Defense Knife and Tool - where is my refund?

[Parker]

This post was copied from the thread as follows. I have been waiting for a simple paypal refund for 8 days now. I followed the instructions from Defense Knife and Tool, and quite frankly am underwhelmed.

The point-man for DFT is Dave Last, and he called me on the 28th of February from a number with call-block so that my cell-phone could not snag his number. He's not given me a number and he has posted in the same forum as the following thread appears.

As it happens, I have taken this post from the Defense Knife and Tool "customer service thread" in which he claims he wishes transparency. Fine. Here it is.

Unless there is a problem with the three knives I sent back in new, unused and NIB condition, I want my refund.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=513516&page=2


David, please indicate when my refund will be in my paypal acct. These items were returned to you via DHL at the address you specified on 3/21/08

They were shipped via DHL, tracking no. 34986529583

Pls indicate if you have not received them and we can go forward from this point. At this juncture I am entirely annoyed with Defense-Tek, Defense Knife and Tool as well as any other header you are doing business with. You still have yet to provide me with a real phone number to contact you and I am genuinely sorry that I ever responded to your advertisement in the first place.

I do not want your I-trader points, I want my refund for the pair of Enduras and the Delica. You have been online since the prior message was sent and again ignored it. Since you want transparency, you now have it. I simply want my refund.

Is there anything else I need to do short of opening a paypal dispute with you regarding this?

I do not care what the problem is on your end, I simply want my refund. This will shortly be copied at GBU and I will make a point of refreshing it daily.

You claim you went out of your way to make a sale? No, you went out of your way to act as a merchant should - you offered at a price, you delivered. That's all well and good.

The product did not meet my requirements or expectations, this is what your restocking fee is for.

However, given that you have not refunded the purchase price minus the restocking fee, I am not entirely inclined to care about whatever you have done "for me" to this point. You have had the merchandise for a week so DHL tells me, and you have also had my funds in your acct for this same period of time.

What conclusion would you like me to reach regarding this matter?

 

[dave_last]

I have been waiting for a simple paypal refund for 8 days now. I followed the instructions from Defense Knife and Tool, and quite frankly am underwhelmed.

Parker, First things first. Your return was passed to my desk late Friday after my latest post on BF. I have now refunded the amount to your PayPal account.

Now to your complaints. In general our return turnaround can take a week or longer. When our shipping department get a return, it must first be inspected to see that it is still in new condition and then as appropriate (faulty merchandise, unwanted etc.) it is referred to our returns department for processing. As above your return wasn't passed to my desk until after my latest post on BF on Friday.

You posted this Friday morning notifying me that your DHL shipment had arrived and today Sunday you have been refunded. That's less than one business day after your post that your issue was completely resolved.

I think that, original misunderstandings aside, you will agree that waiting less than one business day for a response and resolution is not unreasonable.

The point-man for DFT is Dave Last, and he called me on the 28th of February from a number with call-block so that my cell-phone could not snag his number. He's not given me a number and he has posted in the same forum as the following thread appears.

Parker, our phone number 732-719-4795 is very clearly posted on the about us page of our website and for your convenience on our Customer Service thread I even pointed you to our about us page where in addition to our phone number there is a feature that allows you to be connected free of charge to that same number. It just doesn't make sense that I would try and hide our number from you and yet point you to the very page where you would see it.

There is a very normal explanation for why the call ID was blocked. I was not in the office and called you from my cell phone whose call ID is routinely blocked.

Parker, misunderstandings can and do occur between vendor and customer and that is par for the course. Our goal is to address them and to take away what we can to improve. Looking back at all our posts I see that when you posted you expected acknowledgements of your posts and did not appreciate those occasions when I subsequently posted on other threads without first acknowledging your posts.

I will be honest with you. I have sometimes not posted until I have resolution of an issue. I appreciate your feedback and will certainly focus on acknowledging posts even when I don't have an instant answer. That's why we have a Customer Service thread and that's why we ask for transparency.

Thanks,

 

[Parker]

David, thank you for getting back to me.

The package arrived on the 21st. I think 9 days is a long enough time to wait.

