Blog - Awful online shopping experience - Owl's Lab (New York)

June 27
We placed an order online with Owl's Lab, a fashion shop located in NYC. The item in question was priced close to $400 USD after a discount from some sale they were having, and came just over $400 including taxes and shipping. The order was paid for using PayPal as offered on their web site.

July 2
The order was still marked as pending, no news from the shop. We sent an email asking when it would ship, and got a quick reply from shop manager Alex saying that it was out of stock and that it would take up to 2 weeks for the PayPal refund to be completed, for a reason that remains unknown as PayPal has no such policy as to block refunds. This would be the last email we got from them.

July 9
It had been about 2 weeks since the order was placed, no refund in sight. We sent another email asking them to hurry with that refund.

July 13
Patience is long gone, I opened a dispute ticket in PayPal's Resolution Center, listing all details I had at hand. No reply from seller.

July 15
I called the shop! I believe I spoke to Alex, who knew of our order's status as soon as I stated a name. She said that she had tried refunding but that PayPal wouldn't let her..!? She blamed the fact that I had opened a dispute, while I believe that this should make it even easier for them to refund.
Then I posted a message in the PayPal dispute, cut & pasting the steps to refund from PayPal's help. No reply. After a whole business day waiting, I emailed again and asked to email us about the status, if they had tried, what had happened... Nothing!
I even tracked down owner Ashley Thompson on Twitter (she was posting about sales on their web site...) and sent messages hoping to get some attention.

July 17
I called the shop again! I talked with friendlier Siana who apologized and said this was unusual. Unfortunately she was unable to help me directly, she needed to talk with the absent manager (Alex) or owner (Ashley Thompson) first, who weren't at the shop. She said she couldn't call me back long distance so I offered to call again 30 minutes later to know the result.
I called again 30 minutes later, just to find out that the manager said they had tried refunding me but PayPal wouldn't let them. She told me they would try again during that Friday or the next Monday, when the manager is present. I told her that it was important that they at least got back to us by email, because I can't keep calling like this. She agreed, or so it seemed.

July 19
I posted again a message on the PayPal dispute to remind them that they had to refund or email on Monday (which they didn't, sorry for the spoilers), or I would escalate to a claim at PayPal. I put a link to PayPal's contact us page that contains their phone number, so that they can call them easily if they're really unable to find the refund link...

July 20
I wrote some last details in a message on the PayPal dispute, and escalated it to a claim.

The claim process at PayPal works so that they first give the seller 10 days to either refund (I'm sure there's a huge refund button 2 clicks away whenever they login to PayPal) or say something. I had even contacted PayPal's customer service and they assured me that the refund link would be obvious. Owl's Lab did absolutely nothing. Only once the 10 days were over (July 31), I finally got the funds back in my account.

The scary thing though, is that if the seller would have taken the funds out of their PayPal account meanwhile, I could not have got all of my money back. As a customer I was left not knowing for a whole month whether I'd ever get my $400 back. That's just crap customer service.

Owl's Lab may be an ok shop in real life, but on the web it can be the worst online shopping experience ever. I'm an experienced online shopper, and I've never seen anything like this.

If you're thinking of buying something at Owl's Lab, think again and buy elsewhere, or if you really have to buy from them then go directly to the shop. You don't want to run after them once your money will be in their hands.

Keywords: Problem, trouble, owlslab.com, owlslab, trust, trustworthy