I had same issue with Ray, I think he needs to improve his customer service skills and communication skills with his customers! The issue was resolved but it was a pain in the a-- to resolve and at the end I ended up canceling my DRL LED Lamps due to not having confidence with his business sense. I have a lead right now with the manufacter of the lights he is selling and I will be posting up the info tomorrow. I did a little research and I should be getting my lights shipped from China this week. I spoke to the company and they sold me the lights with the same 1 year warranty for a great price and cheaper than Ray!! Hang tight, competition is on the way!!

 

Darned if I know, but I inferred a role in board management. The board is a business too.

Gary

 

Hook it up jpsjr i need a xmass gift for myself lol

 

you can ask members to pm you for the info but you can't post the info in open forum for a non-sponsor

 

Doesn't work that way, so if the buyer has his money back, we're not hearing the whole story. The money is held in escrow by the credit card company until the issue is resolved. Nobody gets it. Usually they ask the seller once to explain why the funds should be released (to the bank account attached to his seller's account at the charge company). Then they give the buyer one chance to rebut that statement. I don't know how versed their customer agents are in the Uniform Commercial Code, but I'd bet they have a good working grasp of the rules. They seemed pretty knowledgeable the few times I've talked with Mastercard or Paypal. That means they will look for Rottec to offer to pay for the return shipping if they want the seats back, and they will have to offer to ship the replacements at no cost to the buyer. Otherwise, the credit card company will consider them in default and remove the charge from the buyer's credit card. If no one disputes the seats were damaged in shipment, then Rottec is completely at the mercy of the buyer. The buyer can't refuse to pay for the seats if they were received in new condition, but the shipping damage doesn't seem to be in dispute.

Of course, that may have happened already. If Rottec has expressed their refusal to ship new seats at their expense, Mastercard or whoever handles the credit transaction would have already credited the buyer's account. (For anyone curious, while the charge is under dispute, no interest is charged. Again, the whole orientation of the UCC is toward customer confidence, because well-run businesses developed those precedents over the centuries.)

Rottec can get back their damaged product only if they pay for the shipping and usually their insurers won't insist on that because it's just added cost. Pictures of the damaged items and records of the report to the shipping company are normally all that's needed for the seller's claim. It does sound like Rottec failed to insure themselves for their own liabilities in this business relationship.

That pretty much describes the situation under the Uniform Commercial Code. Usually the sellers don't bother working out some quid pro quo unless they know the buyer has been seriously inconvenienced by the abortive first delivery attempt because a second delivery will push them past the buyer's deadline, even just an emotional deadline if you will. In those cases, or if they failed to insure themselves, a seller will often offer some serious perk to make up for having screwed up. It has to be serious to matter because the choice is entirely the buyer's at that point whether to cancel the deal completely and thereby damage the seller's reputation. I have had good will offers that in this case would amount to something like "How about we upgrade that vinyl upholstery to Alcantara [or baby alpaca skin or "fine Cordoba leather" or something tempting] and pay for someone local to install it? What can we do to make you happy?"

Right. That discussion takes one e-mail. The customer says "okay" or "no, I want what I ordered" or "nope. Just cancel the sale and pick these up." One way or the other, you do what the customer wants and go back to doing business. The idea that something is 'negotiable' in this situation suggests a pretty small business with no professionally trained managers. Their obligation is what you and I have said. The only thing they can negotiate is how much money they should spend on "good will."

Someone mentioned a restocking fee for example. Those are normally reserved for unusual business areas for a couple of reasons. Mostly, it has to be an unusual business model to take the hit of customer confidence that provision causes. An example I tolerated was buying cable goods that were cut to order. Obviously, a buyer who specifies a nineteen-foot cable terminated with certain connectors has to accept some part of the burden when it turns out the two items to be connected are twenty feet apart and he has to return the product. In the UCC, the item is "specially tailored" or some such phrase, so the buyer can't insist on a refund if it was delivered as tailored without damage. Like I said, common sense. But good business requires sellers to show concern that goes beyond their obligations under the UCC if they want to remain competitive. If they won't let me return a serial cable when it turns out my stupid apprentice didn't notice the connection was a parallel port, then I"m likely to buy from someone else next time. Tough nuggies. Competition is a *****. But a restocking fee is reasonable in that case since they must sell the cable pre-cut now, and they'll have to reduce the price to an "odds and ends" price. Unless no one mentioned it, these are not custom seats tailored to the buyer's specification. They are not OEM seats, but they are what Rottec offers as "standard goods." Using a restocking fee to suppress customer returns is one of those "not good business" practices that appeal only to poorly run small businesses that think more about their margin on each sale and less about overall success.

