Woodpellets.com Order that went wrong!! Pics included

[LIpelletpig]

LONG POST but an Important READ!!



The final outcome to this issue has not been resolved as of today. That being said I was assured that it will have some resolution. What that might be I have no clue but I am not a happy woopellets.com customer. I am not a newbie! I consider myself a fairly knowledgable pellet burner and with reasonable technical knowledge I can basically fix anything on my stove. That being said I have been purchasing my pellets for the past few years locally and I must admit I have a taste of the finer pellet. Barefoot and Okanagon are my first choices. I have no problem paying the premium price knowing I am getting a quality pellet. Well as we all know pellet prices here on Long Island have skyrocketed especially for the SUPER premium pellet. Not going to pay $360 per ton. So I decided to look at woodpellets.com and I noticed they were offering an early buy for the Pacific Softwoods from Cleanfire. I did happen to try a few bags of these this past season from a friend and I considered them to be very close to Okanagon. I said the price is right and the shipping charge is reasonable, so that I would be saving a good amount of money if I put my order in early.

I get a call last week to setup delivery of the two tons of Cleanfires and all is smooth I give them a window that I'll be available this past Tuesday May 15th. That I can accept delivery. Now here is when the situation becomes complicated. If you live in the NE this past week was a RAINY one! Especially Tuesday. I have a unique situation in that I store my pellets in a public storage facility (NO I don't pay for the unit) in a basement unit and during the burning season I usually pick-up a two week supply of pellets and store at the the house. I can really only only about a ton at the house and I am already full from this past season with leftovers. Since I knew the rain was approaching and they were calling for about 2+ inches here in NY I tried to postpone the delivery to Wednesday and hope it would be drier. Well I was told no they cannot it is set in stone and it's to late to change. I was assured the pellets are wrapped up very well and rain should have no effect. (All you pellet heads stop chuckling) You can pretty much tell the rest of the story yourselves. It turns out I get delayed on Tuesday because of traffic accident that had a road closed and I was diverted another route which delayed me 30 minutes and I could accept the delivery. I spoke to woodpellets.com and they were very understanding but I was concerned since the pellets were going to sit in the rain for the next 24hrs on the back of the delivery truck.

Next morning the delivery truck was at the storage unit at 8am and had to close down one lane of traffic on a fairly busy road near the train station. So the delivery guy unloads the pellets quickly drops them in the loading bay at the storage facility and off he goes. I then realize one of the pallets has a rip on the top of the outer and inner covering. The rip was covered with clear tape showing that there was an attempt to not let any pellets get ruined. With one bag visibly ripped straight down the middle. Well in order to really inspect the pellets I needed to uncover all the pellets and investigate. It was not looking good. See pictures. I immediately called Woodpellets.com and was told they would call me back since it was to early for the quality assurance team to take my call. I had no choice I was not going to cost myself a day of work waiting for a call so I had to clear the entrance of the loading dock at the storage facility so others can enter and exit. I kept my cellphone in hand and waited for the call as I unloaded 2 tons of pellets down to the basement storage unit. I discover a few bags that have obvious damage and are leaking pellets. Some bags are moooosh and weigh a ton. Some bags literally have no sign of rips but are literally soaked. The fine little holes on top of these bags let water in!! I could basically say the entire ton was ruined! There is no way to tell if the bags are good or not without opening every bag. As you can imagine VERY FRUSTRATED and I was moving quickly to get to work and not lose a day of pay and add that to the cost of the pellets! Every bag on the pallet was soaked. Literally wet and dripping and I had to dry every bag off before I stacked them not knowing if they were good or not.

I finally did get a call from woodpellets.com and with my surprise they tell me this does occur and that I should of refused delivery! Yeah OK. Little late now the contracted delivery service was gone so fast it was impossible to try to flag him down after inspection. Remember he needed to open the road up and let the traffic flow start again. I had no choice but to stack them and go to work. So the representative states they will come down from New Hampshire and inspect the bags and make a determination on what the company will do for me! I said really! So my word and the pictures I can send you aren't good enough. Nope! I laughed and I said OK. Then I was questioned how long have I been burning pellets? (Why is this important?) I said its going to be very difficult to determine what is good vs. bad since the bags are piled up 8-9 feet high. I was assured I would have a resolution. I shook my head in disbelief. As you can imagine my credit card was billed for the full amount of the two tons of pellets. I now am in a wait and see situation and I am forced to pay the full amount no matter what happens. I said come get your pellets. I don't want them. I was told not an option since I opened the packaging. Not good customer service in my own opinion. Let's see what they come up with? I will update the forum when new information comes along. I am extremely frustrated at this point and probably will never recommend woodpellets.com. It's still early so stay tuned!!

