Provantage

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Author: Anonymous

We purchased an interactive Whiteboard earlier this year. While waiting for it to be delivered, we ordered an interactive pen for it from a company called Provantage (provantage.com). Delivery was several weeks. The whiteboard came in, and we realized that as a special promotion it included two of these interactive pens. I immediately contacted Provantage by e-mail, using the link they provided on the electronic invoice to cancel the order. I also called both their toll free and toll numbers but was put on hold for extremely long times, so I let it go, assuming my order was canceled. A while later, I received another e-mail from Provantage saying that my product would be shipping the next day. I immediately sent another response through their link, telling them to stop the order, and once more tried to call five or six times on their toll and toll free numbers, but could not get to a place where I could either talk to someone or even leave a message. Finally, a few days after it shipped, someone named Stephen Camburn contacted me by e-mail and instructed me to either refuse the shipment or return it. I instructed people in my company to either refuse it or return it, and assumed the problem was taken care of. In the course of an internal audit several months later, after our accountant retired and a new person came over, we could not find any trace of a refund on the credit card for Provantage. We contacted them. Their immediate response was that we had to provide them with a tracking number showing that the item was returned to their warehouse (which it turns out is not really their warehouse - they are just resellers for other warehouses). We spent hours trying to address this issue with them, and they just kept falling back on the easy way out of stating that without a tracking number we could not get a refund. Absolutely horrible customer service. There are literally dozens of other resellers selling the same products these guys sell, so don't waste your time dealing with them. They fumbled the original order, could not be reached by e-mail or phone, and then put the burden of proof back on a customer to correct was essentially a string of errors on their part. This report is not being filed as a rant - I gave them fair warning to address the issue before posting, and now this is a first step, as the same report will be filed on the Starboard (interactive whiteboard) discussion groups and online resources. I'm out $90, but at least I know where not to go in the future for anything electronics (computers, copiers, software, hardware, home electronics) related. Too many good companies out there willing to bend over backwards for my company's business to be forced to work with a company like provantage, who hasn't learned yet that stellar customer service is a necessity when you resell commodities in a crowded field. Buyer beware!

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