Boat Trailer Service, 3306 North Military Hwy, Norfolk, Va. 23518 in front of the Norfolk International Airport
C R.
Jan 8, 2013
I would first like to say that when I visited Boat Trailer Service at 3306 N. Military Highway I had a large order of trailer hardware that I needed. The young lady working stopped what she was doing and pulled the order for me. They were out of a couple of things and she gave me the info for a store where I could find the out of stock items. I was glad that I decided to support local small business. I had originally needed to go to Boat Trailer Service because they carried specific U-Bolts for my Load Rite boat trailer but as I checked out their website; their prices turned out to be competitive with big box hardware stores and better than the chain fastener store so I decided to buy everything there (buy local right?). I went to the actual store to save on the very high shipping charges (drove about 20 miles). While I was in the store they mentioned that they had a somewhat strange system in that they were tied to Load Rite's site but also bought fasteners from a chain fastener store. And although the young lady working that day said she had given me 10% off so the prices "matched the website" I really didn't think about what I had spent vs. what I had gotten. I left the shop, dropped by the other store they referred me to and was indeed able to find the item that Boat Trailer Service was out of. I headed home happy. When I got home I thought I may be missing some items I couldn't find in the box, so I pulled out the receipt to make sure I had asked for the right amount. My first catch? A 4 1/2 inch zinc plated bolt for $4.25! Not stainless, zinc plated- 4 bolts for $17.00. That was of course, alarming because I knew two things: Their website priced this bolt at 89 cents and a local big box was right at $1.00. This was by far the worst one but every item that I bought was approximately twice as much as their site advertised. My total had been $97 at the store but when I did the order on the website it came up to be just over $45. If you are like me, you probably are thinking how do you miss the total being twice as much? And I wish I could answer that, I was in a hurry, didn't really think about how much the out of stock items would have been etc. I expected $70 or so for the total so I didn't go crazy when she told me $97. I felt terrible for that because I knew that I was going to cause them some frustration in trying to figure out what happened. They had mentioned they would be closed for the holidays so I contacted them through the "contact us" function of their website; the young lady that helped answered the message. I told her what had happened and she was very helpful and apologetic. She said she didn't know what had happened but if I let her know what the total was she would investigate; she said it would not be a problem to fix. I responded back to her the same day, I sent her a scan of the receipt and a screenshot of my total if I had purchased on the site. She also responded the same day by saying she wasn't sure but thought there was an issue because the hardware was from the chain fastener store and "wasn't on their website." This was a bit confusing to me as it obviously was on their site because that's where I found it. But I was satisfied when she said she would check with her father who was also there the day I was in the store and I assume is the owner. Two days later I had not heard back from them so I sent another e-mail, no response. To be fair, this was December 26-28 so they were probably off work. Six days later on Jan. 2, I sent another e-mail which was answered the same day instructing me to call the store and talk to the father (owner?). Up until now, I had been led to believe that this was a mistake and that they would make it right and I was relatively happy with what they had done so far, but that call was where the real trouble began.As soon as I got on with the father, he was defensive as I explained what had happened. He stated that he had personally told me in front of two other people that the bolts were going to be more expensive than at a big box store. I told him that I was sure he hadn't. If so, I would have bought the items that I could only get there and stopped in at one of 8 or 10 big box stores I passed along the way. If it had said this on the website, I could have ordered the U-bolts directly from Load Rite and driven 2 miles to a big box. He claimed that I called his daughter a liar and was just screaming at me over the phone. Of course, I had not called anyone a liar. He also stated that the fact that the pricing was different was stated on the website, it wasn't.
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