Eric ordered a hard drive from Buy.com. He never received it, but Buy.com says that it was delivered. Eric’s wife was home at the time that the delivery supposedly happened, and she remains hard drive-less. Now, Buy.com is saying that it’s their policy not to be responsible for items once they are shipped, and Eric wants to warn others about this policy.

Eric says:

I placed an order for an external TB firewire LaCie drive from buy.com and waited for it’s arrival. Nothing came. Several days after the date that was indicated in my shipping email I tried contacting them and after several false starts- they have a terrible support system- my order was reviewed and I was told I already had the item. That it was delivered, and that since Buy.Com does not request a signature the item was “left outside”. Now my wife works from home, so she’s always home, so I’m not sure how she didn’t hear the delivery person ring the bell. Worse yet the “delivery” date was Mischief night, October 30th, so it’s hard to believe they would leave a 300 dollar item outside without getting a signature.

Buy.com “reviewed” my claim and denied me via an automated email with no option for appeal. After writing them back I was told this,

Per company policy: “Title to goods passes to you upon delivery to the common carrier.” (http://www.buy.com/corp/legal.asp). Basically this says that once a product is in transit via the shipping carrier, the ownership and responsibility of the product has passed from Buy.com to the customer. It is the customer’s responsibility from this point forward to make sure someone is at the delivery address provided to accept the package. If no one is available at this address at the time of delivery, the carrier is authorized to leave the package at the door and the order is considered completed at that time. Basically, the security of the delivery location provided by the customer falls under the responsibility of the customer.

So apparently when you make a purchase from Buy.com you are actually not buying it yourself, but rather purchasing the item for a delivery service that may or may not send you the item. So what is to prevent the delivery agent from keeping the item, giving it to a friend, covering it with glitter and making a puppet friend?

I have tried to file a claim with paypal (what I used to pay), but I was hoping you might have some more information on what my rights are as a purchaser? Also if nothing else, please let others know this policy.

Filing a claim with PayPal was the right thing to do, but you might also want to contact the delivery company, assuming that you know who they are. We’d suggest sending an EECB to Buy.com’s executives, but if they have an automated email set up to deal with this complaint, it kind of shows you how they feel about it. Still, it can’t hurt.

Has anyone else had this problem with Buy.com? Did you get it resolved?

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