I agree with your general philosophies on the subject. I was quick to point out to some people several weeks back that disputing payments and charging back payments because items were being held with HK post amounted to stealing, more or less.
However, it appears that FastTech (or at least one of their agents) was convincing people to drop their payment disputes in exchange for promised refunds. Then, they were reneging on the refunds and refusing after the customer complied and cancelled the paypal dispute. Once it's closed, you can't re-open the dispute with paypal... yet other reason to hate paypal and avoid it whenever possible.
I can see both sides of the mess, but there is enough blame to go around.
Why should FastTech, who paid for that gear and shipped it as promised, get stuck with the total loss? They held up their end of the bargain, right? Generally speaking, this would be my honest opinion on the subject and has been for a long time.
But then again, not everyone is like us and reads stupid vaping forums all the time. I would venture a guess that most of their customers have no clue that there are shipping restrictions. Knowing that, FastTech is shipping prohibited items that they know stand the risk of getting nabbed and sent back... or held hostage for months (as is the case in quite a few instances) by HK Post. You and I know better and we know the risks, but your average Fasttech customer probably does not.
Seriously, you cannot expect all of your customers to go read your forums before ordering. AND, promising something like a refund and going back on your word is extremely bad for business. In order to protect just THEMSELVES, FastTech MUST change it's shipping policies and methods, and it needs to be embedded in the description of every affected item, AND it needs to be tagged in such a manner that does not allow you to place an order and use the wrong shipping options. Heck, as far as I know, they don't even HAVE a shipping method for items prohibited on air service.
Don't get me wrong, I think FastTech is a good company overall and I think that if you look at the overall picture, they are a customer oriented business that tries to do the right thing... that is, until it affects sales in a negative manner. They are more than willing to break the rules in order to sell product and keep things moving.
I do believe that eventually, this whole shipping thing will be scaled back... I mean, this HAS to be hurting commerce. The Chinese aren't even following the IATA guidelines that ALLOW shipping batteries, it just has to be done properly and within their guidelines. It's unlike them to go over the top like this, they normally play the game in just the opposite manner and ignore anything that gets in the way of profiting.
Once my credit card is paid off again, I will in all likelihood order more stuff from FastTech and I'm hoping by then, this will all have blown over. If not, then I guess I'll have to go back to paying too much from US vendors.
And I think we all have to admit that if nothing else, FastTech just may be responsible in a large way for the downward trend we see in pricing, even from the US vendors... at least I like to think they have been a huge influence on the retail market.
