MoonShine Framing, Penzance, Cornwall

EddyB

Moonshine Framing is a picture-framing company based in Penzance, with a website. I ordered a cardboard mount for £10 from their website over a month ago and it still hasn't turned up. When I rang them, the woman who answered immediately blamed "The Great Royal Mail!". Her words. It sounded a bit practisied and insincere to me. She promised to look into the matter and ring me back. She didn't. A week later I sent them an email. They did not reply. Then I contacted them again and they said they would cut another mount and send it to me immediately. It didn't turn up. I have spoken to the local Royal Mail Sorting Office and they say there is currently no backlog with deliveries. I get a lot of mail and nothing else has been missing. Two mounts "going missing in the post" being too much of a coincidence, I have written to Moonshine Framing to put my complaint in writing. They haven't bothered to reply - nor have they bothered to supply the mount!

Today I have taken advice from Consumer Direct (South West) and they have advised me to write another letter to the company to advise them that I am going to hold them in breach of contract.

Has anybody else had any bad experience of "Moonshine Framing" in Penzance? Their website is at: http://www.frames.uk.com/

They are offering products at a very competitive rate and they have got a high Google rating so they are one of the first picture framers that come up if you do a search. They must get lots of visitors. You begin to wonder if they aren't just pocketing the money and laughing. Consumer Direct tell me you can't claim the money back from your credit card company because the amount spent has to be over £100 - the only option is to take them to the Small Claims Court - and probably few people bother going that far. I may have used PayPal, but I don't know what protection that offers.

Eddy.

lazy_tiger

Its a bricks and mortar place so not an industrial unit or a rented office . They should be OK.

I'd get back on to them, make sure your details are correct. The main post office is 100 yards or so from the shop. Ask them to pop it in with a proof of posting and keep hold of the proof until you get your stuff.

Mix ups do happen.

I had a really hard time convincing a company that I had not got some stuff even after three emails they hadn't got the point, I then phoned. They eventually sent a replacement.

EddyB

I found last night this company was paid using PayPal. Now PayPal allows you to open "a Dispute" with a seller regardless of the cost of the item. So I opened a Dispute with Moonshine Framing last night, which means I posted them a history of my communications with them, reminding them that an order was about 7 weeks overdue and that they had never bothered to even acknowledge the various complaints that they had received. The result is that in the past 24 hours Moonshine Framing has refunded to my PayPal account the sum that was paid to them. It should be noted however that although the PayPal Resolution process allows the seller to respond to the buyer, Moonshine Framing have chosen not to say a single word, not even a simple "Sorry!".

1. I think a lot of people would not have persevered against this company's mail-order service the way that I have. So many people in various parts of the UK may have been similarly mistreated and have just let the matter go.

2. If I had used my credit card (which Moonshine Framing allows you to do) then I could not have opened a Dispute via my Credit Card company because the amount I spent was less than £100. Moonshine Framing's behaviour suggests that I would not have got my money back.

3. I have only got my money back because I paid using PayPal (which covers sums of any amount) and obviously Moonshine Framing does not want to lose its PayPal facility. So my advice to anyone buying on the Internet is: always use PayPal if you have a choice and if you get treated badly remember PayPal's Resolution process!

EddyB

To close this story, it needs to be recorded here that to date (almost 9 weeks after ordering) NO product has been delivered to me from Moonshine Framing.

When I first complained to them, Moonshine Framing claimed that they had posted the product to me. That was 9 weeks ago. It has not turned up.

The next time I complained to them, Moonshine Framing promised they would send the product out again, i.e. a second one. That was 8 weeks ago. It has not turned up.

I think it reasonable to conclude that Moonshine Framing did not post the product on both occasions.

Despite this they held onto my money.

I was only able to force them to return my money to me because I had used PayPal.

Beware internet buying. Try to always use PayPal if the product costs less than £100.

End of story.

spuds_2

I am glad you managed to get his resolved - well done for persevering. A lot of companies count on you giving up. This thread comes up if you google Moonshine framing, so you can at least know that others will be made aware.

There are other sites to leave bad reviews on, like Blagger.

kevin01736

Hi everyone. First post.

Declaring an interest: As the business owner, just a quick reply.

