ComplaintsforAudio Advice, Inc.

• Initial Complaint

  01/11/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I ordered a video projector (Order Number ********* for $1337.50) from Audio Advice on 11/03/2021 for a scheduled delivery of 1/05/2021, but never received it even though****** said it had been delivered. I contacted ***** and initiated an investigation on 11/05/2021 (Tracking *************, see attachment). I called Audio Advice and was told a representative would call me back the same day (on 11/05/2021). When I didn't receive a call back, I contacted my credit card company and disputed the charge. A few days later, a representative from Audio Advice returned my call and requested that I reverse the credit card dispute and they would issue a refund, saying something about the dispute affecting their rating. I agreed to and reversed the dispute in good faith. Approximately one week before Christmas, I contacted Audio Advice to check on the status of my refund and was told they were waiting on the dispute to clear their records and to call back in a couple of weeks. Since then, I have called a few times and was only able to leave messages to have a representative call me back, but never received a call back. I attached two emails that I sent to customer service at Audio Advice.

  Business response

  01/20/2022

  Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2022/01/20) */ We have to say, this is one of the messiest things we have seen. The root cause is a bank and a credit card processor miscommunication. And a small part our fault and a bit of impatience on the clients part. For our online sales division, we use **** as our credit card processor and fraud prevention company. As you may know, online sales are ripe with fraud. We shipped the customer his order on November 4th. ****** shows they delivered it on November 5th. The customer called us after hours on Feb 5th (a Friday) and left a message he did not get the package. Before we could call him back on Monday, he filed a dispute with his credit card company on Sunday, which is what really caused everything else to go wrong. We called back Monday morning. And as you might imagine, people claiming they did not get an expensive item when the delivery company shows it was delivered, is a red flag for a fraud prevention company. As we further investigated things, the****** signature was not his and turned out to be a bit fishy. We are not able to do a refund if the case is in dispute. We asked him to do remove the dispute so we could do an easy refund, but his credit card company then never let **** know the dispute was removed. After this, it was all a lack of proper communication with his credit card company and **** that happened in the background we were not aware of. We thought everything was ok until we called him back on Jan 11th and then he immediately filled the dispute with BBB We then got involved again and it turned out the client has to give a reference number we obtained to his credit card company to get everything resolved, which as of Jan 19 is in process and the client seems happy with our actions. We do track everything through our CRM system and the following is what happened. November 3 2021 Order placed 000072760 November 4 Order shipped - November 5 12:01 PM Order Delivered ************************************************************************************* November 5 (Fri) 6:39pm Client left us a msg about a failed delivery November 7 (Sun) Client filed dispute with his CC Company November 8 (Mon) 9:39am****** responded to Clients VM and took following steps: He opened the****** investigation Made the client aware of ***** investigation and possible timeframe of "a few days" to get some more feedback from *****. November 9 8:57am ***** called the client again: Let client know that he has yet to hear back from ***** and to brief him on replacement options Client informed us of the now active dispute Client was made aware that we can not do any kind of refunds while there is an active dispute November 13 **** system shows that we lost the chargeback- **** is our credit card processor and fraud prevention company November 27 3:04pm Client called back in looking for his refund (Spoke to ****)- still in dispute. 3:27pm Called the client back and informed him that the credit card dispute was still active due to **** receiving no info from his bank that it was canceled - Client was informed that **** had also issued a payout and that it can take 30-45 days to process. November 29 Spoke to **** - and called the client back to inform him that a refund was processed by **** 2,231.99. (This was for another separate order) December 24 Client called in, spoke to *********** and refused to leave msg - instead threatening to file a dispute. (It was still in a disputed state with ****) *********** is our overload/after-hours answering service January 10 9am - Caller called in and hung up (8 sec call) January 11 11:29am - We called client in response to the previous hang up - We tried to find out exactly what was going on and said we would help. Client Filed BBB Complaint January 12 6:01p spoke to the client to inform him of our conversation with **** and our next steps. Once we have the ref ID number then I will call back to provide next steps. January 17 Received reference number from **** and sent to client via email - followed with phone call Spoke to client and he will be calling his CC company tomorrow Jan 18 January 19 Spoke to client - his CC company gave him a procedure to follow to unlock his funds. He's working through that with them. He says he will keep us posted and seems generally happy we are working to resolve it. We told the client if he needed any more help to please reach out to us and he said he would. Consumer Response /* (3000, 12, 2022/04/20) */ As of 04/19/2021, I still have not received a refund. I contacted Audio Advice a few weeks ago for a status request, but haven't heard from them. If you deal with them, remember that if you don't get your item, they'll make you feel as if you're committing fraud.

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