Slow Delivery & Hair-trigger Retaliation
On 7/24/2021, a friend of mine contacted me & asked me to order a RetroTINK 5X-Pro for him, him knowing that I had a PayPal account only for use with my Twitch channel (closing my other account when I closed my eBay account because I got tired of dishonest sellers on that platform). I had to get my credit card set up in PayPal to even make the purchase (seeing as it was only set up for receiving money in the form of tips through Twitch, not set up for payments & I didn't want the money coming directly out of my bank account), but eventually got it set up & made the purchase on the date that my friend indicated at the time indicated (having to get up early as that friend stated that these things sell out fast). While I struggled with their site, I did finally get the purchase to go through at a whopping $313.99 for the purchase of the device, as well as the SCART Adapter.
This friend kept asking me as to whether they had shipped it yet, stating that no, I hadn't received an email of shipment yet. Ultimately I ended up contacting them regarding the slow delivery on 8/10/2021:
After this contact to RetroTINK, I made contact with my friend over Facebook to inform him of the followup made with RetroTINK:
While I was waiting for a response (either from my friend that had me order it or RetroTINK themselves), I started looking online for complaints about RetroTINK, it came as no surprise that the Better Business Bureau was one of the first few search engine results, which had a lengthy complaint about RetroTINK not shipping the item this customer ordered (also a new customer like myself), not replying to his inquiries about the unshipped item & ultimately threatening collections on the item when it was finally shipped (seems the customer didn't close the claim against them when it finally arrived, which is understandable on the part of RetroTINK, but it ultimately shows the personalities of RetroTINK staff in the statement provided by that customer).
I got (what appears to be) an auto-response from RetroTINK roughly 3 hours after the attempted contact regarding the non-delivery of the item, followed by what looks like manual response:
At this point I started typing a new response, trying to be at least semi-polite about it (also pointing out that online statements gave indication that I expected I wouldn't receive a reply, which you'll see later in this review probably would have been the better result):
It was as I was finishing up this response that my friend finally decided to call me about the message I had sent him earlier over Facebook, apparently worried that I had stated to them that I would be filing a claim against them if not delivered. I stated that while I didn't fly off the handle on it, I did in fact state that I was intending on filing a claim if not delivered in a week. I continued to detail the response from RetroTINK to state that it could be shipped as late as the 22nd & I responded that them I was willing to wait until the 23rd before I decided any additional steps would be needed. In either case, I didn't think there was any need for concern because we still had until the 22nd (12 more days from when I made contact) & expected it would be shipped by then, so it was expected to be resolved with plenty of time to spare.
Unfortunately I got another response from RetroTINK shortly after getting off of that call, RetroTINK making the decision to twist the original contact attempt into a "threat" which they used to manipulate the situation & cancel the order without giving any further choice on the matter:
Let's back this up here for a second. Under PayPal policy, filing a claim is the way to go about it when something has been stated as a part of the transaction is not followed through with, so this is the correct method when a company/individual looks like they are not going to deliver on their side of said transaction. RetroTINK chose to escalate the statement into one of being a threat, which in all honesty, I can only see as manipulation to not have to deal with my purchase (which isn't much different than some of the issues I've had with rotten eBay sellers that ultimately lead to my closing my own account so I wouldn't have to deal with those sellers anymore, ironically this same friend being a big part in the decision to close that account due to orders he was running through me, as well as most of the reviews published to the eBay seller blacklist on this site).
The first thing that came to mind was that I shouldn't have attempted to even contact them a second time, but the end of their first manual reply stated, "Please let us know.", this being the result of it (meaning they were intending on refunding the purchase regardless of response, just expecting that a refund was going to be the first thing I would agree to).
The second thing that came to mind was that I would have been better off just filing the claim rather than even trying to contact them; the result would have been the same, the exception being that PayPal would be taking a look at the company when the claim got filed (I can only assume they made some bullshit statement about threats being made when they pushed through the refund through PayPal).
Unfortunately I had to contact back my friend in under 5 minutes of last speaking to him & state that they chose to force-cancel the order. This brought up 2 concerns from my friend as a result of RetroTINK's hair-trigger retaliation:
Whether he would get back in full the money that had already been spent on the item.
Him wanting me to contact them back to see if they would reconsider the original purchase & reverse the refund.
I received the second email 3 minutes later (while still speaking to my friend over the phone) showing the refund had already been issued to PayPal:
The irony in the Note from RetroTINK LLC is that it wasn't a matter of "not being able to server you", it was not serving by choice & manipulative twisting of the words of their customers (likely former after they get hit by something like this) to suit their own selfish agendas.
In any case, I was still on the phone with my friend, repeating myself that it was already done & despite him begging me to speak to them to try & get them to reverse their decision (must've repeated myself around 7 times), I kept stating that no, I wouldn't try to work it out with them (they had already pushed through the refund, it was too late to try & change their minds), that I wouldn't even attempt another purchase from this (so called) company & I had no intentions on doing business with such a hair-triggered company again.
As stated before, it's this type of behavior from sellers on eBay that lead me to closing my account with them, as well as the associated PayPal account when I decided I was dealing with bad sellers on eBay (sticking primarily to Amazon now). Even if I did have an account on this site (I don't believe it was necessary to create one to order from it), I would be looking for a means to close that account through my own means (in all reality, it would've been likely that RetroTINK would have terminated the account anyways with their manipulative business practices).
Eventually my friend gave up trying to talk me into speaking with them on reversing their decision to cancel the order & finally accepted it (realizing he would have to make his own PayPal account & put his account information on file to make the purchase himself when that particular item was in stock again), at least he knew he would be getting back the money he gave me in full once it had cleared my bank (confirming it was the full amount through emails & my PayPal account prior to letting him go on the phone, clearly disappointed in his voice by the end of the call).
I considered contacting RetroTINK back to let them know that if this was their decision, I would be publishing my first experience with their site in a review. I almost had this response to their email completed before I ultimately decided there wasn't any reason in contacting them back again; they had already made their decision, letting them know I intended on publishing a review about it wasn't likely to change it & contacting them again would likely just result in further retaliation (which has already been stated in the complaint that was already made to the BBB, as well as proven in my own experience). Ultimately I felt it was just better to have write the review & publish it once I made certain that the entirety of what we should be getting back was refunded (expecting that if I published the review prior to getting the full refund, it would just result in more retaliation against the pending refund), this was a detail that was going to need to be added to the review anyways if they didn't pay the transaction fee as they stated they would.
My ending statement to this review is that from a first time customer perspective, it's clear I won't ever do any business with this company again & will be avoiding ALL of their products in the future (note that this is not a boycott page, so I am not asking others to join me, only stating my personal perspective & intentions in response to what happened). Additionally, I intend on blocking this domain in uBlock Origin, as well as my firewalls to make sure I don't accidentally go to it again. This first impression shows me that RetroTINK is not a company that is worth putting trust in, therefore I can not trust their products & refuse to purchase them even from other sites (Amazon apparently being another site they sell them on based on my searches for complaints, as stated earlier in this review).
