zipzoomfly has cheap prices, but terrible customer service and return policy

[bbobbo]

i posted this review on the main website, but figured i would repeat it here on the forums because my experience with them was so bad.

i ordered 5 250gb hitachi serial-ata drives from zipzoomfly and they arrived quickly. when i finally installed them, however, two of them did not work. i contacted the rma department and they told me to ship them back at my own expense. that was kind of annoying, but i figured i had no choice so i did. so that i wouldn't have to wait for them to receive it and ship replacements to me, i ordered two new drives and told them to give me a refund on the defective ones.

when they received the drives back, they said that one of the drives had a dent in it and sent me an email with an image of the damage. it was a very small dent which i hadn't noticed. in any case, they said that i had caused the dent during installation, which was totally untrue, and that any physical damage voided the warranty and they couldn't give me a refund on the drive. so they shipped it back to me.

i called customer service to complain, and spoke to one of the supervisors. his stance was that it is "impossible" (yeah, right) for them to ship out anything that is physically damaged, so any item returned damage must have been damaged by the customer.

what this means basically is if you receive something that is damaged and not caused by shipping, you're out of luck because zipzoomfly will say it's your fault.

unfortunately, i was lulled by resellerraings' fairly high rating of them. but if you look at their rating for customer service and repairs and returns, you'll see that it's quite a bit lower than their overall score. contrast that to a reseller like newegg, where their customer service and repair and returns rating is comparable to their overall rating. so if you receive everything in good shape from them, you're happy because of their prices (hence the high overall ratings), but if you receive something damaged, tough luck.

take a look at other "very dissatisfied" customer reviews here (sort the reviews by rating). you'll see that other people who received damaged items basically got the same treatment i did.

i'm currently working with my credit card company to see if they can help me out, but i'm not too hopeful. the people at zipzoomfly really don't understand customer service. i spent over $700 on equipment from them, and if they had treated me well, i would have gladly bought a lot more equipment from them. now, i'll never buy anything from them again and will tell everyone i know about their terrible customer service.

[bbobbo]

here is the picture they sent me of the dent. i'm not even sure how i would have caused a dent like that, since the mounting screw threads are on the opposite side of the drive and on the sides of the drive. so a screwdriver or whatever caused the dent wouldn't have even been close to that side.

in addition, the email they sent stated that "the damage is too severe too repair". it looks pretty cosmetic to me. i really doubt that the dent is what caused the drive not to work, because the other drive that i returned that was defective had no apparent physical damage.

[bbobbo]

i also took a look at the five other drives that are in my possession that they sent me. one of the other drives actually has some physical damage as well, but it worked fine so i never noticed it. in my opinion, this damage is worse than the damage to the drive that i returned. of course, they would say that i caused the damage during installation.

notice how the metal cover near the screw is completely bent.

[bbobbo]

plus the housing has a small dent as well:

[bbobbo]

well, they finally refunded me for the drive they agreed to take back (i'm still trying to get refunded for the other one), but they docked a 15% restocking fee. on a defective drive. what a bunch of crooks.

[charles manson]

Originally posted by bbobbo
one of the other drives actually has some physical damage as well, but it worked fine so i never noticed it. in my opinion, this damage is worse than the damage to the drive that i returned. of course, they would say that i caused the damage during installation.

to rule out installation damage bull$hit by the reseller...always note physical damages upon receipt and let the reseller know up front with at least an email or something hard copied of the damages and your intentions to test if the item even works.

accepting items with noticeable damages, scratches, etc. and installing it to test is still wrong....even if the product ends up working.

just look at the mess you are in....Newegg would probably think and do the same thing (damaged during installation) and give you the same runaround, so don't think otherwise.

I bet if you scream like a baby and demand to speak with the CEO and write a dirty letter to the BBB, upper mgmt at zippyzoomfly will prolly reimburse your restocking fee.

good luck


chuck

[ArcticFox]

You aren't alone.

I ordered a black retail Asus 52x32x52 burner from them that was physically damaged due to FedEx not placing the package in the right spot when it arrived. I contacted them, and received this response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your inquiry. Please keep the damaged item and original packaging ready for inspection. FedEx will be contacting you shortly to arrange for a pick up or schedule an inspection.

If you have images of any damage, you can fax or email them. I will file a claim with FedEx for the damaged item. Sorry for any inconvenience.

I emailed them a picture and around four other emails but that was the only response I received from them out of every try to contact someone.

Notice the specialized "Dear Customer," line. Anyways, I was never contacted by FedEx (and still have not been to this day, over a month later) so I went ahead and RMA'd the drive and shipped it on my expense. They sent out what I still am not sure is a new drive because it doesn't read CD's anywhere near as fast as the original drive did until it died, and it came in OEM packaging with a cryptic note inside that said "Return your original accessories." with some numbers scribbled all over the note.

So now I'm stuck with a CD burner that will be RMA'd a second time, this time to Asus. Because I was without a CD drive for such a long time I went ahead and bought an Asus DVD-ROM drive from Newegg that was delivered properly and has worked great ever since.

[MDS]

ArcticFox did you post a review?

[ArcticFox]

Originally posted by MDS
ArcticFox did you post a review?

Yep, and it was flooded over by pages of positive reviews....

[HarrisonE]

ZipZoomFly knows about a number of identical incidents recently with damaged Hitachi 250 Gig SATA drives. But for some reason they're sticking to the line that these drives were damaged by the end user.

I've attached a picture of the damaged drive I received. The other two I ordered don't have any mars at all.


Here's a review I just posted.

1/15/05 11:11 PM
Something fishy going on here.

My experience was identical to Joegoldthwaite's 1/11/05
and bbobbo's 12/19/04 reviews. We all ordered a number
of hitachi hard drives (item #100594) that were damaged
before shipment. Small dents were visible on the drive casing,
as if the corner of another drive was dropped on them.

ZipZoomFly's rep Andy Huynh insists that the damage was
caused by installation.

The company knows of multiple people with identical problems
within a tight time frame, yet it is insisting that the damage
was caused by the individual recipients.