OpticsPlanet.com Review... Never Again!

[-Nick-]

Re: OpticsPlanet.com Review... Never Again!

Thank you for responding Alessandro...

I did check the availability button and at the time of order it had said "in-stock". Even the 2 items that were actually in-stock didn't ship for 4 business days and not until I called in 2x practically begging to have them ship them. Both Orders I had made from MidwayUSA including the one I made the same day as with Optics Planet, and the Order I had made on Tuesday after discovery of the back-ordered items, all showed up at my door before you guys even shipped mine.

The biggest issue you guys need to address IMO is the supervisors at the call center. I can't even begin to describe Jeff's apparent attitude, disrespectful tone, and complete lack of empathy. I've only ever placed 2 orders with Optics Planet, both times with extreme frustrations, and both times when I requested a Supervisor they were never around to take a phone call until finally on the last call the gentlemen on the phone with me caught his Supervisor while walking by. If your Supervisor's are never going to be available then I would suggest empowering the call center reps with the same authorities as they're a LOT more empathetic and interested in attending to customers.

 

[TOP PREDATOR]

Re: OpticsPlanet.com Review... Never Again!

thanks alessandro, very admirable to respond and to be listening to your market

i didn't mean to bash anyone, just wanted to post up what had actually happened that left a bad taste in my mouth.

the gal i spoke with on the phone was excellent, i wish i had her name so you can give her an atta girl.

but kathleen H. and her optics specialists can KMA. i doubt very much that the scope was looked at at all, or it would have been obvious to anyone that ever looked through any type of glass that there was a problem.

at the very least have the departments talk to each other, one dept. sent one message, another dept sent another. hard to have credibility when two different messages are sent.

hope you can get things back to where they were, which was excellent, with the competition that's out there, it's sometimes better not to have the biggest bottom line, but to retain customers that are giving you the bottom line.

perhaps i'll go back to spending my hard-squirrelled-away-cash at OP at sometime in the future, but for now i still have a residual undesireable aftertaste.

 

[-Nick-]

Re: OpticsPlanet.com Review... Never Again!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: TOP PREDATOR</div><div class="ubbcode-body">hope you can get things back to where they were, which was excellent, with the competition that's out there, it's sometimes better not to have the biggest bottom line, but to retain customers that are giving you the bottom line. </div></div>

+1...

To add onto that... I found it extremely insulting to be told by the Supervisor and Reps that one of the more expensive products I ordered was available through one of their Vendors but after looking at the margins it wasn't in Optic Planet's best interest. It's basically saying to the customer that they won't make enough money so it's not worth my business even though the price I was paying was what you guys advertised.

 

[johnnyappleseed]

Re: OpticsPlanet.com Review... Never Again!

i've ordered stuff from midsouth without any problems

 

[OpticsPlanet]

Re: OpticsPlanet.com Review... Never Again!

I totally hear you, 100%.

I talked to the director a bit, and they are using your order in their next training session. Like any big company, we have rules, processes, and procedures... but they don't exist to upset customers who are reasonable.

We're working away from everything being black and white to a world where there are various shade of gray. Anyone who works in a large corporation can understand that black/white is easy to train and have run efficiently, but gray takes a lot of trial and error and is an iterative process.

To give you an example: a few months ago we changed our policy to empower individual reps to do more to resolve issues in a satisfactory manner. The policy used to be "grab a supervisor" because the team was smaller and that worked well at that size. Now, the team is larger, the number of calls, emails, and chats we get are growing tremendously with the number of orders we get, and it just doesn't make as much sense to always need a supervisor. But old habits are hard to break, and even in cases where the rep should be able to try and resolve an issue, they grab a supervisor.

We'll continue to keep training and do better, and I appreciate the feedback.

Alessandro

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Broker</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Thank you for responding Alessandro...

I did check the availability button and at the time of order it had said "in-stock". Even the 2 items that were actually in-stock didn't ship for 4 business days and not until I called in 2x practically begging to have them ship them. Both Orders I had made from MidwayUSA including the one I made the same day as with Optics Planet, and the Order I had made on Tuesday after discovery of the back-ordered items, all showed up at my door before you guys even shipped mine.

The biggest issue you guys need to address IMO is the supervisors at the call center. I can't even begin to describe Jeff's apparent attitude, disrespectful tone, and complete lack of empathy. I've only ever placed 2 orders with Optics Planet, both times with extreme frustrations, and both times when I requested a Supervisor they were never around to take a phone call until finally on the last call the gentlemen on the phone with me caught his Supervisor while walking by. If your Supervisor's are never going to be available then I would suggest empowering the call center reps with the same authorities as they're a LOT more empathetic and interested in attending to customers. </div></div>

 

[OpticsPlanet]

Re: OpticsPlanet.com Review... Never Again!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: TOP PREDATOR</div><div class="ubbcode-body">thanks alessandro, very admirable to respond and to be listening to your market

i didn't mean to bash anyone, just wanted to post up what had actually happened that left a bad taste in my mouth.

the gal i spoke with on the phone was excellent, i wish i had her name so you can give her an atta girl.

but kathleen H. and her optics specialists can KMA. i doubt very much that the scope was looked at at all, or it would have been obvious to anyone that ever looked through any type of glass that there was a problem.

at the very least have the departments talk to each other, one dept. sent one message, another dept sent another. hard to have credibility when two different messages are sent.

hope you can get things back to where they were, which was excellent, with the competition that's out there, it's sometimes better not to have the biggest bottom line, but to retain customers that are giving you the bottom line.

perhaps i'll go back to spending my hard-squirrelled-away-cash at OP at sometime in the future, but for now i still have a residual undesireable aftertaste.

