The World of Stuff .com

Left-Handed.com sent me the wrong item and is ignoring me

I work for one of the largest online retailers, but we don’t sell everything. If I’m searching for a particularly rare item, I may have to turn elsewhere. Such was the case when I was looking to buy a left-handed Swiss Army knife a few months ago.

Apparently no company currently makes them, and only websites that sell them are a few online stores that cater to left-handers. Of those, I found that England-based Left-Handed.com had the best selection and the lowest prices, so in November, I ordered one there. Not long after, I received a left-handed Swiss Army knife from them, but it wasn’t the model I ordered. The one I wanted had scissors, and the one I got had some different tools, including a wrench.

I could see how they could have made that mistake. The two models are similarly priced (about $40), and the knife I got was packaged in its original box, which didn’t identify the model. They were probably next to each other on the shelf. No big deal, I figured. So I sent the store an e-mail letting them know about the mix-up and asking for an exchange (although I was secretly hoping they’d let me keep both).

Two weeks passed and I didn’t hear anything from them, so I went ahead and mailed them the knife in the original box with the invoice and a note asking for them to send me the right knife. I chose to send the package First Class (misleadingly, the lowest tier of service that the USPS offers for shipping), which, to Left-Handed.com in England, cost me $11. I didn’t count on them paying me back for any shipping more expensive than that, so I didn’t get a tracking number or anything.

After a few weeks, I still hadn’t heard from Left-Handed.com, so I sent them a message through the contact form on their website. The holidays came and went—no reply. Last week, I tried calling the phone number listed on their website, but no one picked up, not even an answering machine. Then I tried calling them during their business hours (1 AM to 8 AM Pacific Time—not an easy thing for me!), and no one picked up then either. Finally, I sent them another message via the contact form, asking as politely as possible for the item I bought.

Okay, so maybe I sent the first e-mail to a no-reply address. Maybe they didn’t get the package. Maybe their contact form is broken or my messages got stuck in their spam filter. Maybe they don’t have an answering machine, and maybe they had closed up shop early when I called. But I very much doubt that all of the above are true. They seem to be ignoring me, plain and simple. I understand that my story may not sound credible—maybe people have tried to rip them off before—but a simple “We don’t believe you” would be more courteous. If this was my fault, my mistake was to be too trusting.

At this point, I don’t know what recourse I have. I originally paid by PayPal, but it’s too late for me to file a complaint with them. (Of course, if I had thought to do it earlier, I would have.) It seems that the only way to get the attention of Left-Handed.com would be to buy something else from them, although I’m very unlikely to give them any more of my money due to the way they’ve treated me. It looks like I’m out 50 bucks, so I guess all I can do is warn everyone not to make the mistake of doing business with them.

Oh, and I’ll send them a link to this post too, in case it gets their attention.

I’ve often wondered if there’s a website that keeps track of the surprisingly common trend of homophobic public figures being outed as gay themselves. Turns out there is: Gay Homophobe succinctly announces “# days since the last prominent homophobe was caught in a gay sex scandal” (25 as of right now) and lists previous “winners” (there were seven last year alone).