"Issues with Hovels" Topic

I've read quite some praise here on the boards about Hovels costumer service, and particularly how Carol Coleman is diligent and quick on communications with clients, and I feel very unfortunate to see that this is the opposite of my experience.

A couple months ago I submitted my first order on their web site. It took about 7-10 days for them to send an invoice for my order, but other than that,it was a smooth transaction. They shipped my items immediatelly after I paid for the invoice.

Then, a month later, I submitted a second order. Again, it took them a while to send an invoice, but no problems there.

My problems started a few weeks later, when I took notice that the postal system couldn't deliver this second parcel because the address was wrong (incomplete). I informed Carol through email, she admitted it was a mistake on her part, she omitted the street number of my condo, and asked me to tell the Postal System to contact her so that she could confirm the right address to them.

I informed her this is not how things work with my postal system (I'm in Brazil). Their standard procedure is to return a registered parcel to the address of origin in case of incongruence with the delivery address. I even tried working this out with the postal office directly, but to no avail.

To this second message of mine, Carol simply replied that "If they had opened the parcel there was a Paypal invoice with your correct address on".

I then communicated to her that this is not their procedure, and that it didn't help our situation to wonder what if. The fact remained that the parcel was returning to Hovels, and asked what they would do about it.

A few days passed, no answer. I sent another email. This was about the time of the month I was planning on submitting another order (I plan on ordering a few buildings from them every month to build up my collection of terrain), so I suggested they might send replacement pieces from the previous order along with the new, so to save them on shipping costs, and so I wouldn't have to wait for the original returning parcel to get there and be redirected to me again (which might take another month).

Again, no answer. She simply does not manifest any indication of being willing to work out a solution to a situation she admitted was caused by a mistake on her part. Her attitude feels like "ok, I messed it up, but it".

It's been almost 10 days since her second answer. She never mentioned if she is going to correct the situation, nor has her sent me an invoice for my latest order, so it seems she is not interested in my business anymore (as if I was a bad costumer for politely asking them to solve a problem they caused).

I'm at a point where I'm considering opening a case on paypal. Don't know how else to deal with their lack of willingness to comunicate and work this out.

Opening a dispute with Paypal is the first thing to do – it protects you from the dispute period running out and you can always cancel it if the parcel turns up.

It may also get some action from Hovels – I'm guessing they are waiting for the parcel to show up, which could take some time depending on the Post Office – try tracking the parcel again on its return trip & check if it has 'disappeared' along the way.

I don't know of ANY Post Office that would open a parcel to look for an address unless the parcel was so damaged in transit that the original label was missing. The only other time would be if both the recipients AND the senders addresses were damaged or otherwise missing, in which case it would have gone to the 'dead letter' office for salvage.

The window for filing a PayPal dispute is 45 days from the date of payment. If it has been longer than that you are going to have an issue getting your money refunded.

I would suggest you request a refund from Hovels and tell them you will refuse the package when it arrives(if it ever does). That way it will be returned to them.

Dave

The parcel is tracked, which means both me and her can see that it is returning to England, so she doesn't have to trust my word on that.

I didn't want to escalate the situation into a paypal case, beacause I was trying to avoid further litigation, since my intention is to continue to buy from them, there is a lot more stuff I'd like to purchase, if only they were willing to treat a customer right.

But maybe that boat has sailed already…