First, to EddieB unreserved apologies for our problems with your order. No excuses. All I can say is sorry that you were one of the very few.

Quote: You begin to wonder if they aren't just pocketing the money and laughing.

I wouldn't be responding to the post if that were the case. But for the record, no we aren't.

Before I comment on eddies case just a comment on buyer protection: Paypal is our main payment processor for all online sales. If you had paid by credit card at the checkout on the web site you still would have full protection up to £500 when they processed the payment. We have used paypal since 2004, and last year, including yours, we had only 3 paypal disputes out of several thousand paypal transactions (the three were for non-delivered goods, one of them was your order, one was found in our favour when we supplied a copy of the signed-for delivery, and one came back in the post as "carded and not collected").

From our records your refund was issued same day you opened dialogue via paypal.

Re the post office:
Sadly, as most online sellers will confirm, there can be problems with items "lost" in the post in certain areas from time to time. Usually we have to bear the cost, replace the items, and it is seldom worth us claiming from Royal Mail.

Our preferred delivery is by FedEx, but obviously we cant ship small individual orders for £10 with fedex all over the UK. So for small orders there is still no alternative to royal mail for delivery.

In all fairness unless deal with a lot of postal shipping of orders you would not appreciate how much goes missing or is delayed in the post. There is one sorting office area whih "loses" one in 10 of the items we have sent to that area. These -by coincidence- are usually small individual packets that appear to be the same size as a DVD box. And these are signed for recorded delivery items. You can draw your own conclusions.

Generally we take the loss and replace the item.

We are one of the very few firms who will supply custom cut mounts on a no-minimum-order basis. The reason other companies do not do so is because of the delivery issues with small packets in the mail. we frequently wonder if small orders are worth the bother at all, because of the post office, particularly when a rare incident sees the business badmouthed on a public online forum.

I can't figure why EddieB was let down so badly, we have a record of posting, but no record of delivery and no item has (yet) been returned. This isn't just yada-yada, we are a family business with five people working here, sometimes we co*k up.

As businesses go we do comply fully with the DSR (direct selling regulations). But in respect of our returns policy we do more than we are obliged to and unconditionally offer your money back -even on goods made to spec- even if you simply change your mind.

And just one small point - Eddie was refunded on day one when he opened the dispute, paypal did not "make" us refund him.

As EddieB has demonstrated, shopping online is generaly safe, particularly with paypal involved, because of the direct selling regulations and paypal buyer protection.

Most of the time when you buy online, you are buying from a person or a bricks and mortar business with real people in it, not just a web-site. If you See our web site "about us" and you can even see the people you are dealing with, Im the baldy bloke at the bottom of the page with the red bike, and at the end of the day a there is shop counter you can come and thump if necessary between 10 and 5, or ask to speak to the boss if you phone with an issue that the shop staff can't fix.

I dont know who EddieB spoke to on the phone, there are three ladies to choose from at the shop counter, one of whom has since left, so I can't comment on any promises made. Although it is our policy to always give the benefit of the doubt and replace items lost in the post, so he would have been promised a replacement. The fact that he didn't get one speaks for itself.

if its any consolation I've been two years trying to get a refund on a graphics card that cost £300 and failed after two days. Maybe I should have used paypal.

Most businesses who sell online honestly and genuinely do their best, and do value their customers, I dont think we are any exception, in fact I make sure my staff knoiw their job is supposed to be to help customers - they are not looking to be plastered all over forums on the internet branded as criminals, crooks or rip off merchants. But at least on money saving experts there is the opportunity to reply. Which is no bad thing.

If you do some internet research on some business forums you will see the problems that a lot of businsses face with the post. At the end of the day replacements and the time involved in dealing with undelivered or missing items ends up as a business overhead and the customer ends up paying more to cover it, while the owners of small businesses (like me) wonder whether we should not be implimenting a minimum order value and sending everything by FedEx just to make sure it gets there.

Do you know that even when we ship by royal mail its untrackable until you have signed for it or the postie has left a card if you were not in. And it is inevitably a small order like EddieB's that go missing.

