Complaint Review: Wholesale Marketer - Orem Utah

I just received an email from the company, Wholesale Marketer today, issuing a partial refund of over $1000 out of the $7254.51 owed to me. Only part of my return was found, but I see this as a good omen that the rest will be found. I will give more updates as this progresses. A refund check is supposed to be mailed to me.

This company never even WANTED to issue me the refund to begin with. Yes, there were quite a few emails and chats I had with customer service, but that was only because I initiated those talks because I had a feeling I would never see my money again. Wholesale Marketer NEVER contacted me without being prompted to do so by me complaining. Every chat session, phone call, email made it very plain how reluctant this company was to help me, how reluctant they were to issue me a refund of over $7000. "Well, you can't blame us, it's not our fault", a typical big business attitude. And that me saving $444 going through them instead of directly with Overstock.com is an outright lie. You see, I know how to use a calculator too. So: IF YOU ARE READING THIS THREAD DO NOT TRUST WHOLESALE MARKETER. They will just keep replying to posts on this website to cover their own a*s. I've spoken with the postal service and the Federal Trade Commission and packages just do not magically become "lost". To anyone else who has had problems with Wholesale Marketer, I encourage you to file a report with the Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Protection Agency. They have assured me that the more people who file official complaints through them increase the chances for legal action to be taken by the FTC. Their website is: https://rn.ftc.gov/pls/dod/wsolcq$.startup?Z_ORG_CODE=PU01 I would love to be wrong in this matter and find out that my return is just held up in a warehouse somewhere or misplaced. I would love to hear that my check is in the mail. I would love to withdraw all of my complaints and apologize. But after over one month since I sent the return, it remains highly doubtful I will ever see my money again due to greedy and selfish businesses like Wholesale Marketer.

Harry did indeed place orders for merchandise totaling $7254.51 through his membership account with Wholesale Marketer. He had the merchandise shipped to his own address. He was going to then send it out to his customer; however, soon after he received the shipments, he contacted us to request a Return Authorization for the merchandise because he'd discovered that the order from his customer was fraudulent. We try to educate our members about online fraud so they can avoid it. We have an extensive tutorial about avoiding fraud in our resource center. Among other things, the tutorial covers safe payment methods for large orders and red flags to watch out for as indicators of possible fraud. I would like to list three of those red flags here because they are applicable to this situation: Big-ticket orders Orders for multiple items of a product you don't normally buy more than one of Several orders coming from the same person within short time periods As far as we know, Harry's customer orders were all from the same fraudulent person. The total merchandise in the orders consisted of 40 gold rings and 15 gold baby bracelets. The tutorial, of course, contains much more detailed information about each of these flags and what to do about them. Evidently, Harry either did not read the tutorial as we encourage our members to do, or he ignored the advice. I'm not writing this to try and flame Harry or blame him for getting defrauded, but simply to show that we do try and help. We continued to try and help Harry after he was defrauded. He was lucky. Since he had shipped the items to himself first, he wasn't completely out the merchandise. We issued the Return Authorization number and instructions to ship the products back to the supplier. We also went out of our way to work with our supplier and negotiate a much better restocking fee than they usually charge. Everything would have been just great except for one small problem: Our supplier never received the return shipment. Harry sent the merchandise back on the 19th of December, but as of today, it hasn't showed up. In the RA instructions we send out, we specify that the person returning the merchandise must ensure that it is returned. This means that they should use a reliable shipping carrier and get a tracking number or some form of delivery confirmation. Unfortunately, Harry shipped over $7000 of merchandise via USPS Priority Mail, a service that provides neither a tracking number nor delivery confirmation. Since he shipped it on December 19, during the busiest shipping season of the year, we can only hope that it is lost in transit and will eventually turn up. Until then, however, there isn't much we can do to help Harry. After all, one of his allegations was correctwe do care about our bottom line, as does every responsible company. We would not be able to stay in business very long if we made a practice of issuing refunds for merchandise that wasn't returned (or at least wasn't received). We are sad to see such a horrible thing happen to one of our great customers, but we feel that Harry's ire should be directed at his fraudulent customer and at the post office for losing the package. But as for Wholesale Marketer, we have done, and will continue to do, everything we reasonably can to help him. Sure there are lots of scams on the Internet, but they are short lived. They don't normally employ large support staffs (like Wholesale Marketer does) to try and help their customers; in fact, once they have your money they don't even answer emails or phone calls. That is the opposite of what has happened to Harry. In preparing this rebuttal, I read through over 20 emails and archived live chat conversations between Harry and five of our support employees. I am convinced that they were working hard to try and help him. To me it is obvious from the correspondence that they were doing everything they could to try and help him get his money back. Regarding Harry's other comments about our suppliers, it is true that we work with Overstock.com; however, our arrangement with them is not something the public could get by going to Overstock's website. We've negotiated better pricing than what is available on Overstock.com, and we've arranged for blind drop shipping of packages, which they wouldn't do if you were ordering from their site. For example: Harry purchased thirty rings in varying sizes of the same model that sells for $154.99 per ring on Overstock.com (prices accurate as of 1/23/06), but through Wholesale Marketer, the price Harry paid was only $140.18. That's nearly a $15 difference which means that Harry saved $444 dollars on his orders. Also, products from Overstock.com only represent a small percentage of our total product offering. By working with Wholesale Marketer, you can access all kinds of merchandise from suppliers who DO NOT sell to the general public. Even the products from Overstock are not available to the public at the prices our members receive, nor could the general public have Overstock perform blind drop shipping. We worked hard with them to form a strategic relationship that is beneficial for our company, for Overstock.com, and for our members. That is the full story. We honestly and sincerely hope that Harry's package shows up. We regret that it is lost and wish we could do more to help him retrieve his money. Sincerely, Clark Winegar Director of Marketing www.wholesalemarketer.com