Please take this with a grain of salt - it is my personal (horrible) experience :/
Ok, I know I wrote a good word about HopShopGo early this month - but things have taken a turn for the worse this week.
What happened was that I ordered nail polishes via Nordstrom (Chanel and MAC) to be sent to HopShopGo along with a wallet, and have them shipped to me. It turns out that HSG does not ship nail polishes internationally - I didn't notice the mention of that on their website. I just assumed most stuff purchased could be shipped across (unless it was electronic equipment, food, or something). Turns out I was wrong and I received a notice like 9 days after my package arrived at their warehouse. Really, 9 days later.
They asked me to discard or return the items. There's of course a fee if I ask them to return the items. I was livid because the thought of them asking me to discard Chanel and MAC nail polishes was very, very rude. I felt that as a service provider, they should never ask the customer to discard items they have purchased from so far away. I tried to respond to their e-mail but got no reply for 2 days and I started to get antsy because you are charged for keeping your package with them - the first 14 days is free, after that it's 1USD per day or something similar. So I sent another e-mail explaining:
1. I have a package that has items that need to be returned - please return them and charge me accordingly.
2. I have another package that has arrived but I cannot ship it without package #1 being resolved.
Two days later I got a very unclear reply: "The MAC nail polish was not purchased and therefore the amount you paid for was accurate." Never in my e-mail did I say that I was charged inaccurately. I was asking to be charged the return services and then I was hoping I could ship the stuff to me. They did tell me how to consolidate my packages (combine and ship them) - though the package with the problem (nail polishes) was not visible in the shipping section. It's a very strange service model where you can only talk to their staff via e-mail or LiveChat. There's no phone number.
So I woke up really early on Monday morning to deal with their LiveChat. Turns out their Customer Service is outsourced to China. I tried to explain my situation to the staff only to be told that they cannot help me. The only people who can help me is their American office - but again, I was not getting any response via e-mail (beyond the unclear response that is). They did give me a link to the obscure page on "What they don't ship" and lo and behold "nail polish" was there, along with perfumes. I was quite surprised.
I was told to wait till customer service came back to me - but I got annoyed and told the person on LiveChat that all this waiting means I'm going to be charged the daily storage fee even though it's not my fault. Then they said that they will waive those charges. I was not convinced though so I bought some Skype credit and last night I called the phone number that they give me to use when I order stuff with their address.
Turns out this person who answered the phone is not Customer Service - but I ranted to him anyway. His responses were:
1. We give the customer the option : discard or return - to which I said that they should never suggest to discard, because it's disrespectful. He didn't seem to think so because he said most of the time the cost of discarding the items is less than returning them. I told him these were luxury items I had purchased from Nordstrom.
2. He said I should wait till Customer Service comes back to me - then I explained the charges that might accumulate in event they did not come back to me in time. He said there might be these charges (looks like he didn't know about them).
3. Finally after ranting a bit [and saying "Wow, I thought I'd get more service than this"], and refusing to listen to him, he asked for my Suite number (it's like an ID number) and said that he will ask Customer Service to get back to my emails.
Today I got an e-mail saying that they have returned my nail polishes (sigh, goodbye Chanel/MAC) free of charge for me and the remaining items have been combined with the other package and all is ready for shipping.
I heaved a huge sigh of relief and quickly proceeded to pay for the shipment.
This is my last transaction with them. I cannot deal with a company that barely has any customer service - let alone any respect for the customers' items.
So, goodbye HopShopGo. Can you believe it's backed by PayPal?