If you do not believe it arrived on the 21st, I would suggest you check with DHL. I have a copy of the signature from that date.

The rest of your post above smacks of a smokescreen. It is not my job as your client to tell you when my returned item is in your house. It is up to you or your people to figure this out.

However, since you refer to my post above, I will note that I posted my question in the customer service thread you reference at approximately 10:50am on Friday. You had to go below that thread into another to make your last post of the day at approximately 5:40pm, or however time is signified on the board here. I doubt you could miss it. It was the thread with the new post directly above the one you posted in.

So as a result, I'm not terribly concerned with what you think of my timeline. You ignored my polite question. I decided I'd had enough of being polite about this and took an active measure.

I looked thru your website several times this past week and no phone number was on it. Certainly there was no phone number in the contact information or "about us" sections of the site.

I do not do "click-to-call" or whatever that nonsense is. I pick up a phone and call. If this makes me unable to be a happy customer, so be it.

Moving forward, I have in my email at the moment a note from Paypal telling me a refund is immiment. For this, I am glad. However, why did it require this from either of us?

If you want to refer to this issue in the future, note that I acted entirely within the confines of proper decorum until you ignored this issue on multiple occassions. I asked for an RNA repeatedly in email and on the board. I asked for the refund a WEEK after you received my returned merchandise and I did so politely.

I'll say that one more time - ONE WEEK PASSED BETWEEN THE TIME MY KNIVES GOT BACK TO YOUR ADDRESS AND MY REQUEST FOR YOU TO PROCESS MY REFUND. Not 24 hours. Not one day.

If you think me waiting over a week with no response is reasonable and I have no cause to react this way, I will impart a little consultation for you here and now.

The last time I sent something back it was to Knifecenter of the Internet. I made a purchase and really was not entirely happy with the knife. I called them about this, they told me to just send it back with a note. In 72 hours it was back in their hands and I had been refunded the entire purchase price.

By contrast, you respond only when I have to come in and threaten you with a paypal dispute. Your response is to start creating a hysterical smokescreen and telling me I am irrational. I'll be sure to keep that in mind the next time someone asks about DKT.

I thank you for the curently pending refund, but the rest of this circus honestly I could have done without, as I am sure could you.

 

[dave_last]

David, thank you for getting back to me.

The package arrived on the 21st. I think 9 days is a long enough time to wait.

Parker, Thank you for your response. I understand that you expected your refund sooner than 9 days and I think that another area we can improve is to appropriately set expectations with our customers and inform them up front that returns may take a week or longer to process from the time they arrive.

If you do not believe it arrived on the 21st, I would suggest you check with DHL. I have a copy of the signature from that date.

At no time did I question when your package arrived. It is true that I was unable to get online tracking information from the tracking number you posted and I have not contacted our returns to verify when it arrived (Edit 03/31: I had mistakenly gone to the DHL international site, went to DHL USA and confirmed package arrived 03/21). But that is not the point at all. Returns take us time and we should have let you know in advance so that you would know what to expect.

It is not my job as your client to tell you when my returned item is in your house. It is up to you or your people to figure this out.

It is certainly not your job to tell us and your refund would have been processed today or the latest tomorrow either way.

However, since you refer to my post above, I will note that I posted my question in the customer service thread you reference at approximately 10:50am on Friday. You had to go below that thread into another to make your last post of the day at approximately 5:40pm, or however time is signified on the board here. I doubt you could miss it. It was the thread with the new post directly above the one you posted in.

I did not miss your post and never said I did. I saw it and did not yet have an answer for you and so did not respond immediately. It would have been a better idea to acknowledge your post anyway which is the point I made at the end of the last thread.

You ignored my polite question. I decided I'd had enough of being polite about this and took an active measure.

I did not acknowledge your question, but in all fairness a whole business day had not gone by since you posted it. I understand your frustration and as above I appreciate your feedback and do agree that it would have been much better to acknowledge your polite question with a post that I am following up.

I looked thru your website several times this past week and no phone number was on it. Certainly there was no phone number in the contact information or "about us" sections of the site.

