A rude encounter with the other side of Internet fraud
Mark Hanusz, Contributor, Jakarta
Recently I started doing a little video editing on my computer. Nothing too serious but as I am sort of a gadget freak, I decided to buy this little video editing knob to make scrolling through frames easier.
I found one by a small company in Nashville, Tennessee, and checked with a few stores around town. Naturally it wasn't available. So I ordered it over the Internet.
The knob itself cost about US$30 and the shipping was the same. Oh well -- since I have lived in Jakarta for seven years I am already quite used to the fact that shipping anything to or from Indonesia can be expensive. I consider it just part of the cost of living here.
Immediately after I placed the order with my credit card, I got an e-mail confirmation from the company:
"Thank you for your order with us.
Orders are normally processed by the next business day, weekend orders will be processed the following Monday and pre- ordered products are shipped when they become available.
You will be immediately notified via e-mail when your order has been shipped. Thanks again,
The Griffin Team"
So far so good, right? Anyway about a week later nothing had arrived -- not even a note from the shipper to pay some silly amount to clear it through customs. So I sent a polite e-mail asking the status of my order. Here is the response I received from the company, verbatim:
"Hello,
Sorry for this but we cannot ship to any orders in Indonesia. There are so many instances of fraud and deceit (like almost ALL orders) that we have just stop shipping to your country. Almost all orders are using stolen credit cards and so we have just stopped doing business with your country.
If you are not someone trying to con us out our money then I am sorry that it has come to this. You can contact Tom if you wish to convince him that you mean no malice or deceit. He is the shipping manager. rAndall"
Huh? I am supposed to write an e-mail to the shipping manager to convince him I mean no malice or deceit? OK, let's ignore the fact that this moron can hardly write in English properly -- much less spell his own name correctly -- but didn't the company just thank me for the order and say it would e-mail me when the order was shipped?
Unfortunately as my reply e-mail contained too many expletives I am unable to include it here. The gist of it was keep your friggin' knob and that not only did they lose a customer but I will discourage my friends from buying their products. Oh, and I cc-ed a few friends of mine who work for magazines and newswires in case they were looking for a story.
I thought the company would probably just ignore the e-mail and hope I would quietly go away. But the next day I received a response from a man named Kip basically apologizing in case rAndall's e-mail was rude, that sometimes there are misunderstandings, blah blah blah. And also how rAndall is a "exemplary Senior Customer Service Rep" and the shipping manager would process the order immediately and then proceeded to thank me for my understanding and cooperation. Blah blah blah.
Anyway, I had to reply that I still don't want to have anything to do with them nor their silly knobs. Why would I want to deal with a company that uses words like "con" and "malice" and "deceit" and "fraud" in an e-mail to a customer? While Indonesia isn't actually "my country", as rAndall incorrectly assumed, things like this remind me why I am out of "their country" and proud to call Indonesia my home.