Terrible order experience—several hours wasted; unknowledgeable customer service reps (the "go check on your end and come back and try again thing")

[DiZASTiX]

Several hours wasted over arguing with customer service reps and re-placing orders (as advised):

Ordered square anthias, blonde naso tang, and 3 pajama cardinals and checked out using LiveAquaria as the payment processor.

The next, day, I was informed that my orders had been cancelled:

Thank you for your interest in LiveAquaria®. We apologize, however our Loss Prevention Team has alerted us that we are unable to process your order. As such, this order has been cancelled and you will not be charged. Card authorizations that are pending will automatically drop off within a few days.
If interested, please replace your order. If you are submitting the order utilizing the original form of payment, please verify the billing information on your account to ensure that it matches the payment method. If you prefer, you may also try replacing the order with an alternate method of payment.
Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If we can be of any additional assistance, please feel free to contact our LiveAquaria Department at 1-800-334-3699 or via email at [email protected] and we will be happy to answer any question(s) you may have.

I attempted to call, but they were closed. I re-placed the orders, but the coupon wouldn't work so I created a new account to re-attempt this. This time, I used PayPal checkout.

The order was cancelled again by them.

This time when I called, someone picked up to inform me that I needed to speak to the card issuer due to incorrect address information (particularly the unit or appt number). I informed that they were misinformed: this isn't an issue on my financial processor's end evidenced by:

1. The card worked before and after for other vendors;
2. A hold was placed for both orders;
3. The second order was placed using PayPal, which is a different payment processor;
4. The second order contains the room number on address line 2; and
5. Except for high risk transactions, payment processors generally do not require the address to match exactly (only the zip code).

They at first attempted to squirm the issue, talking over me, and I stopped her right there—I demanded that she stop talking over me and informed her that I'm a financial audit and cyber security subject matter expert who worked at Deloitte and the like. If it's a "Loss Prevention" team issue, let's talk to them now. Otherwise, the issuer will not know why they're being asked for help, and I'll re-place a third order and we'll be back here again.

She talked to them on my behalf, and then some time later, a different customer service rep called me to inform me that it's because:

1. My shipping and billing address are too far apart; and
2. My shipping destination is a hotel.

And that I ought to change these. I said: I'm not going to change my billing address to match my shipping address when it's worked for everywhere else I shop. "Changing everything to accommodate one fish store is just dumb." I'm just going to not shop at your store. They were also hesitant due to the address being a hotel. I order things shipped to all over the place, all the time. Shipping to places like work and hotels are extremely common for me and others.

 

[LiveAquaria]

Hello @DiZASTiX. We apologize for your frustration as well as the inconvenience of the orders being cancelled by our loss prevention team. As discussed with you by our Customer Service Supervisor, there are many factors that our loss prevention team take into consideration. They are unable to disclose specific details behind their decisions, which is where the suggestions came into place with helping you troubleshoot billing address details, etc. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience.

- LiveAquaria

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Hi everyone! We've moved this thread to our vendor feedback forum and removed outside comments. Per forum guidelines only comments by the vendor and buyer are allowed in this thread in order to keep the thread clean and allow for the best potential for resolution of the issue. The only exception to this would be posted links by other parties to their own feedback threads (whether positive or negative reviews) with either party.

If you've had a separate customer service experience not related to this transaction, you may start a separate feedback thread.