</div></div>

It's okay - I didn't think you were bashing anyone, just upset with how things turned out. Returns are another situation where we are a little too black/white and need to be a little more gray. Our free returns (all you have to do is pay to ship it to us) policy was abused in the past, especially with scopes.

I'd like to ask returns to re-review the entire case - do you mind sending me the order number so I can have them do that?

Alessandro

 

[TOP PREDATOR]

Re: OpticsPlanet.com Review... Never Again!

i'd love to, for the good of the order, but i'm afraid i'll actually get billed the 429.00, rather than the refund that i've already received. so in the end someone there did do good on your policy, unfortunately as remarked before i did not catch her name on the phone.

but this chick didn't get it:

Kathleen H.| Sales and Customer Service Specialist
OpticsPlanet, Inc. | Sales and Customer Engagement
o: (847) 513-6201 | f: (847) 919-3003
[email protected] | www.OpticsPlanet.com

and the kicker is when the 2nd determination came back:

"Since we are unable to process your return, we would like to return your item(s) back to you. Please contact us to arrange the payment for your return shipping. If we do not hear back from you within the next 7 days, we will assume that you are no longer interested in receiving your merchandise back and will dispose of it without initiating credit."

<<<<<oddly, the credit that i did receive came in @ 2:00 pm which i didn't realize i had received:

OpticsPlanet.com Credit Notice

DATE: 11-Sep-2012
ORDER #: 319xxxx
REFERENCE #: 210xxxx

SOLD TO:
========
xxx xxxxxxx
xxxx xxxx DRIVE
xxxxx TWP PA 18xxx
United States

SHIPPED TO:
===========
xxxxx xxxxx
xx xxxxx DRIVE
xxxxx TWP PA 18xxx
United States

==================================================================
Ordered: 1 Shipped: 1 67-RS-SWSF8-HK4014 Hawke Sport Optics Sidewinder 30 8-32x56 SF Riflescope, 0.5 MilDot 20x Reticle HK4014 $449.99 Ship Date: 20-Aug-2012
==================================================================

Product Total: $0.00
Sales Tax: $0.00
Shipping: $0.00
Discount: $0.00
Surcharge: $0.00
Grand Total: $0.00
BalanceDue: ($427.49)

11-Sep-2012: WE HAVE ISSUED A CREDIT TO THE ACCOUNT DESCRIBED BELOW IN THE AMOUNT OF: $426.59.

Account Type: Visa
Last 4 digits of the Account Number: xxxx

If we can be of any further assistance to you regarding your order, please e-mail us at [email protected] or call our helpful staff at (847) 513-6201. Be sure to mention your Order 3194171 Reference 2100160 when contacting us.

Thanks again for choosing OpticsPlanet.com! We appreciate your business!

Sincerely,
OpticsPlanet.com Sales Team
[email protected]
http://www.OpticsPlanet.com


<<<<<<then got another notice that a credit is not going to be issued @ 5:46 pm on the same day after i asked if any further consideration to a refund was given:

From: "OpticsPlanet.com Sales" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 5:46:28 PM
Subject: RE: Your OpticsPlanet.com Order 319xxxx Reference 210xxxx On Hold (OP:481xxxx)

Greetings from Opticsplanet.com!

Thank you for contacting us. Our technical specialists looked over the item to confirm if the item was defective or not, as they do will all defective returned items. They were able to use the scope as intended and did not see any defects in the scope. Since the scope was returned with some scratching, we are not able to accept it as a defective return nor are we able to accept it as a unsatisfied with item return. I apologize for the inconvenience. Please advise how you would like to proceed.

Best regards,

Kathleen H.| Sales and Customer Service Specialist
OpticsPlanet, Inc. | Sales and Customer Engagement
o: (847) 513-6201 | f: (847) 919-3003
[email protected] | www.OpticsPlanet.com


From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 10:57 AM
To: OpticsPlanet.com
Subject: Re: Your OpticsPlanet.com Order 319xxxx Reference 210xxxx On Hold (OP:481xxxxx)

Has any further consideration been given to the below?



<<<<<i mean no disrespect to you, but if the group's left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, i fear that i may actually be double billed.

i assure you there was nothing wrong with the scope when i got it, scratches on the finish wise, as i didn't even mount it and used extreme care not to damage the finish in the event i had to return it. it didn't have a scratch on it when returned and the thing that was wrong with it that was cause for the return was indeed a focusing issue as described a few posts ago.

the focus issues where so obvious that anyone that has never even looked through a scope can tell that things were blurry. i find it very hard too that if there are indeed optics specialists there that actually looked through the scope that the defect is very apparant.

one more thing is that these mysterious "scratches on the finish" were not mentioned in my first denial for a refund. now 3 emails later, "scratches on the finish" are now mentioned.

that's when i was convinced that i was being put on to some degree, and was very nervous for a week or two that i was going to either end up with a 449.00 scope that was unusable or without a scope and a 449.00 bill.

i'm not able to keep much money on the side for my hobbies, and was looking forward to purchasing that scope for years. i was heartbroken that the scope was the way it was (not your fault) but the problems and BS with the return made it that much more of a disgusting experience.

heck i even reviewed the scope here:
http://www.snipershide.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=3534174#Post3534174

and even in that review, i thought was under the impression that i was going to have a no hassle return. i did mention a scope that i bought from another vendor as it was under 350.00 clearance. returned it with no hassles. then got one through OP, paid full price as i like the features of the scope and i've always had good products come form OP, when they were in stock, and figured the first one was a bad scope, no wonder it was discounted. but the one from OP had the same focus issues, so i don't blame OP for the quality of the scope as you guys didn't manufacture it, but not too confident that if i buy from OP again and have a problem, i'll be lacking customer support / service and get a run around.

again, not being nasty, just being honest.