Pictures show obvious signs of damage and wet pellets. YES, the 4x4 skid picture has wood pellets literally in mush underneath and between the slats of the pallet. Its horrific! Live and Learn...

 

[smoke show]

Why are all the bags split on the seam? Poor packaging?

I've burned lots of pellets stored outside and never seen anything like that.

Hope they make it right for their sake and yours.

 

[mepellet]

I just recently took delivery from a local company who had great reviews on here. I was not aware that they offered Saturday deliveries and since I have a normal M-F job and my wife is home on Wednesdays I scheduled the delivery for a Wednesday. When I got home, the pallets looked wet between the strecth wrap and the big bag they put over the ton of pellets on the pallet. A few days went by until I could start bringing the pellets to the basement. I found one of the pallets to have a lot of water under the big bag and half of of the bags of pellets needed to be dried off. There doesn't appear to be any damage to the pellets however. They didn't feel heavier at least. Next time, I will ask for a Saturday delivery and unwrap the pallets and take the bag off of each pallet before they leave.

Your situation looks worse than mine did. I am interested in hearing your outcome.

 

[smwilliamson]

I wouldn't sweat it. wp.com is a great company to deal with. If nothing ever went wrong with pellet deliveries, everybody would be selling and delivering pellets. Keep us posted.

 

[DexterDay]

Wow... I hope they do good and replace the damaged product.

 

[heat seeker]

If you get no satisfaction, you can dispute the charge on your credit card, and the CC company will investigate. If it's not made right, they will charge back the seller. I have had to do this a couple of times over the years. It's one big advantage of paying by credit card.

 

[ducker]

I feel your pain.. Having gone through issues with companies not delivering product within the time frame they have stated.

(ps. add some space in your opening post and it would be a lot easier to read)

I'm looking forward to hearing how they resolve the situation.

 

[LIpelletpig]

No doubt the packaging is poor. That's probably what led to the increase in pellets getting ruined and it will be very hard to tell if all the bags were effected since they will need to be opened.

 

[smwilliamson]

Pellet bags have holes in them so the air can escape when they are stacked without bursting. Don't fret it man. They will work out something. If anyone ever delivered something like that to my house, I would want it to be WP.com. Rest assured. Stuff happens. Considering the volume they deliver...there are relatively very few returns such as this.

 

[LIpelletpig]

Yes I couldn't agree more. If it was a fly-by-night operation it sure wouldn't sit comfortable with me. The fact that there is no Quality Control at the delivery level makes me a little concerned for a reputable company. The delivery was made by a sub-contracted lumber yard that doesn't sell or market wood pellets. They just pick-up from a distribution center and deliver. I would of imagined they would of inspected the pellets and the condition before delivery. I guess its no skin off there back since they get paid to deliver no matter what the condition is of the pellets. As a reputable company at WP.com I really thought it would of been better Quality Control. I'm optimistic so we'll wait and see. Thanks for all the encouraging words.

 

[jackbean53]

i would contact the cc co. asap so they are aware you have a problem now
just in case this isn"t resolved

 

[Salty]

Don't contact the cc company! It costs a merchant $50 out of pocket with NO RECOURSE! Call the merchant and get it worked out. You wouldnt like getting ripped off for $50

Save the cc call if they refuse to fix it.

 

[heat seeker]

Does the cc co. charge the seller $50 right away, just because there might be a problem? If that's so, it doesn't seem right to me.

 

[aaronnoel]

I orded pellets from woodpellets.com once, and they were delivered on a nice weather day. When I went to bring them into my basement I noticed almost the same looking pellets as the O.P. I called W.P.com quickly and those pellets sat in my carport for 4 months maybe longer with me calling every 2 weeks to find out when they were going to be switched out. The good thing about that was that the next year I found BT pellets and ordered my stash from them, when they delivered there first order, one of the tons was slashed on the in side of wrap leaving 9 bags damaged, I called them and with in 3 days they replaced the damaged bags and gave me 5 FREE bags, and I will only buy from them now, a nice local company that understands how to treat there clients the right way. I still get e-mails and post cards from W.P.com, but I will never use them again after they wasted a whole summer dragging there feet only to do the right thing 4 or 5 months later, they should have just made the switch out right away and I would have still been buying 3 or 4 tons a year, there loss.

