Reader Dan writes in to tell us that the incense peddlers over at Keyherb.com are too chill to do business. All he wanted to do was de-stress with some of their lovely, organic aromatherapy products, but instead of shipping his order, they sent him a fake tracking number then ignored him.
Until, that is, he posted negative comment about them on their website.
I’ve been threatened with legal action by a company for complaining about not getting my order!
Hey guys,
This story is just too funny not to share, it’s a bit long but I’ll try to summarize. I placed an order on keyherb.com on Feb 5th using Google checkout. I received a shipping confirmation on Feb 6th with USPS tracking number. Time goes by and nothing shows up so I check the status on USPS and the number provided is not a valid number.
So I contact them on the 18th and ask about the status. I receive no response. I then contacted them again on the 20th and ask for a valid tracking number, and again get no response.
I then contacted Google checkout to ask how to handle the situation. They said to give them 5 days to find out what happened. 5 days goes by and Google follows up to see if I’ve heard from them or received any goods, which was no to both questions. They then told me they have been trying to contact the company as well and they have not responded to Google either, so they will escalate to one of their specialists and I can expect a refund from Google with 7 days.
Today, I decide to check out the site to see if anyone else has commented on not receiving their order and there was another person commenting they had the same thing happen to them.(they have a comments section to talk about their mysterious products that they don’t ship) So I decided to warn any future users and posted the following on their comments section (they’ve since deleted it so I’ve copied it here, so everyone can see my “threats”)
“Warning! Do not buy from this company! I purchased an item on Feb 5th and received an email on the 6th stating it shipped with a USPS tracking number that is invalid. They ignored my emails and also those of the Google checkout team, Google is currently refunding my money since they refuse to respond even to them.”
Within 30 minutes of posting this on their site (let me remind you, I’ve contacted them numerous times through email and Google checkout and they have never once responded) I received the following email:
KeyHerb Mystic Garden to me
Subject:warningyou have been refunded
stop making threats or we’ll take legal actions against you
we have you name address and IP
you have been banned from using our services
Wow is all I can say, your company takes my money and then ignores any inquiry about why they haven’t shipped my order both (after sending me a false tracking number) from myself and Google and then they have the nerve to send me an email like this? I’m so concerned about being banned from their services, what, I can’t give you guys anymore of my money in exchange for nothing. What a loss! So I responded:
“What threats? Please feel free to take any legal action you want, I am simply commenting on my experience with your company, you may want to consult with your legal department before making ridiculous statements that have no basis in law. This is the first email you have ever sent me after numerous requests about my order. Here let me help you out, here is my name and address,
[Redacted]
By the way, according to both Google Checkout team and my credit card company, I have not been refunded so please provide me with a confirmation of my refund.”
About thirty minutes later, I received an email saying they just processed they return through Google checkout. I guess it finally took my “threat” to get them to respond to my inquiries and to get my money back. There response on the cancellation was:
Comments from KeyHerb – Mystic Garden Inc.: “Google’s fault…Google messing up this account for 2 weeks causing many orders to be delayed.”
Interesting, because Google had been very responsive and followed up with me every step of the process and never once mentioned any issues/delays with this account. I guess Google was stealing my emails to them as well so they couldn’t respond to those either!
I’m sure I’m going to get another scary warning from them if you post this, so I’ll be sure to follow up and let you know how it goes. Also, I’d be happy to send you copies of all my emails to them and from Google so you can verify that at no time was I making threats, I was polite and asked what the status of my order was. The only thing I can thing of that they could have perceived as a “threat” was the fact I said I would be requesting a charge back on my credit card if I didn’t receive my item or a valid tracking number within two days (I stated this in my second email to them after being ignored)
I love your site, keep up the good work!
Dan
(Photo: emilybean)
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Thanks Consumerist for posting my story here! Sorry I haven’t commented sooner, I’ve been traveling on business. For those of you making of fun of me for ordering from some crappy site, I only ordered from them because I’m a fan of deal of the day sites (like woot, they have great service) and I saw a link to them on a forum for a sack o’ crap. I figured I’d go ahead and order it and see what I got, for me the fun in these mystery bags is more in the anticipation on getting the the items rather than the items themselves.
As someone posted earlier, they could have made me a happy customer by simply apologizing for the delay. Going above and beyond would have been refunding my charges but still delivering the sack o crap (which would have cost them probably $0.50 because that’s probably what it is worth) but instead, they now have lots of negative publicity.
I’ll be sure to follow up and let you know if they follow through with their threat of legal action. As I stated, I wasn’t really all that upset about the whole thing, I just thought it was funny and kudos to Google checkout for handling it in a professional and efficient manner.
@smitty1123: Leave your love life out of this.
Damn Ebaums readers. THIS IS NOT A RAID. THIS IS ONLY A DRILL.
(I wonder what the overlap between Gawker readers and Anonymous is?)
Video Professor much?
WHOOOOOOA…. BAD VIBES, MAN, BAD VIBES!
Surprisingly, while these morons are obviously too stupid to understand the definition of the word “threat”, they somehow managed to ace “How to Kill Your Online Business 101″.
I think this just about sums it up:
[ecx.images-amazon.com]
That being said, OP could have saved himself the ungroovy hassle by being a wise consumer and researching the company beforehand. A quick Google search returns enough similar stories from Fat Wallet’s Reseller Ratings to warrant a serious reconsideration of ever doing business with these people:
—
REHarry – Friday, March 14th 2008 4:03 AM
Very easy to order here, and then good Luck!!
