Of course it's my fault for not keeping track of my money.
I'm saying Matty is terrible at what they do. A few sentences in their billing statement would have saved me a lot of headache and potentially a lot of money.
"All orders will be charged at time of shipment."
"You may see an extra charge from us on your bank statement. Please know this is a pre-authorization charge that will be credited in 3 to 5 business days."
"This item is pre-order only, and will ship on December 12."
I guess that's too much to expect? Maybe I'm spoiled by people that actually know what they are doing, and should expect this kind of thing? My bad.
I order things online all the time. Constantly. I've ordered 95% of my christmas on Amazon and ThinkGeek and ToysRUs.com and PerpetualKid and ebay, and when I place my order I know exactly what to expect. I click add to cart, check out, select payment and shipping options, click submit then magically about a day or so later I see charges on my account and then the items ship out. These internets is usually pretty easy to use, I reckon. My orders and charges are easy to keep track of and I've honestly had no problems at all with any of them.
So why can't Mattel's official toystore do the same? It doesn't appear to be that hard. Why exactly has every order I've ever placed with them either been:
The wrong item delivered.
or:
A damaged item because it was packaged poorly.
or:
Delayed for weeks with no coherent or useful response from customer service.
or:
Canceled because it's actually out of stock.
or:
Taken over 2 weeks to arrive, though shipping was $8 for an item that weighs less than a pound and costs $14 and should have been here in 3 days.
Matty just... sucks. In reference to the overdraft issues I (may) be experiencing, it most certainly is MY fault because I should have kept a better track of MY money. My problem is they don't make it any easier for someone who just wants to make an order and be done with it. Their incompetence in other areas, plus their less-than user-friendly nature makes me want to avoid them if at all possible and my GOD their website drives me nuts.
About the pre-auth thing again:
I never noticed pre-auths like this on other things I've ordered from Matty (note, I said “I never noticed” which doesn’t mean, “they don’t exist”). I've never PRE-ORDERED, though, but I didn't really consider this a pre-order.
I thought I placed an order that would ship in approximately 11 days, give or take a few.
It crossed my mind that they may charge at time of shipment, which is what inspired me to check the account in the first place, but as I’ve said the payment amount was the exact price of the order, it didn’t say pre-auth and was exactly what Matty said the payment would say (“ONLINE PURCHASE TO DRI*MATTYCOLLECTOR” followed by price and something like, “TOYS & HOBBIES”). Pre-Auths with my bank usually show up at just that, “PRE-AUTH BP GAS $1.00” or something.
Of all the purchases I’ve made online this year, my online bank statement has never shown any duplicate charges and I’ve never seen any charges vanish. I understand how pre-auth works, and many years ago I worked customer service for an online retailer and dealt with them all the time.
In the past few days I've done a lot of shopping, bought my girlfriend a (used) car and about 3 days ago made the mistake of doing some additional last minute shopping. I was at the store, checked my account balance on my phone and it looked like I had plenty to cover it. Balance seemed high but I was figured there were some bills that maybe hadn't posted (they had) and gas fill-ups that usually take a few days (this time they didn't) and a few additional pending transactions. I figured I could spare it and still have enough to make it until the post-christmas whopper of a check comes out (with the holiday pay, OT, delayed- bonus, etc) . I didn’t dwell on it too long, gave it a quick glance, did some quick bad math and moved on. I didn't, however, take into consideration that my large purchase of PKE Meters from 2 weeks ago had been credited. That (plus a few other purchases that night) put my pre-Christmas bank account balance at an excruciating and very uncommon low of just a little below $500, where it will be for about 2 weeks until payday. When I get a chance I'm going to have to go to CoinStar or something and make a deposit in the bank to cover the difference. That is, if they don’t re-take my payment first.
This time, from my experiences with the way my bank posts things and experiences with other retailers and even Matty, I feel I had no real reason to suspect it was a pre-auth charge and ended up spending too much on christmas. It would have helped if Matty would just cover their bases and spend some time on customer service and made it all clear, but I should have known better to expect that from them.
I also think they should have ran this pre-order (and labeled it as such) in August and September. They should have announced a definite date for shipping sometime in November so everyone would get it in time for the holidays. Or waited until January.
Instead they deny the pre-order option. They post it for sale on the 1st of December obviously to capitalize on the holiday rush, though they know they probably won't go out in time. They have a, "eh, it'll probably be out sometime in December, I guess" attitude about it that is causing some people to freak out.