 

[bill3rail]

Don't contact the cc company! It costs a merchant $50 out of pocket with NO RECOURSE! Call the merchant and get it worked out. You wouldnt like getting ripped off for $50

Save the cc call if they refuse to fix it.

Hello!?!

Why would you NOT call the CC Company to inform them that you have already contacted the company?

If you are going to be stuck with bad pellets in an area that could possibly be storing good pellets, utilize all avenues of recourse!
Nassau or Suffolk County Consumer Services Bureau...
Better Business Bureau...

If they make good on the sale, no harm no foul.

Bill

 

[Salty]

Nobody is stuck with anything.

If you call your credit card company and complain it is a instant chargeback. Merchant loses the chargeback fee no matter what. Mine is $50, some may have $100 or more.

So if you really want to be a dink then sure call the cc company. Then go to sleep tonite knowing you got someone screwed out of money because you jumped the gun and got a black mark put on their credit. Yes a merchant banking terminal/payment system is the same as any credit card. If you get dinged you lose.

Call the company back and ask for a supervisor, explain politely what happened and ask that they get you new pellets for what was damaged.

Save the cc bs for last resort.

In 20 years I've had 5 chargebacks, 3 were fraudulent....bad on me. Two were people who called their cc company for a $20 order they say they didn't get. I lost on every one. The last two got free merchandise, and I got a $50 ding on my checking acct each time.

 

[WoodPorn]

I too had a bad exp w/WP.com, Last year's 2t delivery came with several rips/gashes, wet bags, and the joy of Carpenter ants...
All said and done I only lost 6 bags and chalked it up to lesson learned. Buy local and p/u myself.
I'll never call them again.

 

[urkiddin]

I too ordered cleanfire softwoods from WP.com this year. The bags look nothing like yours.Mine came in clear bags.First thing i did this year was uncover them to check the bags because last year i ordered the cleanfire hardwoods which came in white bags like yours and i too had a lot of bags with split seams.It was also a rainy day here when they delivered but mine have no sign of being wet.

 

[ducker]

on no resolution yet.

 

[sinnian]

They'll make it right.

I had issues my first season in 2008, which was their first season. I had CleanFire Hardwoods which were too compressed and BROKE 3 Lovejoy steel couplings on my boiler and my boiler guy's unit (traded several bags for him to see himself, after he replaced my Lovejoys). Anyway, this was all before they had a quality assurance dept.

Last year WP calls me (after not having purchased from them since 2008) to see if I wanted to order pellets from them. After telling them my story they got me in contact with Joy, who made right for me what had happened 3 years previous. Even UPS'd 3 different types of pellets for me to try before I committed to anything.

 

[LIpelletpig]

OK WE HAVE AN UPDATE........ I was contacted by WP.com and they have been very cooperative. I advised them to look at Hearth.com and view the pictures I've posted. I too was contacted by the Quality Assurance Dept. and they are working on a resolution. I will let the group know what the outcome is in the near future.

 

[PJPellet]

Glad to hear they are "working on a resolution." I hope everything works out for you and maybe WP.com will learn which people to hire as sub-contractors and which ones not to. Any sub-contractor that I have ever dealt with has given me sub-standard service. Just my experience.

 

[ducker]

Yep... image/perception is killer in any type of sales/delivery/service industry. I mean even if they DO provide a favorable outcome - this thread is enough to deter me away from wanting to buy from them in the future.

 

[kinsmanstoves]

Does the cc co. charge the seller $50 right away, just because there might be a problem? If that's so, it doesn't seem right to me.

Yes they do then they ask the business owner to explain.

Eric

 

[LIpelletpig]

Additional UPDATE......

I was contacted again by the Quality Assurance team which I must say are very customer service oriented. They want to do right by the customer. I am very impressed by the way the entire situation was handled and the response I received from WP.com. The outcome is WP.com is shipping me a free ton of pellets by the end of June. This type of customer service and commitment to doing the right thing will make me recommend this company to others. I'll update the forum again after I receive the replacement ton and the condition.