POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE..BUYER BEWARE OF SHADY BUSINESS PRACTICES
My order was delivered within a few days, which was great. However, customer service is EXTREMELY poor. There is no customer service representative ever available via telephone despite calling every hour during business hours. And they don't respond to voicemails. Per the chat agent, "We are an e-commerce company. We have chat and email available." My question is why do they have a customer service number? They do exclusively use email and chat agents, which was not helpful due to our complicated issues and major confusion with return authorization processes. We ordered the incorrect parts and one of the major parts was damaged when we opened the poorly protected 50lb package. So, we needed to explain to a live person that we needed different return authorizations due to different return processes--incorrect and damaged claims. The online return authorization (RA) process only allows one type of RA per order number. After several emails and chats over a week, an actual person called and left a voicemail. We tried to call (Bruce) back within an hour of the voicemail and again, after going through all the prompts of the automated messages, no one was available. Bruce did not give his direct line just the general customer service number. There is no wait time for a customer service representative, just the automatic "no one is available", and "use the chat or send an email message." After a nearly one-hour chat, I hope we will receive our partial refund (minus 20% restocking fee) within 30 days per the chat agent. Also, beware of the padded shipping costs from this company. We used the original package/box and shipping carrier to return the parts. It was delivered back to the warehouse within 3 days using the cheapest insured option with signature upon delivery from FedEx. Our shipping costs were $135 vs fitnessrepairparts.com costs of greater than $250. When I inquired about the inflated shipping costs, this was the chat agent's exact copied and pasted words, "We are sorry, shipping and handling charges are automatically populated by the system. Rates are determined by the carrier, according to the weight and size of the package. We are unable to adjust those charges. We have carefully selected the most reliable carrier to insure our customers receive their packages in a timely manner." I find that interesting since everything was returned shipped in the exact manner as it was received at my home.