Im making no excuses, but we all get things in our jobs that cause us hassle, and the biggest hassle we have in our business is postal deliveries. You probably have hassles in your job, too, which I have no idea about. We replaced an order (lost in post) last week, a small order, £15.
Three days later the lady telephones us, the original order had also been delivered, with a covering note stating the packet had been "detained by a postal employee"..... for a month..... I could give you a catalogue of other examples, items returned because the postie had (apparently) not left a card when the customer was out, packets delivered with tyre marks on them.

yes Eddie you should have had a grovelling apology as well with the refund.

But we are not here to rip people off for ten quid. We have customers all over the UK, TV comapnies, museums, plenty of household names -we dont need to rip anyone off, and we dont want to, not for any amount. Like you we also work hard to try and get by making an honest living, and we always try to treat our customers the way we would like to be treated. Life's too short. So once again. Eddie, as the boss and responsible at the end of the day, sincerely I am very sorry.


Best Regards
Kev

ps. Yes, DO use PayPal if you can. Its the safest way

spuds_2

Thanks for posting, Kevin. It does sound like your customer service left something to be desired in Eddy's case, but at least you have taken the time to respond and apologise.

dacouch

I wonder if the belated apology is to do with the MSE postings coming up on Google...

It is nice that you have taken the time to reply to Eddie although this could all have been avoided if you had rang back and replied to his emails. Everyone makes mistakes, the sign of a good company is acknowledging something has gone wrong and putting it right. If a business does this they generally have a customer for life as that customer knows if something does go wrong it will be sorted out with minimal fuss.

I hope Kevin has learnt from this episode and will ensure that any comlplaints of communications from customers are dealt with as a matter of urgency. Although judging by the blame passing I suspect not.

Please learn from this and ensure you have good customer service, it will return itself in repest business many times over

kevin01736

There are details I cant post because of data protection laws.

Quite right DaCouch, sort of, I wouldn't have known about this post had i not seen it in google. Thats how I came to make the post, but not the reason for posting.

What have I learned from this post -

1. Its reminded me that by and large people do quickly jump to the assumption that they have been ripped off deliberately. I do it, we all do it sometimes.

2. After fifteen years in this business and pretty close to ten years selling online, no matter how hard you try, you can still co*k up from time to time.

3. imho South West Consumer Direct gave EddieB poor advice. They should have asked what his method of payment was, and advised him about the paypal procedure for refunds.
I presume that Eddy hasn't chased the post office to find out why his letter to us has still not been delivered. (For the record: We have never heard from south west consumer protection or any other organisation about this case, so we can take it as read they are not treating it as a rip off or a scam)
For the record as well, we have had only one encounter with South West Consumer Direct (or trading standards as they were called then) about our business in fifteen years, and (in writing, in their own words) ours was an "unblemished record", and their own two serious co*k ups resulted in them writing two apologies to us (including inidences of them seriously breaching data protection by sending us other peoples documents, and then failing to respond to us for 6 months until they were hassled by me and nudged in the right direction with a Freedom of Information Act request) and also changing their own procedures. So Im pretty sure there is someone in Consumer Direct who would dearly love to put the boot into us if they bear a grudge.
And if anyone would like to contact me personally I'll be very happy to give you a catalogue of how Consumer Direct fail to act in the consumers interest sometimes)

4. most customers dont seem to read the paypal protection information when they sign up for paypal or at checkout or in the the email confirmation we automatically send when the transaction completes. Thats uinderstandable I guess.

On our web site you can see that we even have a paypal video from the home page which tells you all about paypal protection. We get up to 1000 visitors a day, that link has only been clicked 8 times in a year....
Fair enough, people might think its not important or small print, but I dont think we can do a huge amount more (being reasonable) to point out paypal's protection.

One thing I hope anyone else who reads this will learn is that PayPal buyer protection works.

As a business account user with PayPal I can say from experience that they are scrupulously fair and rigidly enforce the law and the consumers rights.

I always use paypal when I'm buying too. There are a hundred good reasons to use paypal if you are buying goods online, too many to list, but the buyer protection is at the top of the list.

One thing that most shoppers do not realise is that paypal does monitor all complaints and disputes and claims. And if a business gets too many there are sanctions ranging from freezing the account, to closing the account.

Verified businesses like ours also authorise paypal to take money out of our bank accounts if necessary to settle claims if they arise.

