Warning against buying from ARROW

[hcglitte]

Hi,

Just want to give you a warning regarding buying on arrow.com

In May I had an order where one of my lines were cancelled. However, they still charged my VISA for all lines, including the cancelled one.
They acknowledged the error and said they were going to transfer the amount back in early October. They never did so.
After numerous chats with them, they finally tell me that they will resolve it, and refund the money.
However, they will not pay interest, for bank charges and currency conversion loss.
They did however offer a 10% discount on next order, which you can find on a simple google search.
It may not be a big deal, but not professional in my opinion.

[Bassman59]

CREDIT CARD CHARGEBACK.

Do it.

Now.

[Doctorandus_P]

If you stop doing business with every company that ever made a mistake, then you'd grow hungry pretty quick.

If you stop doing business with companies failed to correct some *&^%$#@! but still had good intentions then you'd still grow hungry pretty quickly.

And yet there are plenty of companies that thrive on deliberately misleading their customers.

[Bud]

I do not think any company in the world would pay back you interest or any other charges when issuing a refund.

[Kjelt]

Interest ? What interest? You have to pay these days to put money in the bank.

[bob91343]

I have had great success complaining to credit card companies.  They value my business so if there is a dispute they will resolve it to my satisfaction, even if they have to pay the disputed amount.  I recently got a refund of over $600.

[Kerlin]

I placed an order for a development board with Arrow.
Never got it, they refused to refund the money, were rude and unpleasant.
Got onto the bank that runs my credit card.
One call was all it took.
Bank found they sent it to the wrong address even the wrong state.
The bank did a charge back in two days and I got my money back, including no charges, who needs pay pal.
Have never bought anything there in the last 30 years.

[VK3DRB]

I have never had a problem with Arrow. Very professional and they provide good support here in Australia. They have never been rude to me and enjoy a good reputation among Australian electronics engineers. But your experience should be escalated through Arrow's management.

Your story reminded of a dodgy company here named Kogan. Kogan advertised a phone at a discount. I bought the phone online and got the receipt. Took them one second to take my money. The next day, Kogan sent me an email saying it was too cheap and they cancelled the contract. It took them almost a month to refund my money. Foolishly, I bought another phone off Kogan. The phone was for the wrong country (South Africa rather than Australia) and clearly not what I ordered, but they would not take it back. In both cases, Kogan broke Australian consumer law. Kogan is at the bottom of the cesspool, ten times more dodgy than Arthur Daley from Minder.

Two valuable lessons learnt:
1. You get what you pay for.
2. Better to pay a little extra and buy from a reputable company.

That also goes with electronic components. I buy small quantities for R & D from Digikey and Mouser.... never had a problem with either of them.

[james_s]

Given the small number of large distributors like Arrow I would go out of my way to avoid burning any bridges. It's reasonable to expect a refund, it is not reasonable to expect them to pay you interest. Giving you a refund and offering a 10% discount on a future order was fairly generous in my opinion. I would not initiate a chargeback except as a last resort.

[Kerlin]

Given the small number of large distributors like Arrow I would go out of my way to avoid burning any bridges. It's reasonable to expect a refund, it is not reasonable to expect them to pay you interest. Giving you a refund and offering a 10% discount on a future order was fairly generous in my opinion. I would not initiate a chargeback except as a last resort.

1- I did not ask them to pay interest.
2- Any bank would not and cant do a charge back without checking the circumstances - so there must have been a problem.
3- You don't know the if situation was a the last resort or not as you don't know the situation, here it is -
       It was $US 1600 development board, I had tried to sort it out for 3 months and I had emails from them which clearly showed the attitude to a refund.
4- I have never had a problem with them, is a one out of one out of one  statistic - lets try another invalid statistic two out of four in this thread have had a problem that's 50%.

[james_s]

The rules may be different there. In the USA it is easy to initiate a chargeback and the system is slanted in favor of the customer. It can be as simple as a vendor not jumping through the necessary hoops to fight the chargeback attempt or inability to prove they are not at fault in order for it to be approved.

[SilverSolder]

Three months is more than enough for them to sort out the problem, one way or another.  Asking the credit card company to step in after all this time is entirely reasonable.

[Circlotron]

However, they will not pay interest, for bank charges and currency conversion loss.

They never received the bank charges or currency conversion charges in the first place.

[Bassman59]

Given the small number of large distributors like Arrow I would go out of my way to avoid burning any bridges. It's reasonable to expect a refund, it is not reasonable to expect them to pay you interest. Giving you a refund and offering a 10% discount on a future order was fairly generous in my opinion. I would not initiate a chargeback except as a last resort.

1- I did not ask them to pay interest.
2- Any bank would not and cant do a charge back without checking the circumstances - so there must have been a problem.
3- You don't know the if situation was a the last resort or not as you don't know the situation, here it is -
       It was $US 1600 development board, I had tried to sort it out for 3 months and I had emails from them which clearly showed the attitude to a refund.
4- I have never had a problem with them, is a one out of one out of one  statistic - lets try another invalid statistic two out of four in this thread have had a problem that's 50%.

Maybe in Oz things are different, but here in the US, if you start a fraud report or a chargeback with your card issuer, the first thing they do is say "we have issued a temporary credit to your account. If after our investigation we determine that the charge was indeed fraudulent/etc, that credit becomes permanent."

This means that you don't have to pay that part of the bill when due.

I have never had a chargeback request denied. Usually the turnaround time for the "investigation" is a day. And since you have all of that extra documentation from the vendor, there is no way your credit card issuer will deny your claim.

It is for this reason that I use only cards from "major banks" like Citi, Chase, Discover and Amex for online purchases. All you do is select the transaction on their website, click the "dispute charge" option and go. I love my local credit union but dealing with a chargeback with them is too difficult -- I actually have to call to start the dispute.

[SmallCog]

I'm in Australia and haven't had an issue with them.

If I want something, I fire off an email, they call me for my credit card details and they send me an Australian tax invoice.

I don't muck around buying in foreign currencies it's too hard for the book keeping at work.

If there was an issue I've got every faith they'd fix it. If they couldn't/wouldn't I'd instigate a chargeback. I doubt I'll ever need to do this with Arrow.

Seems like somethings slipped through the cracks here and not been handled appropriately and promptly. Hardly seems worthy of warning other people away from using them though.

If you shopped with them in a foreign (from your perspective) currency (EG you're in Euro's and shopped in USD) and they provided a refund in USD that hasn't come out as exactly the same as you paid due to the vagaries of relative exchange rates that's not exactly their problem. Same goes for any fees you paid for currency conversion - this was a risk you took when you shopped in a foreign currency.