Poor Eastmall Customer Service

[GraphicsFX]

From reading the problems others have had with Eastmall, I know I am not the only one.

On the plus side:
1. once orders are placed, they arrive quickly
2. prices are inexpensive compared to North American suppliers.

On the downside:

1. Eastmall sells a 901 Riva. For several weeks while my personal supply dwindled I've waited for the new site to include 901 blank carts. No luck. In the past I've had no problem ordering 901 blanks cartridges from them and would assume this would be one item they would have PLENTY of stock on hand. There is no excuse for me holding onto almost a $200 order because something as small and basic as blank carts that go with one of their products is unavailable.

*update: A day after posting here I received an email from Selina informing me 901 blank carts have finally been added and updated to the blank cartridge section of the website.

2. I tried customer support on their "Live" support module of their website. Again no luck. Early morning, afternoon, evenings, weekdays, weekend, makes no difference. It is NOT a live support module. It simply sends a message to them when it is probably easier just emailing from my email address. It's like a prop phone on a movie set. Remove it from the website if it is not in fact "live". Thinking live support is available when it is not just adds to our expectations and subsequent frustration.

3. David lists his Skype contact information to supposedly deal with complaints. I installed Skype for the specific reason of getting a representitive from Eastmall. Again... no luck. He's never on Skype. It's a piece of software I don't use on my computer that serves no purpose.

4. Eastmall should be monitoring their ECF forum posts at least daily. This is obviously not happening since there are days at a time where there are no new posts responding to problems and frustrations people are having.

We've all at one time or another received bottles of leaking ejuice or atomisers out of a pack that don't work or the odd minor messup. I don't even bother with acknowledging these and just chalk it up as a problem to expect. I hope the efforts Eastmall have made to improve their service begin to take effect and ordering becomes less of an effort.

 

[ellanceo]

I agree, Eastmall has a lot of work to do to get them back to the "best customer service" personal title I gave them when I first started with e-cigs.

David has thankfully requested that I PM regarding my issues, and I expect that to be resolved. However, I completely sympathize with this thread, as I experienced the same issue. Obviously this has not been resolved as this was posted 3 days ago, still no response.

I greatly suggest to Eastmall that they either start hiring more customer service representatives, or just start getting more on the ball. Eastmall is the cheapest provider I have found, with great products, but if the customer service is lacking, that will hurt the company way more than the prices and products ever will.

Hopefully they get these things resolved, I really don't want to find another provider.

 

[EMRocks]

From reading the problems others have had with Eastmall, I know I am not the only one.

On the plus side:
1. once orders are placed, they arrive quickly
2. prices are inexpensive compared to North American suppliers.

On the downside:

1. Eastmall sells a 901 Riva. For several weeks while my personal supply dwindled I've waited for the new site to include 901 blank carts. No luck. In the past I've had no problem ordering 901 blanks cartridges from them and would assume this would be one item they would have PLENTY of stock on hand. There is no excuse for me holding onto almost a $200 order because something as small and basic as blank carts that go with one of their products is unavailable.

*update: A day after posting here I received an email from Selina informing me 901 blank carts have finally been added and updated to the blank cartridge section of the website.

As you pointed out, these are on the site now.

2. I tried customer support on their "Live" support module of their website. Again no luck. Early morning, afternoon, evenings, weekdays, weekend, makes no difference. It is NOT a live support module. It simply sends a message to them when it is probably easier just emailing from my email address. It's like a prop phone on a movie set. Remove it from the website if it is not in fact "live". Thinking live support is available when it is not just adds to our expectations and subsequent frustration.

It works as a live support module when someone is on, and asks the user to leave a message if no one is online. It's not a fake prop. David and Selina are usually on it when they are online, which unfortunately is Chinese time. You can usually find them on Sunday through Thursday between the hours of 9:00 pm and 5:00 am Eastern Standard time (New York), which is M-F 9:00 am - 5:00 pm their time (they are 12 hours ahead). The exception is when they are on lunch break for an hour at around midnight EST.

I realize this isn't ideal for the North American consumers, and David has said on more than one occasion that he plans to hire someone in the USA to help with support via live chat, email, and forums during normal business hours in the North America. This will more than likely happen after the Chinese New Year in February.

3. David lists his Skype contact information to supposedly deal with complaints. I installed Skype for the specific reason of getting a representitive from Eastmall. Again... no luck. He's never on Skype. It's a piece of software I don't use on my computer that serves no purpose.

