Fixing an Online Order

Back in March of this year, my wife and I decided to spend the $2300 to get her soft-top Jeep Wrangler a hard top. This required installing the wiring harness, which I did back in October with the help of YouTube. Since putting the hard top on the Jeep I have been trying to figure out if we ever paid for it. Today I discovered that we hadn't and fixed that.

When I originally ordered the parts back in March, it took several tries through an online website. The first time I tried, my credit card got declined. After that, my credit card stopped working and so I had to call my credit card company. It seems that there are a number of thieves that will place an expensive order to an auto parts company on the East coast and have it shipped to the West coast. The thieves then use the long shipping times to rip off online vendors and credit card companies. Noticing this trend, Visa listed my transaction as suspected fraud and shut off the card. I managed to get the card reinstated without too much difficulty.

While trying to purchase the hard top, I found several other online sites selling the parts I needed for even less than where I originally placed the order. One vendor took American Express and the transaction went through. A few weeks later I got an e-mail about how it would take 3 months to fabricate the hard top as it is not a part they keep in stock. I responded that I didn't mind waiting and in May the hard top with associated wiring harness arrived. We left the soft top on the Jeep for the summer and didn't worry about the hard top until the weather turned cold. The whole time I kept expecting the $2300 charge to appear on my American Express. It never did.

In October I started trying to track down if I had actually made a payment or not. I ran through my American Express statements and didn't see anything. I tried contacting the place I ordered the parts from but always seemed to try after they had closed for the day. Yesterday I finally sent them a message via their website (which didn't list a phone number). Today I got back a message saying they had cancelled my order and wouldn't be sending me a hard top. They must not have read my message closely because I already had the hard top and just wanted to pay for it.

I decided that I needed to try a different route and pulled out the paperwork from the original shipping crate. It listed the shipper along with a phone number. I called them and presented my story to a very confused secretary. She passed my call onto the boss and I recounted it yet again. For some reason he seemed amazed that someone would want to try and pay for something without the threat of legal action. He said he wanted to do some research and would call me back.

About 30 minutes later he called and explained what had happened. The original place I ordered the hard top from did not know that it had been sent. After a period of inactivity, the order was cancelled. Because of the cancellation, the shipper was responsible for eating the cost of the mistake. He then went on to politely ask me if I still wanted to pay for the parts. I told him that I did and gave him my credit card number. He continued to be amazed that someone would do all this work. I responded that there are still honest people in the world. He appreciated knowing that.

Sometimes online companies make mistakes. While we should expect these companies to fix any issues with orders, we should also do our part to as well.