Scott Nangle at www.snvinyl.co.uk
Read this if purchasing from snvinyl
I am in the last stages of sorting an online dispute with scott nangle ay snvinyl and its been a bizarre shopping experience. The initial experience was positive with finding the www.snvinyl.co.uk site and seeing a numbers of great rare vinyl items on sale. The actial site was a nightmare to navigate, but I finally found a number of items that I couldn’t find anywhere else. So far, so good…
The owner of the site seemed super enthusiastic and even on a Sunday we exchanged a surprising volume of e-mails, which suggested Scott was a genuine music lover. This gave me the confidence to place a series of orders, nine items in total. I was informed “items had been shipped” but rather than receiving the full order, 30% arrived. That’s not terrible news, as two of the rarest items were included.
Then, it all starts to go wrong…
After receiving these items, out of curiosity I did a check to see customer reviews online. Now, I appreciate that no business gets 100% approval, BUT I’ve never seen so many negative reviews in all my years of business. The TrustPilot reviews were typically brutal, all pointing out a theme of poor communication, orders not fulfilled, and customers informing trading standards. One customer here was clearly driven to detail his terrible experience.
My alarm bells started ringing and I politely requested the ETA for the remaining 66% of the order.
Golden rule – always check business terms and conditions
I have learned over many years to check the terms and conditions of any business, as these will be the reference point in any dispute. The terms at SNVINYL are as follows
“Prices and Payment
All prices are in £ sterling and include UK VAT at the appropriate rate. Delivery charges are not included in the prices quoted. We accept payment by most major credit and debit cards. Payment is taken once we have established that we can fulfil your order, checked details and stock availability and despatched your goods. We do not charge your credit or debit card until we dispatch your order.“
I sent over an e-mail to Scott clearly showing the charges on my credit cards for all items and not without reason expected an ETA for the items…
WTF? The transaction takes a bizarre turn
I continued to ask about ETAs for the remaining transactions. I was also getting a bit concerned by the defensive language of Scott Nangle, who continually spouted the following phrases all designed to elicit sympathy. These include
“I’m a one man band”
“I work 16 hours a day”
“I’ve not had a holiday for 16 years”
“I have to go to a funeral”
“I’m replying to 200 e-mails each day”
The last response is of course pretty dubious, unless they are preexisting complaints about customer service!
What happened next was not what I was expecting. Aftwe all, I had pointed out that I was an ideal customer, for the business!
I received an e-mail saying he’d refund charges for items not surplied and wanted bank details to send refunds. This is a bit odd as normally a company would do a reversal on charges.
Death of 1000 cuts?
This whole process was now taking a huge amount of time and I pointed out that I would still accept delivery of the items that he still showed as being available on his site! As with all communications, everything took forever. I received the first refund, but two were still outstanding. I decided that I needed to push for a deadline, especially as all online reviews suggested that Scott Nangle would delay and delay and delay any responses and refunds. I looked into Amex dispute policy and with that in mind detailed a reponse with this in mind.
Is this partial refund policy a deliberate strategy?
For the last transaction I was surprised to see a random partial figure refunded, leaving a balance of around 29 pounds. I suspect after all these interactions most customers would simply write off this amount that was around 10% of the total order. Having slept on this issue, it occurred to me that this may be a deliberate policy and if Scott was doing this on a mass scale, he’d be doing pretty well financially and I didn’t want to encourage this behaviour. With that in mind I have set up an Amex dispute in respect of the final refund. We’ll see what follows…
Final advice for anyone dealing with SNVINYL
Here’s the lesson if you deal with this company
Always use credit cards for transactions and insist on ETA’s for items. Clearly highlight that you expect SNVINYL to stick to their own terms of business. Keep communications concise and on point highlighting that all you expect from SNVINYL is to actually stick to what they promise. Personally, I have no confidence in any of Scott Nangle’s responses and can’t afford to spend hours seeing answers to simple questions. Its a shame as we’d have done a ton of business. Ultimately I don’t expect his business to survive as I’ve never seen so many negative reviews online…
CAVEAT EMPTOR!
STOP PRESS July 6th 2024
Amex just refunded the full amount of the last transaction. Its not just about the income, but an action taken to warn off this company dealing with future customers in this manner,