He's always on Skype between the days and hours listed above. I know, because he calls me every night at 9:00 and keeps me on voice chat for my entire shift (9p - 5a, Sun - Thurs in Ohio).

4. Eastmall should be monitoring their ECF forum posts at least daily. This is obviously not happening since there are days at a time where there are no new posts responding to problems and frustrations people are having.

We don't currently have an official forum representative since Di's departure last month. I've been trying to do it just to help out, but I have so much to do on the website that I don't always have time to respond to everything every day. I'm also not trained in answering technical questions about products, and am not a product support person. Hopefully this will be solved when my answer to #2 above comes to fruition.

Believe me, Eastmall is VERY concerned and aware of their customer service slipping - the problem is, they are under staffed in the customer service department at the moment and not quite sure what the best answer is right now. Hiring and training new people to efficiently handle support, negotiating wages, and working out tax laws and such in the USA isn't an overnight task (I am a salaried contractor and will be filing a 1099, but a customer sevice rep will be hourly and need to do a W2, and we need to find out the whole process for doing this (Eastmall must match social security, automatically deduct state and federal taxes, etc., etc., and no one here is a specialist in how to do all of this properly and legally. They need to find an accountant and a lawyer first)).

We've all at one time or another received bottles of leaking ejuice or atomisers out of a pack that don't work or the odd minor messup. I don't even bother with acknowledging these and just chalk it up as a problem to expect. I hope the efforts Eastmall have made to improve their service begin to take effect and ordering becomes less of an effort.

As I said, in February or March, after the Chinese New Year, expect some MAJOR changes and additions to customer service and otherwise. I can't talk too much about the details because there are some things planned that may not happen, but customer service is a major concern of theirs and is a topic of conversation almost daily. Right now, we are in the talking and planning phases of trying to roll out a lot of new things in this area. Some of it will happen, some of it might not, but rest assured there will be at least one North American rep soon who will be working something like 9am to 5pm EST.

CS isn't something they are just ignoring or blowing off, they're just under staffed and in the process of revamping everything, but not before some research and strategic planning. If they're going to revamp CS, they want to do it right, and not just hire some schmoes off the street in China with no training, but the USA has laws and regulations for hiring and payroll, and this all needs to be worked out before they inadvertently jump into anything illegally.

 

[ellanceo]

I have since had my issue resolved with Eastmall, and as EMRocks explained, there are many factors on their end that have to be considered when experiencing these issues, I completely understand.

Just gotta be patient, and this company will always be there to help out, but I am very excited to see the new changes in February!

 

[cerver7]

i hope the new changes fix the site issues. I can't order something that appears to be in stock, the site keeps crashing to a random error page talking about the site using some cloud format and it would not let me add two different types of bottle, just with different color caps. I decided to not order from them and to order from a more user friendly non-error creating site. In the future, if they fix the issues, i will give them a shot.

 

[EMRocks]

i hope the new changes fix the site issues. I can't order something that appears to be in stock, the site keeps crashing to a random error page talking about the site using some cloud format and it would not let me add two different types of bottle, just with different color caps. I decided to not order from them and to order from a more user friendly non-error creating site. In the future, if they fix the issues, i will give them a shot.

Cloudflare is our content delivery network (CDN), and we've been having intermittent issues with them for the past couple weeks. I'm going to send them an email and see if they can help us troubleshoot the problem, otherwise we'll probably move to a different provider.

Not sure what you mean by 2 different types of bottles. Each type of bottle is a separate product listing, if you are required to choose a cap color, clicking "Add to Cart" will take you to the product page where you will have to choose a color before it can be added. Once you add it, you can always go back and add another product.

 

[cerver7]

The bottle thing. It would allow an add of say a pack of bottles with blue caps. Then I continue shopping and add a pack of bottles with white caps and it just makes the blue bottles quantity of 2. Seems that the cart can not separate the bottles by color. Same SKU maybe?

 

[EMRocks]

The bottle thing. It would allow an add of say a pack of bottles with blue caps. Then I continue shopping and add a pack of bottles with white caps and it just makes the blue bottles quantity of 2. Seems that the cart can not separate the bottles by color. Same SKU maybe?

Nope, it'll change the qty to 2, but when you go to check out, you should see something that says:

2 x Needle cap bottles
- 1 x cap color: blue
- 1 x cap color: white

If you don't see that, don't worry, they do see it in the shipping department from the invoice on the back end.