Update: Diane says the problem has been resolved.

Edmund Scientific has contacted me and offered to refund the $13 difference. Although they did lay some of the blame on me for clicking the link they have also said this has been a recurring problem that they will look into further.

The best part is that I got so many great links to check out from other Consumerist readers!

Do any readers know of science supply company like Edmund Scientific that isn’t Edmund Scientific? Diane likes buying from them, but they recently pulled a bait and switch on a discount code they’d emailed her, and now instead of responding to her repeated queries, they just keep sending her new promotions.

I’m an avid reader and am dealing with an issue regarding an order I placed with Edmund Scientific.

I just found their website this week and after placing my first order and receiving it, I decided to buy my mother her birthday gift from their site as well. Having received a minimum of 3 marketing emails from them since my order, I just opened one and jumped to their site from that email.

I picked out her gift, added a small item for myself, and went to check out. I input a free shipping code and came to the confirmation page. My order would be $90.82.

Everything looked great so I hit the big SUBMIT ORDER button which immediately sealed the deal on the order… but for the amount of $103.20.

It was too late to do anything but call. I asked the rep how I could be charged $103 when I only authorized and confirmed a price of $90 but she blamed it on the fact that I got to their site through a link with a promo discount built in (which is true) and that the website at the last step in my order revoked that promotion… she just kept repeating this without listening to me, so I just hung up at that point.

Even if her explanation is right, how can they pull this bait-and-switch with my order? I have since sent the two emails below and have only gotten more marketing emails from them (ex: 12% off your next order!) and no personal response at all. Like I say in my email [to them], I don’t want to get more than I paid for, but I do expect to only be charged the amount I agreed to. I have since received the order so I’m not sure a chargeback or dispute is an option.

I like Edmund Scientific and being an admitted science geek with my own microscope always in need of supplies, I hope to resolve this issue with them so I can continue placing orders.

I would love to see this on Consumerist at least to get this company’s attention or some advice. It’s only $13 but it’s just unsettling to place an order and be overcharged with no warning and I don’t want to just let it go… I could get a huge supply of slides with that $13!!!

You can try contacting Timothy Burns, the General Manager of Edmund Scientific, at his personal work address. We don’t know if this will work, but we just tried a shotgun approach at a variety of email addresses and this one went through, so maybe you can reach him here:

tburns@edsci.com

You can certainly send back the item for a full refund if you can’t get a reasonable solution from Edmund Scientific, and if they refuse, you can then pursue a chargeback. It sounds, however, like your valid questions are falling into some sort of customer service black hole, so if you can succeed in reaching this Burns guy it’s likely he’ll resolve the issue—and be glad to find out that his CSRs aren’t doing their jobs properly. (If you reach him and he doesn’t, let us know!)

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