Web Sites Venting Customers’ Fury Over Buy.Com’s Pricing Fiasco
The fury over Aliso Viejo-based Buy.com Inc.’s recent pricing fiasco has expanded on the Internet, with outraged customers venting their frustrations with the online retailer, and no fewer than a dozen anti-Buy.com Web sites sprouting.
The company has seen its satisfaction rating sink among its customers, a boycott and petition drive have been organized, and a class-action lawsuit is being contemplated, although none has been filed. The protests were sparked two weeks ago when the company listed on its Web site a high-end computer monitor for $164.50, far below its $588 normal retail price. Before the company realized its error, it had received nearly 1,600 orders for the monitor.
Buy.com decided to honor the $164.50 price for the 143 monitors it had in stock. It canceled all the other orders, calling the listing “an honest mistake.”
But customers have been complaining that the company charged their credit cards for purchase orders that won’t be filled, and, as of late last week, still had not credited the charge accounts. Some said charges for the monitors showed up on their credit cards even after they were notified that their orders had been canceled. Still others said they won’t be satisfied until they get the computer monitors at the price that they had paid.
The incident has triggered other complaints unrelated to the monitor listing. Among other things, Buy.com was criticized for erroneously shipping items to customers and then taking an inordinate amount of time to refund credit card charges.
The company did not return a call for comment.
Before the monitor pricing debacle, Buy.com had a respectable rating of 5.5 out of 7 on the ResellerRatings.com Web site, which ranks computer product retailers using customer evaluations. Since then, however, Buy.com’s rating in computer hardware sales has fallen to 3.5.
Shopping100.com, which also ranks online retailers based on customer feedback, now ranks Buy.com dead last among 53 hardware sellers.
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Jonathan Gaw covers technology and electronic commerce for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7818 and at jonathan.gaw@latimes.com.
