I placed a $500 Canadian order with them last night following all policies listed on their website. This company is out of the USA and specializes in blank media for businesses like mine that do their own printing. The reason we switched to them is because our Canadian distributor's pricing rose up 26% in the past year.
Today we were contacted by Brandon Epperson, CCR Supervisor, who stated "All orders leaving the United States must be paid in full via wire transfer prior to shipping without exception.". And that my credit card was being refunded. First off, the order was via Paypal with Seller protection. I chose to do this, as a new customer, because it gives businesses more confidence in dealing with new customers.
After receiving the email I browsed their website. The company is setup by default to ship to USA and Canada. NO WHERE on their website does it state that wire transfers are required. In fact, wire transfers are not even mentioned as a payment option anywhere as far as I could tell.
The next thing I did was contact their customer service team for clarification and talked to Julie Chapdelaine. She clarified that she had absolutely no knowledge of this policy and couldn't direct me to anything about it. Brandon was tied up until near the end of the conversation with her but did pop in near the end. He stated that this was because it was "my first order and they have had a lot of fraud lately". Ok, great, but UPDATE YOUR POLICIES!
For those that don't know how credit card works with foreign currency, you are charged a currency conversion fee when you make a purchase. This fee can be anywhere from 1.5% to 3% depending on your credit card. When a refund is processed, that currency conversion fee is usually not refunded. You are also subject to currency fluctuations which I have never had go in my favor. So, they are going to refund my payment and I am going to lose money. They then want me to go to my bank and arrange for a wire transfer, which is also going to cost money. No thank you.
Fraud is a real thing and I feel that EVERY company has to do what is most important to protect their business. As someone who owns and operates the LARGEST retro video game store in Canada and ships my products across all of North America, we have to deal with this on a regular basis unfortunately. A lot of our orders are into the thousands of dollars too and include items that can be easily flipped to someone else for cash. We warehouse well in excess of a million dollars worth of inventory. Paypal is the MOST secure option for payments as long as the buyer has seller protection. This is the reason that I chose to do Paypal for this transaction rather then using my credit card directly. I would also NEVER require my customers to jump through hoops in order to mitigate fraud. And if I did require them to jump through hoops, I would have it listed as a standard policy. I would also update my check-out system to let the customer know and present them with valid payment options such as "wire transfer" information.
I hope you can see from the length of this review that I am genuinely upset by the lack forethought that your company has presented to me today. Get your act together!
UPDATE:
Apparently buried into their FAQ page is a section that states what Brandon said in regards to wire transfer. But seriously, who is searching for something like that or is even expecting something like that to exist? I did my due-diligence and went to the "How to Order" page which listed everything I needed to know. Apparently it is "Fast and Easy". The "How To Order" page has shipping information, payment information and everything on it. If you were going to stick a HUGE policy like that anywhere,...
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