Parker, I just did a Google search for our parent company "Merchant Traders LLC" and Google's cached page dated March 26th here shows our phone number:

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cach...Merchant+Traders+LLC&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

On reflection in all likelihood the reason you didn't see it was because it is not bolded and that is something that we should change.

I do not do "click-to-call" or whatever that nonsense is. I pick up a phone and call. If this makes me unable to be a happy customer, so be it.

Parker, I was trying to be helpful when I suggested that link but you are certainly entitled to want to get on the phone however you want.

Moving forward, I have in my email at the moment a note from Paypal telling me a refund is immiment. For this, I am glad. However, why did it require this from either of us?

I think that both misunderstandings and disagreements are bound to happen between the most reasonable people and I certainly want to move forward.

If you want to refer to this issue in the future, note that I acted entirely within the confines of proper decorum until you ignored this issue on multiple occassions. I asked for an RNA repeatedly in email and on the board. I asked for the refund a WEEK after you received my returned merchandise and I did so politely.

I understand that you felt ignored and there are two ways that we will improve. Firstly we will focus more on acknowledging customer requests even when we don't yet have a complete resolution. Secondly we will set the proper expectations on return turnaround time.

Your response is to start creating a hysterical smokescreen and telling me I am irrational.

Parker, I do what I can to be open and forthright on this forum. And I am constantly working on improving. I certainly do not think that smokescreens work, I definitely do not want to come across as hysterical and I don't believe that it's very smart to insinuate that customers are irrational. As above I fully understand the cause of your frustration and believe that we can improve the way we set expectations so that our customers neither feel ignored nor get ignored.

the rest of this circus honestly I could have done without, as I am sure could you.

I am in full agreement with you. These things happen and our job as a vendor is to do what we can to reduce the likelihood of them happening again.

 

[Keith Montgomery]

Parker, you had every right to expect that things should be handled in under nine days.

Dave, I really respect you for admitting that things should have been done better, and will be in the future.

 

[dave_last]

Originally Posted by longbeachguy
I've done multiple transactions with Dave and Defense Knife and Tool. I also ordered a Crowell/Barker from him yesterday, due to the unbelievable price.

Dave gets high marks based on my experience. I've had him in my "good guys" thread for a long time.

I've also dealt with Parker, and found him to be solid. Pity when two "good guys" find themselves at cross purposes.

Originally Posted by Parker
Here's my take on this, quite frankly - last time I bought from an online vendor and did not find the product to my liking, it was KnifeCenter of the Internet. I wound up calling them quite easily and they told me to just send it back with a note. No hassles, no waiting for an RNA (which took a while from DKT) - they had no "restocking fee" and in the end, I'll go back if they have something I want to try out.

I've had similarly great experience with New Graham and OneStopKnifeShop, www.knivesshipfree.com and MD Tactical.

Parker, I want to show you that:

1) I believe as longbeachguy said that you are a "good guy"

2) We listen to our customers.

You say that other vendors did not charge you a restocking fee. Well, I have refunded your restocking fee.

 

[Parker]

David, thank you. I appreciate this matter being concluded. I considered our business finished last evening, and did not request the restocking fee be waived. It's a pleasant surprise this morning.

I'm sorry that this matter came to be as it did, but it appears that this episode will make DKT a better company in the end. I'm glad for that, as you do offer excellent pricing for your product.

Regards,

Parker

 

[dave_last]

David, thank you. I appreciate this matter being concluded. I considered our business finished last evening, and did not request the restocking fee be waived. It's a pleasant surprise this morning.

I'm sorry that this matter came to be as it did, but it appears that this episode will make DKT a better company in the end. I'm glad for that, as you do offer excellent pricing for your product.

Regards,

Parker

Parker,
I am also sorry that it happened this way and now that it has happened we are determined to take some lessons and improve.

It is certainly true that you did not ask for the restocking fee to be waived but I waived it for you because listening goes beyond responding to direct requests, it means meeting customer needs and expectations even when they are not explicitly stated. It means going out of our way to ensure that our customers are satisfied.

You are of course free to take your business wherever you want. That said, we at Defense Knife and Tool will be glad to take your business any time and to have the opportunity to show that we can learn from our mistakes.

