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My preorder experience with AdvancedBPS.com :(


Guest DeanONH

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Guest DeanONH

My preorder experience with AdvancedBPS.com icon_frown.gif

---

 

On 2/14/01, I preordered a Garmin eTrex Vista from the secure web site of AdvancedGPS.com and received email confirmation and credit card validation back the same day. AdvancedGPS said that they would email me for approval to ship when they received their Vistas. At that time the scuttlebutt on the street had the Vista scheduled for mid to late March.

 

On 3/5/01, I emailed AdvancedGPS wanting to know whether I was high enough in their preorder queue to assure me a Vista from their initial shipment. AdvancedGPS replied "We still have a few left that have not been allocated yet, so you are in good shape!". So far, so good!

 

As time rolled on through March, the street scuttlebutt had shifted the Vista delivery day to the second week in April. Gettin' close!

 

At 1:04am on 4/4/01, I received, by email, "Garmin eTrex Vista - February PreOrder Automated Confirmation" asking for permission to ship and bill my credit card. They also invited me to add any accessories to my order.

 

At 4:57am on 4/4/01, less than 4 hours later, I approved the shipment and billing. I added a PC cable w/ cigarette adapter. I also included my phone number and asked to be called if their were any questions. The fun's about to begin...

 

Three days later, 2:08am, 4/7/01, I received the following email: "Hi, it has been so long since the order was placed that our system has automatically deleted your cc info. Can you please resend it via 2 separate emails? Thanks!" The section between the quotes is the complete email text. Does anybody really email their credit card information? No phone call during the 3 days. I tried calling the numbber on the web site, at my expense, and the phone was answered by machine with no capability to leave a message. I emailed back saying to please call me....; no phone call.

 

On 4/0/01, I get the following email. "Your credit card number is not lost. As I explained, the order was placed so long ago that our system automatically deleted it for security purposes. This is for your own protection. Do you really want your cc info to sit around indefinitely in cyberspace? Regardless, we will ship your order once we can get billing information - unless you would like to cancel, which we will be happy to do also. Please just let us know how best to complete your order. Thank you, Sincerely, Kim, AdvancedGPS" No phone call. They say they are trying to protect my credit card, but asked me earlier to supply it by email.

 

I find AdvancedGPS to be somewhat lacking as many etailers are. The order was for over $330, I think a phone call was justified and could have easily solved this problem.

 

I suppose I should feel lucky to have found out the true nature of the AdvancedGPS. I wonder how they would have responded to a real problem?

 

This is just my experience with an etailer.

 

Dean

 

(. .)

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Guest Quinnow

I think we're jumping the gun here a bit. This is a single incident that

is

known so far, and Kim is the owner of the company. But here is my

opinion...

two weeks ago I pre-ordered my vista through the same company and was also

e-mailed by Kim, she explained to me that my card information would stay

on

file until the order was processed and ready to go. Four days ago I was

e-mailed again telling me that my card had been run through and that the

unit was on the way. Right now I have the Vista in my hand that came with

not a hitch and was well packed and a great price.

So before we go throwing these bad comments around just on what has been

said by one person, the facts need to be known. Maybe she did make a

mistake

(they do happen) but in all my dealings with that company not once have I

had a single problem, and I order allot from them. This is my opinion and

I

respect his, but there is always two sides to every story. I will continue

to order from Kim and I would recommend that others do the same. I know of

a

few other gps companies that have said the units are on the way or will

be,

and those customers are still waiting. I on the other hand have mine and

will be caching with it this weekend.

I really do wish that person all the luck in the world in getting this

worked out. icon_smile.gif

 

Quote by IronHelix...

 

"yes I also had a great experience with AdvancedGPS.com. (no idea about

advancedBPS.com :-))

 

I ordered my vista around the second. On the fifth I asked if mine had

shipped yet and if I could upgrade to overnite. Same day I got a response

that it was ready to ship and for $25 (kind of steep) could go out USPS

Priority Overnite (or something like that). I emailed back saying go for

it, and the next day I had a shiny new vista in my hand.

 

My only complaint is that the carry case had no hole for the click stick,

but thats because (AFAIK) Garmin doesnt make one that does right now. Not a

problem, given five minutes, a 1-hole puncher and a large pair of pliers my

case was fully clickstick-compatible!

 

Based on my experience I would recommend AdvancedGPS.com to anyone buying a

GPS."

 

Sincerely,

 

Quinnow. icon_smile.gif

 

 

------------------

Quinn Stone

Rochester, NY.14616

www.Navicache.com

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Guest jeremy

As an eCommerce developer for several years, it's not a standard business practice to delete credit card information after such a short amount of time. Here are the reasons...

 

1. Chargebacks happen often, and backup information is necessary to dispute a charge that has been charged back to the company. Most folks don't know this, but in cases of fraud the merchant gets hit, not the credit card company (who say they "guarantee" orders. They do, but they just pass the loss on to the merchant - with a processing fee). A chargeback can happen for an order that is super old. It's good to have documentation for research.

 

2. Returns require credits, so once a order has shipped you may have several weeks (a month?) to return the product and receive a refund. The merchant needs to know the credit card in order to refund the customer. In some cases, knowing the confirmation number from the merchant bank helps link the charge to the credit as well.

 

The only thing I can think of why credit card information isn't retained is due to programmer error (not checking on backorders before deleting), unencrypted credit cards (for customer service, etc.), or liability purposes from previous experience. It was probably programmer error.

