Not Impressed With Play Asia or UPS

I usually have nothing but good to say with my dealings with Hong Kong Companys but a few months ago, the end of february to be more precise, it took around 2 weeks to go through (the order was an ipod touch for my daughters birthday) and then it shipped around mid march.

The parcel took less than 3 days to arrive in the East Midlands from Hong Kong (with UPS), on the tracking it then said out for delivery, 3 days later when it didnt arrive we got a tad worried so contacted UPS, they said they would put a trace on it, a week later and some idiot from UPS left a message asking if the Ipod Touch had arrived yet, not only had it not arrived but the idiot phone caller had let slip our daughters surprise birthday present.

After that we eventually got Play Asia/UPS to sort out a claim for the lost parcel, whilst waiting for any news i got a letter from UPS asking for £50 for the cost of delivering the parcel, the parcel that never arrived, this really pissed me off and if the woman had of been of english voice and not some accent i couldnt understand she would have got a round of ****s down the phone.

Anyway went on holiday and arrived back expecting some news but still no news and this is now nearly 4 months, i sent another email and finally the claim had gone through and been settled.

You would think after all this time that i would finally get the Ipod touch, no such luck, play asia contacted me saying the order can now be reopened and order what i like, on checking this i found that they were out of stock of ipods, i then asked if i could have the money returned to my account to spend at my pleasure. they said that leaving the order open was the best way.

after pondering a few more days i asked them to either send me the money back or at least stick it back in my account and which i can draw back away from play asia, they did neither.

They sent me a coupon for the amount owed which means i now have to buy stuff i dont really want to get my money back, what i did was order 2 blueray films expecting the remiander to go back to my account but again they contacted me saying that when the orders had shipped i can get a new coupon for the rest of my owed money.

This really takes the piss and well i am really put off buying anything that gets delivered through a courier, i already paid play asia for packaging and then UPS also charge an extra 50 Pounds (not customs charges)

So my advice get shipping via registered airmail and ditch the crap courier services and watch out for firms who want give your money back when they lose the order. Worst of all no ipod touch and i aint got the original money either.

Wraggy, you should send them a link to this post and make them aware of how many visitors dcemu.co.uk gets, am sure they will see the errors of their way once they discover how badly this is making them look (play asia, not UPS) UPS are frigging useless, will never buy anything that requires them to deliver my stuff ever again, not after the last cock up.
Good luck with the refund,

Mike..

ive sent so many emails ive just gave up, being a webmaster means nothing to these people, then again im just like any other customer, but hopefully this will teach them to be a little more fair in future

That's an annoying situation you've been put in. The eternal risk of buying stuff from asia is when s*** like this goes wrong - what can you do? I guess they could just refuse to give you anything at all, and bringing the good old law into this would amount to nothing - it's China baby.

I only had one bad experience, when they sent me a wrong product. I tried to convince them that they should pay the return postage costs, but no siree, and they would not ship the correct product until they had the wrong product back. Theres not nearly as much money involved as in your case - but it's just insanely annoying anyway.

Still way cheaper than buying stuff in Europe, so we need them - and they know.

Never had a problem with UPS or play-asia, however as play-asia will not submit the tracking number that registered mail has you can not verify the date and time of delivery and the delivery attempts online. This of course renders the service completely useless to you.

Wraggster, why would you buy an iPod Touch from Play-Asia (they say its out of stock on the site)?
Wouldnt it be better to just goto the store and buy it and save you from all that shipping crap?

EDIT: Might I add that Play-Asia hasnt worked well for me either. From December 2007-May 2008, I asked them to track down the Japanese Gamecube version of Sonic Gems Collection (Jap Sonic CD soundtrack). I probably asked around 6 or 7 times, through their site, pressing that track down button, and e-mailing them. Still Nothing. I couldnt find this game on any other import game sites either. The only places I found it at were Amazon.co.jp who doesnt ship games out of Japan, and some Japanese site that does the same but sends me all these e-mails I cant read. I guess the game is either getting rare or there's a lack of demand for it. Well thats my story :)