Problem With Supplier

[Firm Young Carrot]

I'm in Belgium, where al Fakher isn't distributed, so I've been buying it online from www.shisha-onlineshop.ch

They've been good, friendly and prompt. Until now. I noticed their website was down for maintenance and emailed them about an order I wanted to make. They said it would be back up, but I could order by email.

So I ordered and made the bank transfer to their German bank.

I've heard nothing since, the goods should have arrived over three weeks ago and i'm not getting any replies to my emails. I've googled and have seen that others have had similar peoblems.

So, what should I do next?

[thegreengoblin707]

how did you do the transfer? paypal by any chance? obviously you didnt use a credit card. yeah, bank transfer is an awful idea and the least protected by all. if you had paypal or credit card payment - you'd have this resolved at most in 2 weeks with your money back. if you wired money (tough to recover) or did a bank transfer - the best source of guidance would be to contact bank asap.

[Johnny_D]

Looks like you lost your money

Allways pay by a credit card. Even a pre-pay one.

JD

[ahwahoo2006]

What Johnny said. You just learned an expensive lesson. While credit cards have their (many) downsides, they also offer a fair amount of protection for the consumer - the company I use is so good that they called me because I spent a couple hundred dollars at an electronics store (which I dont usually do). If you don't have access to, or do not wish to get a credit card, you can easily transfer money with paypal (and I think there is a European counterpart), which offers its own form of consumer protection.

[john_smith]

Paypal DOES offer consumer protection, but I don't know how willing they'd be to give you protection for buying tobacco (which is against their policy).

[Firm Young Carrot]

Thanks for all that guys. I'll have a word with the bank. If I don't get my cash back, at least I can tip the bank off that there's something dodgy going on.

[Firm Young Carrot]

Well,

I did a google on one of the names on previous emails and found him. He runs a travel agency, but I think he has passed on the shisha shop to a partner, so I emailed him.

He replied saying that they had serious email outages and that is why they've had problems. He asked me what my order was and has promised to send it asap. I work in IT and I know that such outages do happen and can be devastating and often the result of bad luck/other people etc.

Now, I'm not entirely happy about all this. I think a core problem is that I only had an email for them, a phone number would have been more useful. They should have seen my transfer which also would have identified me and the amount I ordered.

Anyway, I'm going to wait 7 days and see if anything arrives. If so, I will look into ways of making more secure payments in future and having better contact details.

[shisha fan]

good luck, and nex time you might want to order from the US. then you`ll be able to choose between more brands than nakhla and al fakher.

[mushrat]

don't have to order from the us, just never order froma place without a working phone number. And Call the number listed if it does have one to make sure someone really answeres. I never ordered from a place that didn't have a phone number.