 

Jeremy

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Guest johnny

Hmmm, Quinn's was ordered about two weeks ago and has been delivered,

"IronHelix" ordered one on the 2nd (of April?) and that has been

delivered. I ordered mine on 2/28 and have yet to hear from Advanced,

other than when I did a status check in mid-March as to when the

expected ship date was. The reply was prompt, and I was told that

delivery was expected around 4/9. I sent another message last night to check

the status and haven't heard anything yet. Hopefully I'll see my

Vista soon.

 

John

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Guest Quinnow

I made contact with Kim on this topic and I add it here from her e-mail to me, this is a Quote from her (owner of advancedgps.com)

 

" I am sorry you did not find your order experience with us to be

agreeable. When we originally started taking pre-orders in January,

we were told by Garmin that the new products would be out in

February. It turns out that many of them were not available until

April. Further, Garmin has serious backorders on the new products.

All I can imagine is that demand by far exceeds their expectations.

 

As a security measure, all customer credit card info is automatically

deleted from our system after 30 days. This is to protect the

customer. I am sorry that it was an inconvenience to you that your

info was deleted, but I emailed you several times to get updated

info. Further, we have a 24-hour voice mail in which to leave info.

I even called you two times myself.

 

We, like every other internet Garmin dealer, are completely sold out

on the Vista. We did not have enough to fill even our February pre-

orders. Garmin is working diligently to fill orders - and as they

supply us, we are supplying our customers. We offered the new

products at an extremely low price and we always offer free shipping -

therefore we had a tremendous number of pre-orders.

 

Again, I am sorry the experience was not to your satisfaction.

 

Sincerly, Kim Vermaak, AdvancedGPS

www.advancedgps.com "

 

I have not read anything into either statement be it from Kim or from the person who had the bad experience.

but I have heard that many places will delete card info (mostly after) transactions due to the fact that we live in a world of computer hacks. But I think we know that it is uncommon to wait 30 days for a cc charge to be added to the accounts. I guess she could have charged the account of this gentleman right off the bat, but she as well as her company felt the best thing to do would be to just hold the information as to not tie up funds of the card owner.

And once again I choose no side on this thread, I just wanted to see both sides of what had happened and I now feel that it has been done.

I wish you good luck!

 

 

------------------

Quinn Stone

Rochester, NY.14616

www.Navicache.com

Link to comment
Guest DeanONH

I agree with all of your replies, but a single phone call from AdvancedGPS could have cleared the problem in five minutes. A little extra effort on a preorder that was six weeks old. Was that really too much to ask for?

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Guest DeanONH

My final word....

 

It would have been nice to hear from Kim on this forum. Quinnow, do you work for Kim?

 

BTW, I tried a little test.... I ordered a Vista & cig adapter cable from Vanns.com and asked for a confirmation by phone. Not only do I have my Vista in hand, but that phone call confirmation came 1 hour 35 minutes after placing the order.

 

Customer service is not dead!

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Guest jeremy

I hear you, but you sort of get what you pay for. Although I'm way pro- mom & pop shop, you wouldn't have had an issue if you went through Amazon. They've invested gobs of time and energy to exceed the expectations for their customers. And they still seem to have eTrex vistas in inventory as well.

 

Mom & Pops, on the other hand, rely on a much tighter budget, and as a result have less feature-rich tools to respond to customer needs.

 

From my experience working on ecommerce sites, the feature-rich software out there is much too expensive for boutique sites like AdvancedGPS.com - I'm sure their customer service is lacking because they have none (or a quarter of a person,etc).

 

However, the personal touch occured in many cases and there are lots of folks who like the company.

 

Jeremy

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Guest Quinnow

er can be worked out.

Dean I hope it all works well for you in the end, just make sure you continue to have fun caching as well as speaking your mind on the forum. Thats what its all about (feedback) icon_smile.gif

 

------------------

Quinn Stone

Rochester, NY.14616

www.Navicache.com

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Guest DeanONH

Well, maybe this is my final word... icon_wink.gif

 

Quinnow,

 

I have an external answering service and there were no messages from Kim or AdvancedGPS. We had corresponded several times by email. If Kim did try to call twice and couldn't get through why haven't I received an email saying that?

Link to comment
Guest DeanONH

Quinnow,

 

I received my Vista from Vanns.com. I even gave them a little customer service test. Please see my reply above. Vanns passed impressively.

 

Thanx for the offer of your Vista. icon_wink.gif

 

Hangin!

 

Dean

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Guest johnny

I called Kim today and discovered that my two orders (mentioned previously in this thread) were "un-confirmed" -- AdvancedGPS had sent the confirmation messages, but I nevere received them. I've been put back in the pool for the next shipment of Vista's. That's OK, I suppose, but I wish I knew where those messages went...

 

John

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Guest Quinnow

Dean...sorry, to tell you the truth I completely overlooked your post farther up. But to answer a question, no I don't work for kim at all, But I believe in helping those that help me, and she answered very quickly and nicely any questions I had. But mind you I don't base quality service on a single instance, it took many visits to her site as well as e-mails for me to form that opinion of her and her company.

Heck!...she's even gonna take her family Geocaching so how bad can she be? icon_smile.gif

Once again I am sorry you had a bad experiance with the company.

i guess its like me bringing a friend to my favorite burger joint to find out he gets a bad one, that first opinion counts! icon_biggrin.gif

 

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Quinn Stone

Rochester, NY.14616

www.Navicache.com

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Guest Mullen

The one thing that bugs me about ordering from AdvancedGPS and ExploreGPS (They are the same people) is that you really don't get much information from them when you order something.

You order, then wait and wait and wait. You have to send them email (You do get replies within 6 hours, which is pretty good) to find out anything.

They need a WIMS (Where is my stuff) button so you can get a status on your order. It pain to put on the web site, but people like it alot. They want to know where there stuff is.

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