Now, OK, you have probably realised that businesses have to stay pretty squeaky clean with paypal - there are some rogues that slip through, but paypal do terminate their accounts quite sharpish.

So whats in it for me, as a business taking paypal? Its simple, if customers are protected, they are happier to buy. Its win-win for the buyer and the seller.

About shopping online in general: Just some little observations over 10 years of selling online.

Businesses have to comply with distance selling regulatiuons, this is the law, and it is enforced.

The majority of problems are cause by delivery problems which are not the fault of the seller or the buyer because they are out of the control of either party.
But the imporatnt legal issue is that the responsibility of the delivery is one hundred percent down to the seller. Proof of sending counts for nothing. However hard they try, or whatever reasonable steps they take - Only absolute proof of delivery (a signature). And thats the law. Its also as fair as it can be, imho.

The items also have to reach the buyer in one piece, thats the law too. No matter how well you pack something, its possible that seasonal staff in a delivery hub somewhere might vandalise it, or it can be stolen in transit, lost, or delivered to the wrong address. It happens, and its not the buyers fault or the sellers fault. But the seller is responsible.

The law says if you buy from a web site (except in some circumstances that have to be listed in terms and conditions on a sellers web site) that you have the right to ask for a refund within 7 days FOR ANY REASON (you do not even have to give a reason).
The seller has 30 days to issue the refund, and has no right to demand the goods back first.

This is actually a scam artists charter, but thankfully most people are honest.

The key point is "most people are honest" (hopefully you'll accept that this also includes businesses who you buy goods from)

I can count on one hand the number of customers who have tried to rip us off in the past ten years - exactly five. So thats an awesome testament to how honest people are. How many items have gone "missing" in the post in 10 years or been delayee the 15 days where the post office calls them lost? Well about 2 percent actually. (Amazon would love to have only a 2% loss in the post. Unofficial figures put their lost/non delivered items at between 3 percent and 10 percent)

At one point when we used to send items out "regular" post, (not signed for) we had claims that about 10 percent were not being delivered. You can draw your own conclusions from that. But at the end of the day it costs more to send and deliver something signed for, and that adds to the cost to the customer.
We also dramatically reduced "losses" in the post by affixing labels to packages which clearly pointed out that there were NOT DVDs. Again, draw your own conclusions.

So if you think something should have arrived that hasn't speak to the seller sooner rather than later.
Ask for a refund sooner rather than later in writing (by email or via the paypal procedure).
Comment: In EddieB's case the paypal dialogue was the first written request we had for a refund and it (refund) was actually issued within 8 minutes of it coming in.

Buyers- it is often far easier and quicker for a seller to make a refund and then start again, than to go through complaints procedures and upset customers.#

As pointed out by Daouch businesses that do well do customer service well.
(possibly RyanAir being the exception to the rule...)

For sure our life as sellers is easier with happy customers, happy repeat customers are even better.

EddieB's miserable shopping experience certainly looks like everything fell apart at the seams, starting from two failed deliveries and going downhill from there. But 99% of the transactions on the internet (internet transactions in general) go through without a hitch. There are always going to be co*k ups, seldom intentional, from the biggest business to the smallest.

Here are some typical misunderstandings which cause customer complaints.

Order hasn't arrived.
It was sent to the address supplied with paypal but the customer had moved and not updated their paypal address. (this one is our own number one problem). I can understand how this happens, unless you use paypal on a daily basis the last thiung on your mind when moving house is "I must change my paypal address". So thats just one of those things.

There was no-one in when the postman called, a signature is required, and the customer didn't get or didn't see see the slip the postman left. (this is our number 2 problem) Sometimes people phone up and we track the order, and it shows as "carded" (postie lest a slip). "oh yes, I saw that, I wondered what it was...."

Order hasn't arrived and cant Be tracked "we lost your order" : Most often the Postcode differs from that supplied by paypal (see above) or Paypal email address is not the same as the email address you used to apply for the tracking number. 50 percent of the time Transaction ID not given - (supplied by email by paypal when your order was placed, and also supplied in an email by us when we received your order)
In this scenario it is going to take someone anything from ten minutes to half an hour to find your order details manually. That costs me (for example) a fiver in wages, national insurance and overheads for half an hour while one of my staff finds the details. It also delays responding to the enquiry, and other people's enquiries and orders.
There are only so many hours in a day.

