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July 21, 2008
Terrible experience
The nightmare began when I foolishly decided to purchase a bicycle for my girlfriend's birthday from www.Dickssportinggoods.com on April 16, nearly three weeks prior to her birthday party on May 2. A reasonable amount of time for handling, shipping and assembly, I thought.
I was very wrong.
The troubles began when I attempted to use the "Bill-me-later" option on your website, lured by 90 days of free interest. I had used "Bill-me-later" only a few weeks earlier to buy myself a bicycle from another sporting goods site, so I figured it would be convenient to use it again. However, this was not the case - The purchase was declined immediately, with absolutely no reason given from Dick's web site. After calling Dick's and speaking to a customer support representative who seemed to care little about his job and even less about my issues with my purchase, your rep promptly distanced himself from the issue and told me to talk to Bill-me-later directly.
After working with Bill-me-later for a number of days (with absolutely no help from Dick's), we finally got the issue resolved and the order went through. The issue was with Dick's website, which was down for some reason and prevented the order from going through. Regardless, I finally got the confirmation email from Dick's on April 23, a full 6 days after initializing the transaction.
The bicycle and all of my other ordered goodies arrived on-time a week later, around April 30. This was great, as I had plenty of time to assemble my girlfriend's bike before she got into town that weekend.
Except...the boxes that my merchandise was shipped in were nearly destroyed. The box that held my girlfriend's helmet was ripped apart and partially crushed, but fortunately the helmet was intact. Not so much for the bicycle box and it's contents, which each apparently received the same fate. The large bicycle box (which cost me around $25 for shipping!) was completely ripped open, with large gashes torn into all sides of it. There is no excuse for shipping something in this condition, especially when an object inside has so many small parts that could have fallen out.
The bicycle itself was in terrible condition. The decorative stickers were applied wrinkled and crooked, and the rubber on the handles, as well as the paint, was scuffed and marked. The pre-installed gear-shifter sat crooked on the right handlebar, totally misalligned from the rubber handgrip. The whole thing looked like it was put together using slave labor.
It also looked incredibly cheap, like a trinket from a gumball machine. This wasn't the most expensive bike available, but if I was looking for bargain basement prices and quality I would have bought a used bicycle. I expect a new product that I buy to at least look new!
All of this would have been tolerable if the bicycle had come with a seat, which it did NOT. I now had a partially assembled bike for my girlfriend's birthday with no safe way to ride it.
Upon calling Dick's Customer Service, they once again distanced themselves from the situation by suggesting I call the manufacturer, Huffy. Dick's made it clear to me that their "brick-and-mortar" locations have nothing to do with www.dickssportinggoods.com, and in fact don't even carry many of the same products, nor do they support them.
The Dick's Customer Service reps that I spoke to were completely uninterested in the fact that I made my purchase through THEM, not Huffy, and not only were they unwilling to check to see if they had another bicycle that they could quickly send me, they wanted nothing to do with calling Huffy, something that they felt was apparently was my job. Nice punishment for doing business with Dick's. They were gracious enough to give me the customer support number for Huffy. This saved me five seconds on the internet, compared to the hours of time I had already spent attempting to complete this tiring transaction with them.
The actual bicycle seat finally came about a week later. I was excited, thanks to Huffy's responsive product support. The seat matched the bike and looked decent compared to all of the other flaws and scuffs that were present from the moment I opened the box. A little tweaking here and there and some boyfriend TLC would have been just what the bike needed, except...the shipped seat post was the wrong size.
Nearly a month later and I STILL did not have the complete product that I had originally ordered from Dick's. Fortunately I was able to borrow a seat and seat-post from my father that fit the bike, so my girlfriend was able to ride the bicycle, but it still looked like a mismatched, used bike made of spare parts, and my father was now out of a bicycle seat.
I called Huffy directly (by this point it was apparent that Dick's has no interest in helping me or standing by it's products or customers) and Huffy promptly sent me out a new seat post for the second time. It arrived just last week.
Here it is, June 4th - over a month and a half after initializing this transaction with Dick's Sporting Goods, and my girlfriend STILL has not seen her completed birthday present. She will be back in town on June 21st, where she will finally get to ride her completed bicycle. By the time she does, it will have taken two full months of embarrassment, frustration, anger and an INCREDIBLE amount of wasted time to get to this point. This was her first birthday with me as her boyfriend, and due to these issues I was unable to give her a gift even worth using. This is unacceptable.
My experience with www.dickssportinggoods.com and Dick's Sporting Goods in general has been absolutely horrendous. I don't understand why I would ever do business with these companies ever again.
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