I have ordered twice. The first time, I began trying to contact them after almost a month. The “tracking number” they gave me consistently came back as “no such number found.”
I called and emailed and NEVER heard from them after the initial order confirmation email. Their Payment handler, CCNow notified me that the order had been sent. Another two weeks. I notified CCNow again, and they told me the order had been re-sent, and they were canceling my dispute claim. It took another two weeks to get the first order. I had ordered another item in the mean time, and that was on January 23. I was notified that the order had been payed from my PayPal account on January 24th, and that the order had shipped. Another “tracking number” was tendered, with the same results. None. It is now March 14, and I have been notified by CCNow that they are dropping the matter, and won’t correspond with me any further, because I notified PayPal of a problem with the order within PayPal’s 45 day limit. I tried calling the company five times altogether, and got only an answering machine. No one EVER called me back. I sent four or five emails directly to the company with the address on their customer service page, and never heard anything from them. When CCNow was still talking to me, they would tell me they had contacted the merchant with a message marked as “URGENT” and if I didn’t hear from them in three days, I should let them know. I never did.
Don’t buy from them.
Don’t send them any payments.
If you do for some reason, order something from them, don’t plan on seeing it or hearing from them for at least two months, if Ever! And their merchant account handler is apparently not much help, either, as they refused to respond to the PayPal resolution process.
—
dynamitecrow – Tuesday, February 26th 2008 3:31 PM
Do NOT order from this company. Supposedly in Texas however phone number is in Seattle WA. Phone number also linked to numerous email scams. Will take your money and never send your products. Better off flushing your money!
—
Jmallit – Sunday, February 24th 2008 8:08 PM
Though the ordering was easy getting my order to me isn’t. I placed the order on January the 24th and I still haven’t received it a month later. I have sent about 5 e-mails to the support team and have no response. The only people that have contacted me back was the sales department but they said they are forwarding my e-mail to the shipping department well that was 2 weeks ago and I haven’t heard anything. I have one order directly through the site and one through google checkout less than a week apart and neither has arrived and I have been trying to contact them through google and they won’t get back to me at this point I just want to cancel the order and get my money back but they won’t get back to me. WILL NEVER ORDER FROM THEM AGAIN!
—
dynamitecrow – Wednesday, February 20th 2008 5:58 PM
never received package…..poor customer service.
[www.chillingeffects.org]
@greensmurf: Goes back to the “Queen’s English.” Google it.
The pic of “Tub Girl” was a nice touch….
The pic of tubgirl is a nice touch…
Ugh. Can’t we focus on bashing the company, not putting up horrible shock images? I really didn’t need to see Tubgirl at this hour. (Or any hour, really.)
@j3sX: I agree, I typically google companies to verify before ordering anything,(I’m the OP by the way) but like my comment above stated, it was one of those deal of the day site’s mystery bag for like $10 (I ordered 2), you are really taking a chance anyway, so I figured what the heck.
BTW, all of the comments you’ve posted above are well after my order date, (Feb 5th)which were probably people getting scammed on this same deal. I didn’t see anything of Fatwallet prior to Feb 14th, so that would have done me no good anyway, but thanks for the tip.
I had the exact same experience. Claimed to have sent it, USPS number did not exist. Claimed is was sent UPS…no record either. 10 unreturned phone calls and numerous emails later. I posted some bad reviews on their site. Obviously, I had a bad experience (I am dynamitecrow on the reviews btw).
I received this:
“Also I refunded all your money so STOP or I’ll start.
First and last WARNING.
You got your money back so that’s enough. We are a small company with tons of sales. If you don’t like the way we do stuff don’t buy from us. But remember the karma of things you do.”
As a response to all of this new publicity. He believes that I stirred things up. I received 42 emails from him this morning flooding my inbox stating
“Since you continue to bash us. I have contacted your email and ISP there will also be a personal visit to your address on file and legal actions taken. When you wonder why. Remember me.”
I had left things alone, as I thought I had been refunded (checked my account online btw…no credits from this company)
What a sweetheart!
Just and FYI, they took down the feedback forum the link now routes you to their todays deals page.
Ahhh, beat me to the punch. I didn’t see any tubgirl and judging by the above comments, I don’t want to know…
@chemmy: That would be due to the fact that, as one might expect, they completely removed the feedback page, as well as all links to it, this morning.
Which is exactly why I took the liberty of preserving it last night.
So, for anyone who might have come across this story after Keyherb removed their feedback/comments page and is interested to see what it contained, you can do so here:
[image.bayimg.com]
or
[xs225.xs.to]
Slight NSFW warning: Thumbnail picture of TubGirl in comments.
Sounds like they aren’t just smoking herb, maybe tweaking on the side seeing how they completely ignored orders and then overreacted when someone actually mounted a complaint.
LOL:
“we have you name address and IP”
@randomguy85263: Sorry for your experience with them, I hope they don’t harass you too much since it wasn’t you that got them all the attention. As I stated in my email to them, I welcome them to try and sue me, they have no legal basis since I simply posted my real experience with them (with email proof to back it up). Feel free to email them back and tell them to look me up if they want to harass someone, it will give me something interesting to do. If anything, it sounds like they are now sending you “threats”.
I was swindled for $10 after they never delivered an item from E-bay. It escalated to a claim on paypal, but I never received my funds back.