You sent the wrong order. Yup, that happens sometimes. Hands up to that one. Not often, thankfully. And its the easiset one to fix. We send you another.
On occasion we might mis-type the sizes into the computer and the machines just cut what we type. (That will be me, or Tom who messed that up, so thats purely human error).
We tried getting round this one by employing a dedicated member of staff (Dave) to do all the packing a couple of years ago, with the idea being that he would double check the actual measurements of each item against the packing slip- This backfired as it happens, because it meant there was always a pile of unpacked items waiting for packing and shipping, and it could delay orders going out. Plus Dave lost his will to live with the mind numbing job. So now its a case of "you made it, you pack it, you are responsible for it being right". Its a pretty basic method of quality control, but about the best we can come up with so far -within reason- in a small business.

About half the time we didn't send the wrong order, we sent exactly what the customer ordered. But the customer made a mistake with the measurements, or ordered in CM instead of inches or whatever. Generally we'll replace it anyway as good will -after all, see above what dacouch says about customer service paying off.

How do mistakes happen? same as any other workplace I guess, busy trading period, tired people working long hours, someone's forgot their glasses, typing mistake, hangover, feeling under the weather, people off sick, human error, and in EddieB's case goodness knows.

We all at some time or another end up on the wrong end of what we think is crappy customer service, but as a rule, the smaller the business the more effort goes into customer service, and I'd guess that its rarely deliberate.

At the end of the day there are very few people with a small busines that "take people's money and laugh at them", but a lot of small businesses that make the odd mistake or get it badly wrong then find themselves the subject of an anonymous post on an internet forum.

I bet RyanAir would prefer to be loved for their customer service rather than their bargain prices providing they still made as much money

Well anyway, thanks for your balanced and reasonable comments, I think I've said plenty enough, its been nice to put the other side of the story, and I'm glad I found these forums, looks like an interesting place to drop by from time to time.

kevin01736

one improvement that I'm putting on the website, and which ought to be there by tomorrow (and I cant think why I never put it there before) is a Ask for a Refund" facility perhaps combined with a complaints form and a proper automatic confirmation that the complaint, request for refund etc has been received which is sent as soon as someone opens the email.

Maybe all web sites should do this, then customers would have something they could show to Consumer Direct, and something acceptable to paypal or their card company when making a claim.

Then im having the day off, its my 51st birthday tomorrow :embarasse

One more Tip for getting a faster refund if using paypal - from "an insider"
If you want a refund in a hurry, skip the "dispute" and go straight to "claim". Then if the business does not proivide proof (pretty much to court-exhibit as evdence standard) to paypal that the goods have been delivered, they will make the business refund yoiu. If the business wont refund you Patpal will, and get the money from the business. Paypal dont mess about, but they really are impartial - so make sure you are in the right if you choose to skip the dispute phase.
EddyB actually did the correct thing by initiating a dialogue via paypal. But behind the scenes that is only a series of emails between the buyer and the seller which go through paypal which they can look at to see if the buyer is behaving reasonably in their replies. Paypal do not become involved until the buyer (or the seller) "escalte" it to a complaint.

dacouch

Kevin you seem to be taking this matter so I assume you have corrected any problems with replying to customers which is good. Hopefully MSE and Eddie have helped you discover a small problem that needed sorting out. The beauty of MSE
is that any one of the thousands of members who ever view this thread can see that you take the matter seriously and have ironed out any problems.

As I said before customers realise that things go wrong but the sign of a good company is that they sort the problem out. The sign of a bad company is nothing gets sorted and the customers gets annoyed. Stats show the disgruntled customer tells around 10 of their friends but the happy customer only 3. So you need to sort out any upset customers efficiently and fairly.


Ryan have a bad reputation but most people do not complain or accept the shoddy service as they expect this as they are paying peanuts.

You sound like you have good business skills and insider knowledge, you will find it wonderfully fulfilling by helping other people on MSE who have problems you may be able to help with, or you may have a question yourself. Its a wonderful community with people who want to help other people out and save each other money

P.S Happy Birthday