My world...

I posted a tweet a few days ago regarding my experience with TwelveSouth. I’ve had people asking me “What happened?” and though instead of trying to summarize it in 140 characters I’d write a quick blog to share my “2 cents” on the customer service principle. Before I dive in I should say that this is my experience and I’m sure there are other stories of successful dealings with them I’m just merely sharing mine. So it all started when I saw the BookBook for iPhone4 back in mid July. I though immediately, “I GOTTA HAVE IT”. I do own other TwelveSouth products but none of which I bought online. So when the ordering was available for the BookBook for iPhone4 I bought it right away. On their website there were three shipping options to choose from regarding she you would receive it, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. I placed my order on a Tuesday night and chose the Thursday option which cost an extra $14. My expected arrival day was Thursday and after checking the shipping details on UPS the next day it said I would have the item by Friday. Now that’s the first mess up. Not a big deal by any standard but I’m a man of principle. If you offer shipping options with arrival dates and have the customer pay to have it by that day they paid for they should have it on that day. So I emailed them and after a couple days I got a reply apologizing and they refunded me my shipping of $14. Now once I got the iPhone4 case on Friday I opened it and was excited to set it up. After having it out of the packaging for about 1 minute I noticed it was going back to them immediately. The part of the case where the iPhone4 slides into has a little strap that looks like it snaps, clips or it’s a magnet to SECURE your iPhone4 however that’s not the case. It simply folds over. Now why would you build a case that costs $60 that doesn’t offer any protection from your iPhone4 from slipping out? I was so disappointed. I went to Twitter to vent and one of the founders of TwelveSouth replied to my tweet stating something to the effect of it was secure and I shouldn’t worry so I tried it out. I put my iPhone4 in the case, shook it three times and low and behold the iPhone4 was resting on my couch. Slipped out. So I contacted them telling them I was completely disappointed in their product and wanted a full refund. The lady at the number I called at TwelveSouth said I could ship it back and they would issue me a full refund. I asked her about a return label. She stated they don’t offer return labels. So I have to pay out of my pocket to ship THEIR item back that in my opinion was poorly built? Great business model right? So on my lunch break the next day after speaking to her I spent 20 minutes waiting in line at my local UPS office and a total of about $12 for the box I had to buy and shipping costs to ship their case back. That was around August 5th. To this day (August 15th) I haven’t received my refund. Now I know I will be getting my refund it’s just that there seems to be no sense of urgency to give a customer their money back after they already have their item back. Quite a circle of frustration and to top it all off I essentially paid $12 to test out one of their cases. This could have easily been resolved by them setting up an account with UPS to print return labels in the off chance just maybe a customer wanted to return one of their products. I imagine their a large enough company to do so but I don’t know their finances so I’ll just leave that one alone. Bottom line is if you REALLY, REALLY want the case they sell for your iPhone4 make sure you take extra measures to avoid it slipping out. I would suggest you take your $60 and go elsewhere. Taking that advice just might save you the $12 “checkout our case and see if you wanna keep it” expense. I should also note this is in no way just about the money. I could careless about the $12, shipping costs and so on but rather the principle behind it. Thanks for reading. Happy iPhone4 case searching. :)

- Kyle