The UCC prohibits any fee, under any name whatsoever, for returning goods damaged in shipping.

No one has mentioned this technicality, but before it comes up, it is possible to advertise items for sale "FOB our dock" which means the buyer takes responsibility for inspection, packing, shipping, and all taxes or custom duties that accrue between the seller's dock and the eventual point of use. Obviously, that arises regularly in business-to-business sales as well as private party sales, but any sale by a business to a consumer is implied to be "FOB buyer's front porch" unless the selling business takes some extreme measures to prevent that presumption. Those measures usually frighten away potential buyers who are truly just consumers, so you rarely see such sales practices. (And nothing on the Rottec website even hints in this direction, so I assume they just don't know about the distinction. That means the presumption of the UCC applies.)

I've been trying to remember a term from business school, but memory fails. There is a name for Rottec's reliance on their having said "we charge a restocking fee of X%" and it also covers that other old nonsense about people who write "payment in full" on their check before they mail it to a business. I've forgotten the term, as I say, but what it amounts to is the UCC always prevails and you cannot override that (or any other law) by making notes on documents. Or web pages. For example, Rottec also say that reports of damage must be made within 24 hours. They cannot make that provision because it imposes a new obligation on the buyer more strict than the ones in the UCC.

I don't remember how long buyers have to file a report of damaged goods. Probably just 'reasonable', but certainly not "24 hours" because ordinary business practices impose delays of 96 hours routinely. Insisting on 24 hours comes across as trying to make buyers believe they've forfeited their rights in situations that create such routine delays. Even that attempt, legally impotent as it is, implies bad faith to a judge if the seller ever tries to fight something like this. Setting up a presumption of bad faith in a judge's mind is... not good. So well-run businesses don't use such clauses. Unfortunately, small businesses are rarely well run in that sense. In every generation they all think of the same mistakes, which is why the mortality rate is high.

Gary

 

Chuck, my only concern with this thread is that it violates the first rule of 6 speed. Having yours and Bobby's approval, is like a drug dealer having the polices permission to break the law, where as with others it won't be tolerated. This is a business transaction that has had an unfortunate outcome. Allowing this thread to be posted essentially forces Rottec potentially compromise there policies, and essentially teaches us all how to get win a dispute.

 

Right. I want to see how much better the customer service will be when dealing with Kwan Loo in Beijing. If you think you have communication challenges now, just wait.

 

Shipping cost has never been brought up, because we are still in the middle of the charge back process. Just for the future references, we have never charged any damage/return shipping from any of our customer, and this will continue to be in our damage/return policy for the future.

Just a little update on the case, we have already sent out a prepaid shipping label to Bryant, and once he cancel the charge back case against us, then the return process will begin.

 

That's certainly the effect, but I'm not sure I see why you deplore it, NorthVan. If any advertiser is trying impose 'policies' on buyers who expect normal good business practice, we should learn that as early as possible. And if the policy were reasonable, it wouldn't be needed. Not as a 'policy'.

I don't mean to sound unreasonable myself. Businesses often explain many things to potential buyers. If you bother to go there, the web page for "terms and conditions" is likely to need four scrolls to reach the end. That can seem like 'policy' when they really are just explaining how business works to people who understandably have no wish to take night school to buy a new can opener or open a wireless account.

Businesses that actually expect to enforce policies of their own creation are just violating the Uniform Commercial Code in most cases. There are exceptions with truly innovative businesses like Google and Yahoo, but the ideas that leap to mind for a small business 'policy' always turn out to be rehashed ideas that were outlawed years ago. With the best will in the world, we tried to find alternatives for a small business that wanted to impose one of those bad ideas. After three years, we finally gave up and let him go to jail. Anybody who thinks of a 'new' way to avoid losing money in business usually just rediscovered an old way to go broke or go to jail. Smart business people focus on thinking up ways to make money, not avoid losing it.

