On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 04:38:27 GMT, Sydney Hoeltzli wrote:
Which reminds me, I used my AOPA Mastercard, so I should take this up
with AOPA for whatever good that will do...
Morris (not so naive to believe it would actually do any good...)

Morris, I'm confused, are you saying that writing the Mastercard
people won't do you any good? If you feel you've been billed for

I'm saying I should persue it with AOPA, since AOPA advertizes Sporty's.
And Sporty's takes AOPA membership numbers for a discount. Since my
dissatisfaction fell on deaf ears at Sporty's, maybe AOPA is another
avenue to get Sporty's attention. I just don't think it'll really
accomplish anything.

a service you didn't receive (overnight shipping of charts which
were out of stock). Draft a letter disputing the charge. Then

From my perspective, that's what happened. From their perspective,
I made a rush order that they could only partially fulfill. For me,
the rush was the charts. They rushed an IFR hood I could get anywhere,
anytime.

I think they screwed up. I've already cancelled the back-ordered
charts. When the hood arrives I will send it back to them and they
will issue a refund according to their policy. We'll probably argue
over who should be responsible for the return shipping (I say it was
their error; based on my conversation with them about the shipping,
they'll probably insist that they shipped what I asked for), but they
will issue the refund according to their policy. That will be the end
of that and I will never order from Sporty's again.

What I'm annoyed about is them sending the hood overnight and billing
me for the premium delivery. The extra $20 or so for the shipping
is a small irritation in the grand scheme of things, but I'm not
willing to pay it for something that isn't a rush. The rush was for
the charts, which they could not deliver on.

The fact that they can't deliver the charts on time, while annoying
in itself, is not something I can blame them for. It's clearly
beyond their control. Fine. In that case, it's no longer a rush,
but I want the charts anyway when they do arrive.

If they had any business sense, they'd eat the cost of the rush
shipping for the hood, and send me the back-ordered charts regular
delivery when they do arrive (assuming I didn't find the charts needed
for the weekend flight elsewhere). They'd have retained a customer
instead of a ****ed-off ex-customer. Even issuing an in-store credit
to cut their losses would've left me satisfied.

The only leverage I have in this situation is their desire for retain
the goodwill of a customer, or my bitching about it in public. They're
not interested in the former, so I'm willing to post my complaint here.

make an adjustment now, instead. Let them know that people on the
internet are waiting to see how they respond. I was about to order
a couple of things from Sporty's actually but I can live without
them or go elsewhere.

I appreciate that.

I realize this is petty in the grand scheme of things. Every once
of these really petty things sets me off way out of proportion.
Mostly it's the cumultive irritation of all the other ignored petty
irritations of life. Not to mention the major irritations that I
can do nothing about...

My spleen is sufficiently vented for the moment.


Good luck,

Thanks. I'm going to try to beg/borrow/steal a CFS for Sunday and
forego the IAPs.

Thanks to everyone for the alternate source suggestions.


Morris