ComplaintsforFairytale Brownies

• Initial Complaint

  12/28/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Delivery Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Fairytale Brownies charged me three times the amount of the order I placed, and overcharged my account. This company engages in fraudulent behaviors by overcharging their customer base. I called and spoke with ****** and ****** who both assured me the overcharges would be refunded, but that has not happened after a week.

  

  Business response

  06/14/2024

  
  I spoke to the customer on 12/27, where she was requesting a refund. I initially let her know the order had shipped and we could not refund her, at which point she claimed she didnt care and wed charged her double. I then noticed she had paid via PayPal; I let her know this wasnt the case and explained that PayPal will at times put an authorization hold on the account for the total amount, but once the actual charge hits once the product has left our bakery, the authorization hold generally falls off. I suggested she contact PayPal to help rectify this issue, and she claimed she had it in writing that ****** said they were not at fault, and she began to demand to speak with the head of accounting. I let her know this wasnt possible (our accounting department is not customer facing) let her know that I would get with accounting, and should we find that there was an error on our end, we would initiate a refund and let her know, but we needed to do our due diligence prior to refunding anything.
  
  After the call, I saw that a callback request had been sent to ****** from customer service earlier that morning, so I reached out to her, and she let me know shed communicated basically the same thing I had, and she let me know she had already reached out to accounting. What will follow is what we found out through communication with our accounting team:
  
  Timing of Contact and Chargebacks: The customer reached out to us on December 27th, a day after she initiated chargebacks. She requested a refund while PayPal had already initiated the process (we show that she voided a charge of $107.70 on the 26th). Additionally, she alleged a double charge, which we confirmed wasn't the case. Instead, there was likely an authorization hold by PayPal, a fact we communicated to her during our conversation on the 27th.
  
  Delivery Guarantee and Order Placement: When her claim of duplicate charges didnt gain traction, she then requested a refund by claiming our website guaranteed delivery before Christmas, despite placing her order at 10:55 PM on 12/23. We disputed this claim based on the timing of her order placement and what was on our website at the time the order was placed.
  
  Resolution with PayPal:  ****** received an email on 12/29/2023 from our accounting team who had worked with PayPal to investigate this issue, and at that point we were made aware that the customer had multiple authorization holds due to creating multiple accounts. ****** mistakenly placed individual AND combined authorization holds stemming from an error on their end, leading to what looked like a double charge. Accounting also let us know that PayPal confirmed the completion of charges and let us know that PayPal had removed the authorization holds. However, there was still nothing that could be done on our end regarding a refund, since again, the customer had initiated chargebacks on the 26th, preceding her contact with us for a refund. This was completed and the money from the chargebacks was back in the customers account by January 4th per PayPal.
  
  Once these facts were made known to us, we proceeded to communicate our findings and the stance that, given the initiated chargebacks, we would not issue a refund given that they had already begun the process. We emphasized the importance of future communications being in writing for clarity and to prevent further confusion./
  Due to her escalating grievances and confrontational interactions, as well as a history of problematic demandssuch as claiming a lost order and requesting a reship, then demanding a refund after receiving the reshipped product in previous yearswe suggested via email that she might find better service with another company. She did not respond to this suggestion.
  
  As to resolution, the customer did end up getting their money back through the chargebacks they initiated prior to reaching out to our service team. PayPal also confirmed that the issue did not stem from an error on Fairytale Brownies, but an issue on their end that stemmed from the customer creating multiple accounts on our website, and these were resolved within 48 hours of their contact with us.
  
  We regret that the customer had a negative experience, but I believe that the facts show that Fairytale Brownies did everything we could despite the issue not being something that was created by us, and still managed resolution in a timely manner.
  
  *****************************
  Sales and Service Team Leader

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