We have been ordering pet supplies from Chewy for years and never had an issue on those rare (maybe once a year) occasions when something arrived damaged. We would send them pics and they would send a replacement.
Just how it should be, right?
Today our shipment arrived with a crushed box of cat food pouches. Hubs contacted Chewy who told him that they were sorry that he was having FedEx issues and here is their contact info. You will need to contact them for the cat food replacement.
Hubs sent them an email saying that we were Chewy’s customer, not FedEx’s so it is Chewy’s responsibility to deal with the issue because FedEx certainly won’t talk to non-paying customers.
Has anyone else had this issue with Chewy? We know they aren’t the cheapest pet food company out there, but we liked how easy it was to use them. We haven’t had a shipping issue since last December so don’t know if telling the consumer to deal with the shipping company is their new business model, but if it is, we are not very happy.
OTOP, we don’t want to stop our auto-ship deliveries if this is just a one off thing.
I haven’t used Chewy in years, so I can’t speak to any policy changes, but if they refused to take fix a problem like that, I wouldn’t think twice about disputing the charge and letting them hash it out with my credit card company.
I would probably first check their site to see if this policy is mentioned anywhere.
Also, if I had already emailed them and attempted to fix the problem quietly, I’d probably post the pictures on their facebook page and see what they have to say about it public.
Edit: Their site says “All items purchased from Chewy.com are made pursuant to a shipment contract, meaning that the risk of loss and title for such items pass to you upon our delivery to the carrier”
So you might not be able to win a charge back, but I’d still post about it on their facebook page. I’m not a fan of businesses handling shipping issues by saying “tough shit, figure it out yourself”.
I’ve had pretty reasonable luck with Chewy, though I do not order frequently from them.
My last gig was the head of Logistics for a decent sized e-commerce company. My directive to everybody in the company was that we do NOT put the blame on our common carriers (eg, FedEx, UPS).
The customer didn’t choose them. We did. If there’s a problem, we handle it for our customer.
I support your position 100%.
Also, you don’t swing a big bat as the recipient. The shipper – particularly a company that probably ships as much as Chewy – does.
Thank you for finding that. I just spend a few minutes comparing their terms of service to PetCo and PetSmart and learned that their shipping costs have dropped significantly in the years since we last looked at them.
Well, yes. Not to mention that we didn’t give the shipper any money ourselves, of course they don’t consider us to be their customers.
So Chewy is hoping that their customers will fall for their disclaimer and eat the costs of the lost items themselves. I can see how that might be a profitable business model for a short time.
I know that Chewy doesn’t think that our 6 grand a years worth of purchases make us big customers (yes we do feed the birds and the strays and give treats to the neighbors’ dogs…why do you ask?), but I would still think that they wouldn’t want to give that up over a 20 dollar box of cat food.
If one other person checks in to say that their return was also refused, PetSmart has the litter we use and Amazon has George’s fuzzy balls, we will get over this and move on.
Compare this to a company like Breville. Our toaster oven conked out and I called them try to find someone who could fix it. They said “Well, if you want to spend $75, we’ll send you a shipping label, you send it to us, we fix it for no additional cost, and if we can’t fix it, we’ll give you a new one.” Keep in mind this is a $270 appliance. So I shipped it and it got lost/stolen in shipment. Called Breville and the guy says “Well, it’s our shipping label and there’s no reason for you to be in the middle of this, so I’ll just send you a new appliance.” Customer for life.
As for Chewy, I’ve been using them for years without an issue. They’re fast and efficient, so I’m sticking with them for now.
I’m really hoping that hubs just got a noob CSR who was blindly following their Terms of Service instead of remembering that Chewy is where it is because of their rep for stellar customer service.
I’ve only had one damaged shipment from Chewy, which was clearly a screwup by FedEx, and the pleasant woman who took my call sympathized and took the charge off my account.
Which was just the response we were expecting. Do you remember when that was? They changed their Terms of Use to include the above mentioned disclaimer June 30th of this year.
It was, I think, a couple of years ago. I’ve never had any problems since so I have no idea how a complaint call would go now. Hopefully I’ll never find out.
Yes. It’s like those disclaimers at a garage that charges for parking. You can put up all the signs you want but you can’t write off your liability for theft or damage. If they won’t refund your money then you might be able to have the card reverse the charges since you didn’t receive what you purchased in good condition.
As we always order enough for free shipping, dealing with a card reversal for one 20 dollar item would be too much bother. Suck it up and move on. There are many other online retail stores that would be happy to take our money.
If it was the entire shipment, yeah, that would be worth the bother of the charge back while finding another place to serve our needs.
As we both are super lazy, I am really hoping that this is just a one off thing that will be fixed in the morning.
Of course I will come back with the results tomorrow.
ISTM this problem is burgeoning across the entire e-commerce world.
The transport / delivery companies are ever-less reliable and damage ever more stuff. More and more porch pirates are out there. The big shippers have beaten the prices for shipping down to the bone where the carriers make almost nothing. USPS is in fact selling their last-mile package delivery service for far less than it costs them to do the work.
Meanwhile, customers want the product to be delivered on time without damage or theft and want somebody, anybody, else to a) take their word for it about any discrepancy no questions asked, and b) pay for 100% replacement, ideally with a spiff for the inconvenience & delay.
Formally / legally, title to most goods passes to the buyer when the carrier picks it up at the seller’s warehouse. The buyer is obligated to make a claim to the shipping company for any loss or damage. This is irrespective of who paid the shipping company. And the shipping company’s liability ends when they deposit the package where you wanted it. Defined legally as “at the address you gave them”. If that’s at your front door and a porch pirate nabs it an hour later, legally that’s 100% your problem and no one else’s.
In the early days of e-commerce (1997?) many sellers chose to absorb all those risks as a way of weaning all of us into the willingness to part with our CC numbers to some random website in hopes that a [whatever] would arrive on our doorstep in a few days unmolested.
Now, here in 2023, the public is totally on board with e-commerce and home delivery for damn near everything. And the costs to the sellers to try to keep that “no shipping / delivery / theft problems” guarantee are exploding.
They’re collectively going to be running away from those guarantees absent some sort of consumer protection legislation. Meantime the porch pirates just get bolder.
If the cost of shipping is born by the shipper then they are the only ones who can make a claim for damages by the carrier because they are the ones who contracted and paid for it.
You will find most shipping labels include the requirement that the recipient notify the carrier if there is any damage or shortage. Ideally notify the delivery driver at the time of handover if a face-to-face handover is made.
A formal claim may (IANA expert) have to be made by whoever paid the carrier. But if the carrier demands the recipient notify them of damage and simultaneously refuses to talk to the recipient because they are not the carrier’s customer, then somebody somewhere is not understanding the actual legal scenario. That sort of Catch-22 doesn’t exist in the legal world. Might some clueless worker have that idea? Sure. Is that official policy? No way.
This is why I HATE ordering products. I have to order certain medical products because nobody stock what I want locally. I just ordered a bunch stuff that I can’t get locally and it’s a cluster of crap trying to keep track of them. The accuracy of various company’s tracking email is poor. I try to time them all to arrive within a given week so I can watch for mail and other deliveries every day.
