never buying from them...shoulda informed you...

yeah.

there's the principle at stake here, the policy being implimented, and the tone of his service.

the principle is that you ordered one thing and he shipped you something else without notification, (seemingly) on purpose.

the policy is that he is not going to pay shipping to have them returned, though he will give you a full refund for the wheels if you ship them to his specifications.

the tone is the actual customer service issue, coupled with the error of not notifying you of the order change.

the principle at stake is what's most important. it seems like he INTENDED to not notify you of the stock change. To me, this is vastly different than being negligent or forgetting to notify you. Substituting a higher spoke wheelset for what you ordered without notifying you, asking if you wanted it, or otherwise taking steps to avoid the problem strikes at his credibility as an honest businessperson. if he tried to slip this past you, what else would he try to get away with on purpose?
as a vendor, your first and utmost priority is the customer. that's paramount. making sure you're providing the customer with exactly what they want is more important than almost anything else, on principle. it would actually be less troublesome if he had sent you a 32h wheelset that was blemished or even slightly damaged in a cosmetic way when you think about it from the perspective of the principle of salesmanship that he's violating.

the policy he's implimenting isn't quite as bad. in fact, i think it's perfectly reasonable to deny to cover shipping.
it's not his fault you live in australia, and it's not his fault parcel services charge what they charge for the service this transaction requires. he never included shipping as part of his cost, he kept it separate and that's legitimate for precisely the reason that these situations occur.
seventy dollars isn't that much to ship a wheelset across an ocean... but when you buy things through the mail you have to be readily cognizant of what that transaction requires and what the policy is behind it. i don't think he has a policy to pay for shipping, or provide return shipping, or do anything like that- and you should have been okay with those policies and procedures before ordering with him. also, they should be clear to a reasonable customer- which i'm totally assuming they were. could be dead wrong on that, but i am assuming he didn't hide such policy, and had it available to those who inquired or looked. sounds to me like you didn't think that far ahead.
next time, i'd consider going to a local shop so you can say "i want a 32h wheelset" and they have the option of looking you in the eye and saying "36 hole won't do?"
in fact, this vendor could have policy that says "unless the product is defective, there are no returns" and not even offer to give you your money back, and as long as that was disclosed in the ordering process, there'd be nothing wrong with the policy he's sticking to even though he didn't ship you the right product. you could have gotten a response saying "I am sorry you are not happy with your product. our terms declare that when stock is low in an item, a similar item may be substituted. the product you received is valued higher than the price you paid and because of this, our policy is to not accept returns of non defective items. i trust that aside from the additional spokes, your item is as ordered. thank you for your business and let us know if you have any other concerns, as i would be happy to serve you in areas where i am not bound by policy to deny such requests." and had no real recourse. such a scenario would actually be better customer service than what you've posted so far. functionally, you would be in the same situation you're in now because you're unwilling to pay for shipping, so even though he's offering a refund, you won't take it... i am just trying to impart upon you that you bought from him and his policies are not really lacking... you should have thought about 'what if i don't like what i get?' before you ordered. so in terms of the policy he's implementing here, i don't think he's actually doing anything wrong. you should consider it to your advantage he's offering a refund at all- he gave you a set of wheels, and you paid him for a VERY SIMILAR set of wheels that actually would cost less than what you got.

finally there's the tone he's taking in dealing with you.
tone is probably a bad way of addressing it... but his candor and politeness are really lacking and that's the real problem of service here. this is actually the reason i'm siding with you completely... if he was kinder in dealing with this mixup, even saying "gosh, i certainly didn't mean to send you a 36 spoke wheelset, and now i see the 32h are out of stock. i'll gladly refund you (except shipping, which is policy i am held to) and give you a discount on a future purchase if you really don't want the wheelset you have." then i'd actually call this good customer service.
even if this wasn't a mistake, treating it like one would cover up the severe principle issue at stake and though deceitful, be better customer service than what he's actually doing because of the tone of his language.
as it is, he's being condescending, rude, fickle and coming right out with his principle trespass of giving you something other than what you ordered. that makes his policy of making you sit on the shipping costs seem a lot worse than it really is... and it's making your experience suck. that's why it's bad customer service.

