DealExtreme is one of those Hong Kong online retailers which you can find a lot of goodies at no price with free shipping. I’ve bought a lot of things from them in the past and, although their service was little bit slower than usual when considered to local sources, I was overall happy with their service. Their support were able respond you in a couple of days and they always returned with a reasonable solution.
Unfortunately, they appear to left those good days far behind.
Here is what happened with my last order; I ordered four different items as a package. After couple of weeks, they told me that they couldn’t find the memory card reader I ordered, hence they split my order in two shipments. They sent the first three item after their message and told me that they’ll send the remaining item when it’ll become available.
A few more weeks later, I wondered about my card reader and tried contacting them through their online chat support. After waiting almost half an hour before I could find someone to talk to, I told my problem to the staff. She told me that they are still waiting for the supplier.
Thought since I have a pending order in the system, I might try adding a new item to my order. Since my first order has tracking because total was higher than $15, my pending order will certainly have tracking as well and I can use that opportunity to add free tracking to my new order, which was below $15 by itself.
Asked her that how long will it take them to get the item I was thinking add to my pending order. She told me that the item is out of their stock and she can’t give any ETA. Because the item I was thinking to add was listed as “in stock” on the site, I was surprised with her answer. When I asked her about this inconsistency between the site and her answer, she copy&pasted this fine-print from the footer of the site to me:
Note: Stock and Availability shown on this site is for your reference only. While we strive to provide the most accurate and timely stock and availability information, availability information may become out of date and may change between the time you added an item to cart and the time your order is received.
After her responses, I gave up the idea of adding a new item to my pending order and decided wait. And I waited a lot!
I’ve put my order on 24th December 2010 and they’ve send me an email only 4 days ago stating that my they’ve shipped my last item. Yes, exactly 89 days after my purchase. Considering item hasn’t arrived yet and probably won’t for another two weeks, it’ll take more than hundred days to get an item from DealExtreme.
I will definitely not buy anything from them in the future and I suggest you to do the same. There are a lot of alternatives, try them instead.