What the hell happened to buy.com?

Cornfedwb

Cornfedwb

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I remember back when buy.com used to be the online retailer, especially for electronics. Hell, they even had the minor league golfers on the Buy.com Tour. Shipping was quick, customer service was pleasant, they were highly communicative and prices were excellent.

Now... they've somehow sunk down to the depths of despair, and quickly. I placed three orders with them recently, one for a 802.11g router I changed my mind on which took over three weeks to get cancelled. One for a pair of the new Xbox wireless controllers.. 2 weeks, still hasn't shipped. The final order was for a PCMCIA wireless card that ended up shipping after 3 or so weeks but wasn't what I ordered and I'm still working to get that returned.

On resellerratings.com they're down to a 2.5 in the last 6 months. Hell, BuyRite isn't doing that much worse.

Anyways.. does anyone know what the hell happened to them? How do they go from the likes of Amazon to the likes of Buyrite in a few short years?
 
I agree, they've definitely gone down hill. I used to order from the all of the time. I ordered a Wireless Logitech controller two weeks ago and it still hasn't shipped and they won't let me cancel my order. I'm going to by shying away from using them in the future.
 
Buy.com went up with the boom and came down afterwards. After they realized that they were supposed to turn a profit, they had to cut those silly expensive things like good service and prompt delivery.

My last order from them took 3 weeks, I'll never buy from them again.
 
I also used to use them a few years back, first etailer I started with, everything was going fine for awhile until I had a dvd order become backordered, I think fine i'll cancel, as those of you who frequent the site enough know then they decide to ship it a week later. That was my last time using them.
 
The last time I purchased from them was like 3 years ago. Had similar problems. Took 3 weeks to received the $1100 digital camera I ordered. It arrived damaged. It took another 3 months to get my money back after returning the camera. I haven't ordered from the since. I see the deals for them being posted all the time in CAG, but I won't bite. They got me once. Never again.
 
cheepy should post a buy.com warning in the front page deals saying that they do charge tax and they take forever (3+weeks) to ship
 
I stop buying from them when it became apparent to me that their customer DB was compromised and my CC info was stolen.

It was never publicly announced but a couple years ago a lot of people were getting these weird russian CC charges and everyone had one etailer in common. BUY.COM

Also management didnt go public with an IPO fast enough before the bust so they didnt raise the capital to stay affloat.

What's really funny at buy.com is they have bizrate link but if you actually go to bizrate.com and do a check on buy.com they get POSITIVE as an average but why not scroll down a bit and try to actually read the customer comments...
http://www.bizrate.com/ratings_guide/cust_reviews__mid--18893.html

I think buyrite has finally gotten beat for the bottom position as WORST online retailer. I hate places like bizrate..you have to pay to get ranked with them and they cheat on the ratings for sure.
 
Jesus, Defender wasn't kidding. They have %35 negative feedback overall, and bizrate is still giving them a positive rank. Ridiculous. Thanks for the heads up guys, I know to avoid this place from now on.
 
I've often thought about why places like buy.com still have positive bizrate rankings and such, then I heard these stats in my marketing management class this summer:

"95% of unsatisfied customers don't complain directly to the rerailer or any kind of authority about their bad experience. 89% DO stop shopping there though and 33% tell at least 10 other people about thier bad experiences."

Now it becomes a bit more clear.
 
Buy.com tried to do too much, methinks. I remember when I used to get an actual printed catalog from them. The people in charge just lost focus as to what they should have been doing.

And I was one of those that got hit with fraudelent charges on my CC as well.
 
Yeah thanks, many of my family members have used them in the past, I'll give them a warning.
 
[quote name='coolsteel']I always wondered about where that 100 dollar charge came from , heh figures.[/quote]

yeah that's the thing..a couple years ago a TON of people got weird charges and it was never truely discovered which DB got hit and I think buy.com did a cover up or at the least denied it really well..this was all played out at Fatwallet a while ago and I just deleted my account and never went back.
 
Before my time, I guess.

From what I've heard Buy.com has reduced their head count to the bare operational minimum while hoping for things to pick up and allow them to hire on the needed personnel for their former level of service. I don't think it's going to happen. To much of dot.bomb era plans were based on delusion. Most of the big names are connected to serious B&M operations, and Amazon survived by using their incredibly overvalued stock to buy other businesses the had real net revenues until it gave an unmatchable market strength. That kind of opportunity comes along, well, it came along once.
 
Amazon also created the correct relationships which was key for them.

They also started auctions, marketplace, zshops, and have one of the most popular affiliate programs around.

Amazon has stepped forward while places like buy.com stepped back. Buy.com could have gone the same route but it just didnt have the proper leadership. I forgot the name of the owner but there was a lot of articles about him at the time and he really just blew it.
 
Defender, how do you delete an account on Buy.com? All I see is edit account. I want nothing to do with this site!
 
[quote name='jboy']Defender, how do you delete an account on Buy.com? All I see is edit account. I want nothing to do with this site![/quote]

Edit the info to be useless for purposes of theft using your credit card.
 
[quote name='defender']Amazon also created the correct relationships which was key for them.

They also started auctions, marketplace, zshops, and have one of the most popular affiliate programs around.

Amazon has stepped forward while places like buy.com stepped back. Buy.com could have gone the same route but it just didnt have the proper leadership. I forgot the name of the owner but there was a lot of articles about him at the time and he really just blew it.[/quote]

Most of that was due to their perceptionof who their competition was. Wouldbe etailing titans like Buy.com thought they were Amazon's competition while Amazon saw Yahoo! as primary opponent in gathering online spending to their domain. It was the battle to become the center of users' lifestyle rather than just a store. eBay has similarly operated with this in mind, most recently illustrated by their investment in Craig's List.
 
I did find some deals on Buy.com not too long ago (in fact, I posted these deals on CAG). It was the television DVD's from Fox.

One item, the Family Guy DVD's came a few days late. The other one, the Simpsons Season 4 DVD did not show up for 3 weeks. On the website, it said it was available but in reality, it was not released yet - which I didn't realize until after the fact.

The customer service was lousy and the products took way longer than anticipated but I did save more money on those DVD's. They were cheaper on Buy.com than anywhere else.

So I can't say my experience was completely negative.
 
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