so to sum up: it's bad customer service for him to treat you in the way he's treating you, mainly because of how rude he's being. sending you the wrong item was wrong, but that's not actually bad customer service- that's just bad (and wrong, and unethical) business and an error. the policy behind what he's sticking to isn't really a problem in addressing this error... what is bad customer service, is that he
1. didn't notify you of the change to your order(just notification, still an error unless he offers to cancel the order if you're not happy with the change)
2. isn't providing you with quality service as would be seen standard for this type of conflict (that is, he's being rude)
so my recommendation to you is two fold.

first, be happy that you have a wheelset that is, in my opinion, worth what you paid for it. maybe sell it and buy what you want from a physical shop you can walk into and return to if things go wrong? if you don't sell it, just ride it and learn to love the 36h. unfortunately a private sale is probably not going to recoup the total cost, especially not shipping.
and second, thanks for telling us about how this is working out. it's valuable information to the people of this community to know what's going on here. i know that i won't be buying from someone who can't fill an order properly. i would write this guy a final letter saying you're dissatisfied, and be as specific as possible. that way he won't do this to other people. or, if you really are bent up over this and you have a ton of time and money to blow, hire a lawyer to sue him. worst case scenario, you'll waste time and money and he won't pay up, and he'll simply stop doing business in australia(or abroad). best case scenario, he realizes that he's ****ed up with the wrong customer, and pays for shipping plus a little extra discount for your trouble... and all with just a strongly worded letter from the right people.


TL;DR:

Yet another elaborate post by cc, you have never let us down and the gorilla is just a bonus.

OP, you should definitely include this thread in your email to Caesar, if he cares about his business, he will try to fix your situation.

He is losing customers pretty quickly.

yeah. changing someone's order without notification is bunk.

i know this is hyperbole, but imagine if he sold you a set of dura ace 7600 hi flange to ceramic open pros for 200 and you got a box in the mail two weeks later that had a set of formulas to aeroheads.

had you read this thread, maybe you wouldn't be surprised.

the principle at steak!!

oh yeah i once ordered a set of wheels from fairwheel bikes and they ended up giving me a different, better front hub without telling me. i was cool with it

Yummm

(i swear i edited that before i hit post.)

Obviously cc was playing with words because he recognized the beef that OP and the said company is having.

wat

Early in the morning...

CC, you're making me want to work to post longer posts with more useful content, especially when I disagree with you. Unfortunately I don't think I have quite the critical mind you do. But here it goes.

I learned, last year order lights for a Rave (yeah eat one) that if a seller has both an Ebay store, and a website to order from, use the Ebay store because Negative Feedback on Ebay allows you some recourse of action other then talking to your Bank/Credit Card Company about a charge back. I've looked over this Dbags site and I found his eBay account which does already have 1 negative feedback regarding a similar issue here where a customer received an Origin 8 Hub instead of a formula. Personally I'd rather avoid having the Origin 8 name on my bike if I could but thats just a minor quirk.
What bothers me here is the level of responsibility he is taking for shipping the incorrect product. I work for an eBay retailer with both an online store and an eBay store as well and I can't say we've never pulled a stunt similar to this. However in the cases we have if the customer is unhappy, we remedy the situation at no cost because it was our mistake, not the customers.

He did not inform you of the change, I did check his website and he does not have any policies regarding returns, refunds or handling of situations similar to this so really what he's doing is saying "I have your money, if you want it back you need to play by my rules" without ever saying what "my rules" are. Contact your bank or credit card company ASAP, don't mount the wheels. And do this, if you really want to stick it to him.

