Another Great Highlandwear review--UNSATISFACTORY

[ForresterModern]

One of our members recently posted a review of a Balmoral he recieved from greathighlandwear dot com. I am happy for him that his experience, although not ideal by any means, was satisfactory in the end. Interestingly I made a similar but slightly larger order from the same website at about the same time and thought I ought to post a review of my experience as well.

I ordered online two balmorals and a deerstalker hat back in early June and promptly my Paypal was charged for the amount due. I have recieved exactly nothing since then, despite a now 6 week wait and several emails. I even discussed my situation with a customer rep on their online customer service chat line, who basically said he could see my order but had no further knowledge of the status (status online was "credit card charged"), and had no way of finding out about it further. He promised that there would be a change in the status of my order within 24 hours, and an update email about my order. Now yet another week later I have neither recieved a status update or any response by email or other mode. I have contacted Paypal about reversing the charge for this totally unaccounted for order and am awaiting their investigation and report.

Just another extremely UNSATISFIED customer.

Jeff :ootd:

[beloitpiper]

Awful. You'd think the service rep would be more in tune with what was actually going on at the company!

[Jordan]

Thinks not very good To Hear about i know my experiences Wern't The Best But keep chasing them up and you Should get The result you want and if not at least they should give your money back

Jordan

[ForresterModern]

Jordan

That is the nice thing about using Paypal---they pretty much guarantee you get satisfied or made whole with reimbursement.

j

[bigdad1]

Please clarify the time frame for me. You say you ordered in early July and then refer to a six week wait. This is only the 25th of July. I am just looking to understand what is going on and not trying to be smarta**.

[Riverkilt]

One of the differences between middlemen in the Scottish goods industry is that some -guessing very few - maintain a warehouse with stock ready to ship.

The others just take our order and forward it on to the manufacturer. Sometimes they have the manufacturer drop ship directly to us (yes, its happened to me), sometimes they have the manufacturer ship to them and they reship to us. Sometimes the middlemen wait and group our orders for the same product for better pricing from the manufacturer.

These middlemen without stock (though you'd not know it from their websites) are at the complete mercy of the manufacturer's schedules so they have no way to predict when our goods will arrive. Its even worse then they are holding our orders waiting for other orders for the same product before placing the orders with the manufacturer. They'll never admit to that.

Its much akin to middlemen who sell hand sewn kilts but subcontract with anonymous kiltmakers. Once the order is passed on they too are at the mercy of the kiltmaker's backlog, health, fabric delivery, et.al.

Much gratitude to the men on this board who share their experiences so that we can learn how different businesses providing Scottish goods actually operate and include that knowledge in our decision making process.

An example of a well run middeman operation is the Scottish Tartan's Museum which maintains stock on some items like Lewis Kilt Hose, and forwards orders on other items like L&M custom designed sporrans. STM works closely with manufacturers that can be trusted and they hold delivery times and warn of delays. So it ain't all bad...its often very very good. We just need to sort the various businesses out. So again, a hearty thank you to those like Forrester Modern who share their experiences.

Ron

[ForresterModern]

Please clarify the time frame for me. You say you ordered in early July and then refer to a six week wait. This is only the 25th of July. I am just looking to understand what is going on and not trying to be smarta**.

Order placed second week June, Paypal charged next day, nearly 4 weeks later I wrote to them on website communications about status of order and received no response, nearly one week later wrote again and no response, one or two days later I contacted them by their own website online customer service chat line and got the useless runaround and never fullfilled promises of future updates and emails, nearly one week later still no communications about order status I contacted Paypal about reversing the order (they have a 6 week time limit on filing these complaints/requests).

My major concerns are that they have poor communications systems about following up with status updates that are useful and informative, poor onsite communications responses (well actually ABSENT responses technically would qualify as below POOR), and then worst of all when I do shat with a customer service rep on their own chat line precisely for that purpose I get no help, then empty and unfulfilled promises of updates that never come. 6 weeks of absolutely nothing except a charge to my paypal account is in my opinion unacceptable, and when combined with the misinformation (some might use the term "lies") provided by the absolutely no help "help line", the overall experience is rated that of UNSATISFACTORY.

I don't mean to be crass or vindictive. Paypal will make sure I either get my items promptly or refund my money then go after the vendor to make good for paypals costs, so I will not be out anything other than time and effort and some frustration. As those who have read my other reviews can tell when I find good things I freely state them, when I find problems I attempt to understand them before making a final assessment. But in this case I cannot understand not only the complete lack of communication and response to my attempts, but the actual help line lack of help and frank misinformation on top of that. I think if a vendor finds that there will be an unexpected delay in their ability to deliver an item they should let you know about it---if a stock item is out of stock they should know that when they go to check their stock for the shipment fulfillment and let you know then, if they know they are at the mercy of a manufacturer they should let you know the item will be drop shipped separately and approximately what the time line for that will be (after all the supplier is their responsibility to manage). Anything less than open and honest communication is just bad business practice, which should be met in this kind of forum with appropriate and honest appraisal of the outcomes of that practice. I would do the same with any of the sponsoring or non-sponsoring vendors or individual artisans on this site, as I hope others would.

Hope this helps.

jeff :ootd:

[ChubRock]

I think we Americans (and I'll lump the Canadians in with us) are in a big rush. Not that you don't deserve better customer service, an educated response from customer service, and at least an email in six weeks, but I have noticed on my travels that no one is in a hurry but us. I once ordered a meal in Scotland and it took 75 minutes to retrieve, it was a simple meal and I remember it was the special. Luckily they had a fine selection of single-malts to keep me occupied. I just don't now if anyone is in as big of rush as us in general. In 1990 I ordered toast in Jamaica, I am still waiting for it.

[MacKay71]

I think we Americans (and I'll lump the Canadians in with us) are in a big rush. Not that you don't deserve better customer service, an educated response from customer service, and at least an email in six weeks, but I have noticed on my travels that no one is in a hurry but us. I once ordered a meal in Scotland and it took 75 minutes to retrieve, it was a simple meal and I remember it was the special. Luckily they had a fine selection of single-malts to keep me occupied. I just don't now if anyone is in as big of rush as us in general. In 1990 I ordered toast in Jamaica, I am still waiting for it.

All very true, but if you are promised to get something in a certain peroid of time, you should get it on that time.