polsteins.com

I ordered 4 "mystery boxes of stuff" on November 27th. My wife ordered 2 "mystery boxes of stuff" on November 28th.
Boxes arrives and we got the EXACT SAME ITEMS.
Why was I charged for 4 when I got the same items as an order of 2?

I called their 800 number. Was told to email support.
I emailed their support and got no reply.
I called again a few days later. I was told to email support again. I told them I had. They said there was nothing they could do, other than "relay the message to their 'box of stuff' department".
I emailed again. No answer.
I called back again. They said they would once again relay the message.

I am now forced to take this up with my credit card company. I will never shop HomeandBeyond.com or Polsteins again.

This order was placed online at www.homeandbeyond.com on 6/29 and was originally shipped on 7/2. I received an email with a tracking number. On 7/7 the package was returned to origin by UPS - reason on UPS web site "This package was damaged in transit. UPS will notify the sender with the details / all merchandise is being returned". When I didn't hear from Home and Beyond by 7/16, I called Customer Service and was told it was waiting for management approval and he will get it out ASAP. I didn't hear back and on 7/20 I sent an email to customer service - I received a reply with a ticket code stating someone will contact me. Didn't hear anything and on 7/24 I called Customer Service and asked to speak with a manager. I spoke with a Supervisor who apologized and told me he would ship it out express that day. After 4 days I called Customer Service and asked if my order got shipped yet. I was told it was scheduled to ship that day (the 28th) and I would receive an email as soon as it shipped with a tracking number. On 7/29 when I didn't receive an email, I called Customer Service again fully planning on cancelling the order, and I was told it shipped yesterday. When I got home from work it finally arrived. I would never, ever purchase anything from this reseller again. This company is the worst I've ever dealt with.

I ordered a remote control doorbell from Polstein's and it worked a few times before quitting. I contacted Polstein's to get a refund, as less than a month had passed. The company totally ignored my email. Do not order from this company!

I placed my first order with Home and Beyond over the Internet on Friday, December 15, 2006 just after 11AM. I Googled for a Homedics Shiatsu Massage Cushion, model SBM-200 as a Christmas gift for a family member hoping for a reasonable price and shipping charges. I found Home and Beyond during my search and decided to give them a try. Navigating around Home and Beyond’s web site was easy, direct and user friendly….as it should be. I found the product, ordered it for about $10 cheaper than most other sites with included reasonable shipping charges. My only concern, would I receive it in time for Christmas? The very next day, Saturday at about 3:15 PM I heard a knock at my door to find FedEx had left a package, which was the massage cushion….ordered the day before! I was absolutely flabbergasted. I immediately sent a “thank you” email to Home and Beyond’s customer service department, whereupon within the hour I received a reply.
I’m 59 years of age and fairly computer literate, having been a Christmas-time-only-Internet shopper since 1997, so I know a good company when I see one. I will definitely, without a doubt, shop with Home and Beyond again in the future. Speed, courteous service and price all make for a happy customer.
Sincerely
M.
Long Island, NY

Basically they: 1) took 7 days (5 full business days) to ship even though "Availability: Usually leaves our warehouse in 1-2 full bus. days"; 2) never notified me of order status or shipping information. Details: I ordered quite a few high-end smoke detectors on 4/3 @6:01pm. Sometime thereafter (I don't remember when exactly) I got a call from a guy who said that my order hadn't downloaded correctly (I looked on my email receipt and saw my keyboard had missed a '0' in my delivery ZIP though their site didn't check). I gave them the correct one and they said it would be sent right away. A few days later (7 days, 3 hrs after ordering) my purchase was shipped from GA(UPS says: "04/10/2007 9:04 P.M. ORIGIN SCAN"). I only knew about this since I called and was told and had to talk them into getting me any/the correct tracking #. The items eventually arrived as described, but obviously they did NOT have them In Stock. I was counting on getting them right away as smoke detectors are important and HomeAndBeyond.com failed.

Ordered the Zircon 60560 LaserBall 360 because it was too cheap, lol, only 1.24 shipped, got the stuff in 3 days, that stuff worked pretty well.

I ordered 2 boxes from their promotion for a random box of stuff. They shipped it all in one box. Of the 8 items I got about 1/2 of them were broken and damaged. The store isn't even selling their old items / inventory. It looks like the specifically purchased very cheap items to make money off of this promotion. Total value of my order was maybe $5, seeing as even the coasters they sent out were torn. But the shipping box was in perfect condition. Customer service does NOT email back or even really care that they products were complete crap.

I ordered 2 40" diameter log racks and when I received them they were 2 36" racks. I called customer service and the lady was clueless. I told her I ordered the 40" and got the 36" and she asked if I received the packages yet. It turns out she says they don't carry a 40" log rack and they will email me an rma in a couple of days.