Get information regarding your buyer protection through the CC company. If they will cover your purchase then you are set. I've been on the other end of these charge backs and they are a PITA to deal with, the CC requests a lot of information and is very finicky with what they receive and how quickly they receive it. If he sent the order via international Priority he may have an even more difficult time just due to the crappy tracking it provides. So if they say

"You're covered, ship the wheels back with tracking and we'll perform a charge back"
You do the following
Box up old weinmans, slap some tracking on them suckers and send them back.
???
Profit.

There is a chance your CC company wont care about the difference, or even give him the option of saying "he sent back the wrong product!" I checked his site and it seems he uses Authorize.net, which is the same Credit Card Processor we use and its very likely he wont get the option and it will be a fiasco trying to handle the situation.

Or Option B. Which is don't be as dirty as I would be.
Send the Wheels back, get your money back and your CC Company will cover you for the costs of shipping. Most companies these days have very strong buyer protection policies, especially in cases where they do not receive what they ordered and the merchant refuses to handle the situation maturely. They have complete control over the money and they will likely just pull the funds out of his account (The funds you paid) and give them back.

I'm not going to argue the morals or ethics hard. What it comes down to is there were no details given regarding incorrect items on receipt, it is clear this seller has done it at least once before and I have a feeling this is a common practice for him. He knew you would have to pay out the arse to return them so he just sent them anyway. I don't say become the white light of justice correcting wrongs, but if you don't want the wheels, stand up for your self and your right as a consumer. People do a lot more to sellers over a lot less, again I know from personal experience. But this is a case in which your rights are getting shafted. If nothing else tell him you want a discount on the set because you did not receive what you ordered, otherwise you'll handle this through your card issuer.

Good luck man.

It's four spokes, man.

i mean, sure... you deserve to get the wheels you ordered, but shipping back some dp18's and getting your credit card company to strong arm him sounds like a quick way to draw this thing out for a month or two.

especially because your credit card company could go after you if you did that. but even if you got your cc company to do this and you shipped the open pros back properly and had the cc company do it right, they are doing international business and i'm not sure av here is imparting to you just how difficult they might make it.

this is throwing good money/time after bad.

it's four spokes, just deal with it unless you can't, in which case, yeah av's CC customer protection avenue is probably the right course of action. definitely better than my 'litigation' rec.

but really, four spokes man. get a magic eraser and takethe origin 8 logo off the hubs and then drop this whole thing.

Good post avner, but you could've included a picture of some sort of feline or flying rodent with clever one liner to really make a statement.

i second velomine. actually from the looks of this thread, im the third or fourth.
super good prices, incredibly good customer service. went out of their way to get a different toothed kog for a coaster brake wheelset i ordered and only charged me like 5 bucks more for another cog (i wanted both cogs)

4 spokes in each wheel translate to more unwanted weight that the OP did not order.

I'm sure a weight weenie roadie would not tolerate unwanted weight on his wheels but then, OP said he doesn't care about it.

I do agreed that OP should just suck it up and use those wheels and never ever buy from him again.

You know, I like to provide a "FUUUU" option as well as a legitimate option just for ****s and giggles. If you want to wear it, and you are more then welcome to wear it. Again check with your CC, not to try and undermine your CC, I enjoy reading your posts but each company will have a different process and if the wheels haven't been mounted I would at least inquire about the process. I would hate to have to wear it. What if you were a track racer and those 4 spokes on each wheel were really a big deal and this was going to be a nice upgrade for your race bike? I'm not the staunchest capitalist but I have a strong sense of integrity which is why I am all


Flying squirrel advice poster will be up as soon as I get to work with my photoshop comp

First, he uses the wrong spoke key.



Then he uses the dish stick in the wrong direction.

alright that's it, i'm convinced.
Avner, you convinced me.

OP- time to get your money back. take it to CC customer care.

when they put you on hold to wait for a rep, play this

goodmorning lol
thank u

Those pics of that dude are solid gold.

tl;dr