Thanks,

 

[sketchbag]

just my $0.02

I think it's best to reply to customers as soon as possible regardless of whether you have a resolution, I'd rather here something along the lines of "I dont have an answer for you right now, but I'll get back to you in X number of days", if you get no reply it only leads one to assume the worst.

And bolding the phone number would be nice, it wasnt immediately apparent to me either.

 

[SIFU1A]

i agree with sketchbag, silence only makes ya wonder WTF is going on, as long as folks will communicate with me, even to tell me they dont know WTF yet, i dont get too concerned, its when emails go unasnswered i do start to get concerned.

 

[dave_last]

just my $0.02

I think it's best to reply to customers as soon as possible regardless of whether you have a resolution, I'd rather here something along the lines of "I dont have an answer for you right now, but I'll get back to you in X number of days", if you get no reply it only leads one to assume the worst.

And bolding the phone number would be nice, it wasnt immediately apparent to me either.

sketchbag good solid advice, that's worth a lot more than 0.02c. Thanks.

i agree with sketchbag, silence only makes ya wonder WTF is going on, as long as folks will communicate with me, even to tell me they dont know WTF yet, i dont get too concerned, its when emails go unasnswered i do start to get concerned.

You guys at bladeforums are the best, thanks for the feedback.

 

[Parker]

Dave, just a heads-up, the refund is still showing "Pending" status, which means it has not cleared your acct yet. The funds have not been released as of a few moments ago, 1745 central time.

Please drop me a line here and let me know when this will be finalized, as I have another use for these funds.

 

[dave_last]

Dave, just a heads-up, the refund is still showing "Pending" status, which means it has not cleared your acct yet. The funds have not been released as of a few moments ago, 1745 central time.

Please drop me a line here and let me know when this will be finalized, as I have another use for these funds.

Parker, thanks for the heads up am looking at this... will be back here later tonight with more...

 

[dave_last]

Parker, thanks for the heads up am looking at this... will be back here later tonight with more...

Parker,
I looked into this and here is the deal.

By default PayPal processed the two refunds as eChecks which means that instead of taking the cash from cash in hand in our PayPal account which is instant they wired our business bank account for the money and you only get paid when the funds have both cleared our Bank and when PayPal has then internally cleared them to you. That's how their eChecks work.

I checked our business bank account and your initial refund already cleared our business bank account yesterday 03/31. The second refund of your restocking fee is showing in our bank account as pending and will almost certainly clear out of our account at midnight tonight.

The question is now that the initial refund has cleared our account how long will it take for PayPal to release it to you? Well, there's an easy way to know. Go to your transaction summary and then click on the Details link within the appropriate refund transactions.

There in the details will be a PayPal estimate of when they will release the funds to you. They are usually very accurate and update the date when there is any change.

Feel free to get back to me if you have any difficulty with this or with any other questions.

As above you are welcome to give us your business any time and we are determined to do what we need to, to deserve it.

Thanks,

 

[dave_last]

Dave, just a heads-up, the refund is still showing "Pending" status, which means it has not cleared your acct yet. The funds have not been released as of a few moments ago, 1745 central time.

Please drop me a line here and let me know when this will be finalized, as I have another use for these funds.

Refund complete

 

[Parker]

Dave, I was just on my way in here - first refund is complete, the re-stocking fee refund (again, very generous of you and I thank you for putting me above your policy) should hit on Thurs from what I can see.

I'm glad this is working out as it is, and I think we all learned something here. I'll have no hard feelings when this is all done, thank you David.

EDIT to add that the restocking fee showed up a few moments ago. As I had said earlier, it's your policy, I really was surprised to see that come back as well.

Thank you again, David. I am sorry this started off as it did, but it has worked out in the end.

 

[Keith Montgomery]

This worked out just the way it should have. Dave has shown himself to be a person that I would have no qualms about dealing with.

 

[popedandy]

Kudos to Dave Last for the way he handled this. I was going to buy a knife today, and I think I'll head on over to his web site and see if he has something I can spend my money on.

 

[Justabuyer]

yeap...based on this thread I will do the bulk of my christmass shopping for male relatives here. ANY dealer can have a problem. Its ALL about how you fix it.