texasphil

I was trying to place an order with that famous online company 'named after that big river in s. america'

I pick my bike accessories each has free super saver shipping listed. Good prices. Good so far. I enter my name and info, tried next day first and order went from $26 to like $66, bad bad bad, hit the back button. Tried FREE SUPER SAVER shipping, order went to $37. These parts only weigh about 2lbs total. Tried to call to find out why free shipping cost $11, got a call center in India the guy spoke terrible unintelligible english and cut me off after I asked the question. I call back got a female this time. No better she didn't even really try to answer or tell me what country she was in. I hung up and called Bikemart(.com). Paid a couple dollars more but it was worth it (their shipping was about $6). When I order from a U.S. company based in the U.S. I would expect to at least deal with sales people in the U.S. If I Owned there stock I'd sell it.

Sprocket Man

I didn't know there was a Nashbar River in South America.

Little Darwin

I started to correct your English, but I grew weary of the process after about a third of your poorly written racist message. If you are going to blast someone for poor communication, you should strive for proper communication in making your point.

While I agree that any company is foolish to hire people to answer the phone who can't be understood by the customers, there are several American regional accents and dialects that are as difficult to understand as most foreign accents.

And even though you may not like it, you should probably learn to get along in a global economy, because you have to make a living working in one.

texasphil

I don't live in a country named "India" and I don't speak their language. How is that racist? I don't even know what language they speak. I tried to spend money and phoned a U.S. based company. Maybe we should all learn the worlds 400 different languages and thousands of dialects so we can all be diverse. I'm not writing a thesis so don't bother correcting my english!

texasphil

DARWIN DON'T YOU EVER CALL ME OR ANYONE ELSE YOU DON'T KNOW A RACIST! This shows a complete lack of understanding. PS: Whites are a minority in Texas, so you have no clue what your talking about!

oneredstar

Like they say, "Don't mess with Texas".

donnamb 

+1 one to both your opinion and your observation.

Brian

Wait, you want low prices, and you want them to pay for quality customer service people? Buy from your LBS then. I can't make the lady at Comcast 3 miles up the road from me understand what the heck I'm talking about, so why should they waste their money paying her, when they can outsource my call to someone else that still can't understand me, but will work for 70% less?

It's a well known fact that if you want to make a million dollars in the bicycle industry, you should start with two million. It's a very competitive business, with small margins. Can't blame them for throwing up a website and trying to save costs by going cut rate on their phone service. A call to an $8/hour agent in the US would eat a huge chunk of their margin.

CB HI

Seems to me he wanted a reasonable price with good service. When they jacked him on the supposedly free or low cost shipping, he asked a question about it and got unsatisfactory service. He then took his business to another company, got a fare price and reasonable shipping with proper service and he was happy.

He post about his experience, and one in the forum calls him racist and others jump on him for whatever useless reasons.

RonH

You buy bike stuff from Amazon???? I thought only newbies did that.
Good prices???

bbattle

And I thought he was talking about Rio Motobecano.

bbattle

Why do hate Philly?

rodrigaj

Spanish was my neighborhood and family language growing up in the South Bronx (I am 58 years old now). I could not speak a word of english when I started school. The elders of the neighborhood used to joke about this:

When junior started school he could not speak a word of english. Now that he has graduated he can't speak a word of english or spanish.

BTW, I won't buy from Nasbar or Performance because of their horrible customer service. If you want to buy from them, order the cheapest shipping and wait for your order. Don't expect an answer to a question as simple as "is this part in stock?", much less, "when will I get it?". But if you don't care when you get it, rest assured that it will get to you some day.

Brian

If he had named the company and the items, I'm sure I could have gone to the site and located the fine print that he missed. Of course, if he was really ordering bike parts from Amazon, I don't even know what to say. That's like going to Del Taco for a burger.

Nicodemus

I generally have a fun time dealing with people in call centres from whatever interesting country my call ends up in. However, when someone complains about it, unless there's clear evidence of it, I would be very hesitant to call them a racist. It's perfectly valid to complain about it if they've hired people whose English is terrible.

Of course, one has to take the OP's word for it, and assume he didn't start the conversation with "How much you towelhead freaks gonna charge me to send stuff? I'm a rootin' tootin' Texan and I gots me four guns mutha!!!" .. click.

And, of couse, someone has luckily already admonished the OP for the naivety of expecting anything approaching customer service from an outfit like Amazon.

Sir Stuey

I order from Amazon all the time. If I have a problem, I send an email and they sort it out politely. A few times I had them call me (they don't give the # out on the site but have a "call me" button). Sure the customer service people are outsourced, but out of the dozens of random orders I placed with them, the low service has balanced out the low costs.

Now, Amazon sells many things. Many of their products are sold and shipped from amazon.com. But when you want certain uncommon products such as bike components, you have to look at what you're doing. It will say "item does not qualify for free shipping saver" or "item sold and shipped by xstorex". What you probably did was try to order an oversized component which didn't qualify for free shipping, or you added an item to your cart from one of amazon's partners.

This is not amazon's fault for outsourcing their customer service; it's your fault for not paying attention to what you were doing. There is a minute chance that maybe something was wrong on their end, but my experiences with amazon lead me to believe that the untraceable extra shipping fee is the result of you not reading carefully or neglecting to pay attention to what you were ordering from where.

Brian

Indeed. Of course, the tide is changing on outsourcing calls to India. It's getting harder to find quality employees overseas, and as the cost of doing business there slowly rises, we will see a swing back to US-based call centers. Not that someone in South Dakota will be any more helpful...

filtersweep

Ever heard of globalism? First of all, anyone can sell crap on Amazon.com as a partner. I placed an order for some parts, and it was actually fulfilled by Nashbar. For awhile, I know that you could buy cars there. They merely referred you to a local dealer.

Secondly, if you are cost conscious, you are not going to receive much service for the money. It seems silly to post a rant like this. Why are you not supporting your local bike shop if buying from an American company is so important to you?

Ever try calling ebay or paypal?

al-wagner

I have bought a lot of stuff from the web site you speak of. And have never had a problem...

no motor?

Nashbar has always shipped my orders quickly, and I've never had to wait for backordered items from them. Much better service than the LBS (Village Cycle in Elk Grove Village IL) that measured my old seatpost 3 times and still didn't get it right.

robo

As far as i know Amazon doesn't sell bike parts - they 'outsource' their bike part sales to Nashbar. So you are actually ordering from Nashbar, but using Amazon's website. Free 'Super Saver' shipping only applies to products actually purchased from Amazon, not their 'partner stores'.

The OP would have done just as well or better to have gone straight to nashbar.com. He probabably could have used the 10 or 15% off coupons they usually have going too.


As for Nashbar service, i've found them to be OK. My one beef with them is if they don't have an item that you ordered, they won't tell you, and will just ship the other stuff. Which is great when the item they don't have is the main item in your purchase. A couple years ago they had a great deal on Flite saddles, so i bought one, and also threw in a pair of grips and some spare brake cables. I wanted the saddle fast, so i paid about $15 for express shipping. Three days later, i got a box with a pair of grips and a cable, total value about $5. No saddle! Called them up and was told the saddle was sold out. So i paid $20 for a $4 pair of grips and a $1 cable. (however, the good thing is i *****ed about it and they gave me free shipping for my next order... so it could have been worse)

Cyclist0383

English is an official language of India.

operator

+1 billion owned

operator

No they won't, they will find people who can speak proper english and who accept lower wages than you'd pay in a US based call center.

Little Darwin

Duplicate Post Removed.