable and see how far they can push you, fuck em they get what they get. Everyone has the crazy gear you just have to tap it. :)

Their warehouse is full of the cheap stuff, ie: $600 base model 18 cube fridges, base model electric ranges etc.
Their bread and butter is condo contract jobs which use that type of stuff.
Like with any business, it doesn't make a lot of sense to keep a lot of stock of the expensive high end stuff when you may only sell a handful of them a year.

He signed the portion where it says special order in the product discription, and right below that it says deposit of $1100 dated Aug 6. By doing that he accepted the terms.

Unfortunately, I just got off the phone with Visa..
They said that I had two possible choices of resolution:

"Credit not returned": The process used when a refund was promised but never received. Unfortunately, they said that the refund has to have been promised in writing, and that, although bad practice, they are within their right to simply say that the girl made a mistake. They said I would probably lose this type of dispute.

"Goods not received": I could use this process to claim that I never received the goods that were promised. The problem is that, if it does actually come in in december, then the claim would fail, since they can now give me the stove. Secondly, even if it doesn't come in, since the invoice says it's non-refundable, so they might just offer me store credit instead.

Overall, they said I don't have a good chance because the conversation wasn't in writing, EVEN if the girl freely admits to giving me wrong information.

Thanks for the tips about the Order Type, unfortunately, Visa said that it doesn't add much to the argument because the Order Type might not mean special vs regular, it could mean something totally different, and the fact that the stove was actually a special order might override that.

They recommended that I try to talk to coast to either split the deposit so we both take a loss, or try to reason with them and get some store credit. They definitely offered to file the dispute anyways, but said that it's definitely an uphill battle for me, and without anything in writing, it would be tough.

@quasi
Going into the store to cause a scene is about the only thing that I haven't done. I'm not opposed to doing that, but I don't know if that alone will cause them to cave for $1100. The Branch manager, Steve Edgar, isn't very friendly or compromising. He's more likely to say, and has said to me before, 'tough, we have your signature on the invoice'.

Freakshow, one small thing that might be in your favour is that you never actually signed the area that indicated that the deposit was non-refundable, nor did they circle the area that says Special Order Product as per their instructions on the form (in fact, as mentioned, that's not even written anywhere). I would bring that up if you do take it up with the BBB or if you talk with them again, it certainly couldn't hurt to point out that they didn't follow their own written procedures.