I would advise against ordering from this company (now known as Homeandbeyond). My items were VERY poorly and unprofessionally packed, and I am surprised that the shipment made it as far as my door without falling apart. Instead of using an appropriate-sized shipping container, they very sloppily pieced together two small boxes with a bunch of twisted-up packing tape. Also, the cushioning was almost non-existent - a small amount of loosely-packed bubble wrap. Besides these issues, it took a week for them to process my order. I don't recommend doing business with Polsteins/Homenandbeyond.

Short version, if you have any other option, DO NOT deal with this company, I did, almost a year ago and am still trying to get a refund for NEW items returned in perfect condition almost 9 months ago.

In highly condensed and edited form, here's my experience.
I placed a phone order for 3 items, 2 fruit grinder/crushers, and a fruit press for juice. . Before placing the order, I talked with their order taker, who checked the shipping charges for the items, which were purported to all be quite heavy. These 2 items are used in conjunction with each other, and both are needed to accomplish the task.
The fruit press was shipped, while neither of the grinders (which have to be used FIRST to grind apples before juicing them), but instead were substituted for with HOPPERS that would normally be mounted on top of the missing fruit grinders.

I attempted to contact Polstein's to no avail for a few days, so I called my credit card company and solicited their advice. they said to file a dispute, which could be cancelled later, which I did. (I've since learned that there are all sorts of nuances to handling a credit card charge with a merchant that I had not suspected before, most of which the credit card companies DO NOT GO OUT OF THEIR WAY TO INFORM CUSTOMERS OF.)

After contacting Polstein's to try to clear up their mistake in my order, I was informed that I could only get the original 2 "B" items by paying a grossly increased price from the original offer. (well over $100.00 each vs. $15.00 each as was originally advertised). I declined that offer, as well as a discounted price for the merchandise they had mistakenly sent to me, (which was useless for my purposes without the missing items), electing to return the "A" and "C", using their promised to be sent return labels. At that time, I was ambivalent that I had filed the dispute.

3 MONTHS went by as I tried again and again to get them to send me the labels. Finally they came, and I returned the items the very same day.

After a reasonable amount of time, I called repeatedly to try to find out what was happenning with my refund. I also called my credit card company to see if they could help, and in short after originally issuing a TEMPORARY PROVISIONAL credit, they couldn't do anything else,and then they had to recind that temporary credit (after 3 months), mostly because so much time had passsed since placing the original order.

It is now my opinion that Polstein's DELIBERATELY waited until the period of time had passed during which a dispute for payment with a credit card company would have expired (3 months after the dispute was filed in this case-check YOUR credit card's policy on disputes), before sending me the return labels.

Even if I believed that the original order was simple mistake, besides their unbelieveably long waits for customer service, the ignored or forgotten promises of call backs to me, repeated promise to send labels and the ridiculously long delay, their subsequent actions show a pattern of shady actions including but not limited to: distortions or outright lies to both me and the credit card company in a 3-way conversation in re. "not receiving" notification of the issuance and later recinding of the temporary provisional credit to my account (copies of both of which were sent to me) broken promises by nearly everyone with whom I spoke at Polstein's, no good reasons for their inaction nearly evertime I called, trying to "up-sell" merchandise, GROSSLY overcharging me for the shipping of 2 very lighweight items that were sent instead of the very heavy ones that I had ordered, etc.

How this company remains in business would be a mystery to me if I didn't think that most people are basically honest, so there's no shortage of potential victims out there in web-land, most of whom, don't make a habit of reading these reviews when first doing business with a company outside of their experience. I learned my lesson about not trying to make a habit to do that ahead of time.

Ordered 2 items @ $5.88/ea as fixed minimal shipping was $7.28 bringing cost to $9.52/ea rather than $13.16/ea. Delayed 6 weeks due to back order. Received only 1 item at full $7.28 shipping and note that now out of stock on 2nd. Never got call or email to cancel, which I would have at that cost. Customer service insisted policy stands and no change could be made. Spervisor, after more heated exchange, agreed to refund full shipping under threat of BBB report. Will NEVER buy here again and recommend other's avoid. p.s. Free gift was a non-working cell phone flashlight which supervisor said was just free stuff they throw in so, that's inconsequential.

Item ordered May 5, my account charged May 5. I emailed customer service May 27, got no reply. Item arrived June 2. Avoid this seller if you are accustomed to 5-10 day delivery.

We have found that this business does not have SSL (secure sockets layer), which means that you should think twice before trusting this business with your data, such as personal information or credit card details, because your information will not be digitally connected to a cryptographic key and secure connection cannot be established. We found that the domain for this business is older than two years which could be an indication that this is a trustworthy business with an established customer base and experience in their field.