The responsibility of a business that provides advertising space is pretty limited. Certainly the board is not responsible legally for an advertiser violating the UCC. On the other hand, they have the same competitive obligation as any other business. They need to show concern for their customers that goes beyond their obligations under the UCC. They showed an even-handed concern for both parties when they tried to mediate the dispute. That's appropriate. When Rottec refused to comply with their obligations under the UCC, the board showed an appropriate concern for all of us in letting the 'policies' of Rottec be described in a post by the buyer.

So far, no one has been flaming anyone, though I heard the word used unreasonably. The buyer described the situation, and Rottec described the differences in how they see it. The only real difference I noticed was Rottec thinking the buyer has their money back because the credit card put it on hold, but that's a matter of Rottec misunderstanding the operations of credit card companies I suspect. (Although, as I said, they cannot impose policies in violation of the UCC, so if they expressed that intent to the credit card company, they might indeed have given the buyer back his money already.)

My point is that everyone has been quite civil, and a failure of civility is usually the only reason to suppress a thread. Commercial posts from non-advertisers are also banned, but that's just common sense, even if the would-be poster claims no affiliation with the product. Buying space is the answer to that, or an offer to PM details in the case of someone truly not affiliated with the product.

This is different. A refusal to permit discussion of the goods provided by advertisers would put the board itself in an awkward position. Both in ethical terms and business-wise. Personally, a large part of the value of the forum to me lies in hearing other users discussing these products. If I thought the board moderators were censoring negative comments, that value would evaporate. That value to the forum members is what makes us pay attention to the ads in the first place, so the moderators have an obligation to the other advertisers to keep their own reputation intact.

Like many things in life, the practices of business are just common sense as learned by people doing this sort of thing for generations. Internet forums are new, but business affiliations like those between advertisers and media are not new. What the moderators have permitted in this case is in the tradition of those relations because they have to balance their obligation to the advertisers, the board sponsors, with their obligation to those of us the advertisers hope to reach. The latter obligations create the value they sell to the sponsors.

Gary

 

I'm not sure I understand, though I admit my French isn't good enough to ask for a translation. What is the "return process" once he has shipped the seats back to you? You'll get your seats back so you can file a claim with your insurance. And the charge will be cancelled.

If you mean the process PayPal uses, rather than Mastercharge or Visa, I have to say I sympathize, because their methods are more brute force than necessary. But won't they clear the accounts and release everything once you relinquish your claim to the funds?

Gary

 

i'm not going to comment anything on the case. But i agree with JPSJR comment about customer service. I've been PM-ing and emailing about the CF rear spoiler for 997.2 and until this second i never received any info about that. Been contacting them more than 3 times. All of the reply are "will be in stock in 2 weeks" (took days to get the reply) but nothing happened. So i'll just take it as Rottec doesn't want to sell their CF roof spoiler to me and i just don't want to waste my time.

 

I don't deplore it, I am just saying that I don't think it is fair to bend the rules for one because the moderators feel that one is right and the other one isn't they only two with all the facts are the buyer and the seller. Allowing this thread to exists, forces one to bend from there position...right or wrong. I don't care about the facts of this issue, I care that one person gets to bend the rules because 6 speed moderators agree with ones position over the other on a private businss matter. Moderators are the ones that need to make sure the rules are followed, by everyone, not the ones they choose to have follow them.

As for the argument about the business situation, I don't care. I stopped reading this and every other long winded posts after the first few sentences. You guys can argue your CS point of view in another thread.

 

Excuse my French.

Every story has 3 sides. Let's stop looping around what he said and what she said kind of story. We should concentrate on how to solve this problem.

 

This is an important thread because we all order stuff from forum's sponsors based on thinearth at we hear and see about their products.

Anyway, more I read Ray's (from Rottec) replies to this thread, more I am convinced that this is his fault. Like Gary pointed out, He doesn't know the first thing about customer relations or good business practices. So bye- bye- Rottec.

 

Solution is easy Mr. Ray, send him a new shipment of seats and ask him to pay you if he is satisfied. I am sure he will because he paid upfront in the first instance. He trusted you. You lost his trust because goods arrived damaged and you didn't replace them promptly.

Now it is your turn to trust him and ship him new seats. Then, we all will know that you are a good trustworthy businessman. Or else.....