Mainer gets assistance dealing with company ‘from away’

A Lewiston consumer, Mrs. H., ordered a mock fur coat from a Pennsylvania mail order company for $54.70.

After waiting two months, she wrote the company asking that the coat be sent immediately. She astutely mailed the letter certified, return receipt requested, so she would have proof that the business had received her letter. Within days the U.S. Postal Service verified delivery of the letter, but after two more weeks, still no coat.

Mrs. H. had used COMBAT’s dispute resolution service once before and had been very satisfied. She was certain we could help again and asked that we contact the business on her behalf. She enclosed a photocopy of both the front and back of her canceled check, a copy of the magazine ad to which she had responded, and a copy of her certified letter’s return receipt.

A COMBAT volunteer mediator wrote a letter to the Pennsylvania company explaining the problem and that it had been 10 weeks since the order was placed. We reminded the company of the Federal Trade Commission’s 30-day mail order law which states that merchandise must be sent within a 30-day period unless the advertisement specified otherwise. We further reminded the Pennsylvania pelt purveyor that under the law, a business must contact a customer if merchandise cannot be delivered within 30 days and must also give the customer a choice of waiting a specified additional time or requesting an immediate full refund. Under FTC rules, the company had been in violation of the law for several weeks.

COMBAT instructed the company to send the mock fur coat immediately or a refund in the amount of $54.70 within 14 days. A week later we received a reply from the firm’s Customer Service Department informing us that they had shipped the coat but it must have been lost in the mail. They promised that a second coat would be shipped within seven days and apologized for the inconvenience.

Ten days later we received a letter from Mrs. H. who said the merchandise had arrived but it was a jacket, not a coat and it looked nothing like the picture in the advertisement. The jacket had a hood and a front zipper. The coat ordered had no hood and had button closures. The fur on the jacket looked like the fur on a teddy bear in brown; not sheared in black like the coat she had ordered. Mrs. H. mailed the jacket back to the company and asked COMBAT to again contact the company on her behalf.

We dutifully wrote the company requesting a refund in the amount of $54.70 within the next 14 days because, with their apparent fuzzy thinking and strange way of doing business, we felt a reorder might result in mock fur mittens or a hat. Sometimes we are so happy to live in Maine where we still recognize the difference between a biscuit and a muffin.

Two weeks later Mrs. H. called to say that she had received a refund check in the amount of $27.35.

We immediately wrote again requesting that the company send a second check in the amount of $27.35 as full refund of our client’s $54.70. Ten days later Mrs. H. received the second check. Sometimes it’s like trying to drive a straw through a rock with a spoon when dealing with out-of-state companies.

But then, that’s why we are here. We have to remind folks from “away” that Maine may be up here in the farthest corner of the U.S.A., but we still believe in living by our agreements and the law.

Consumer Forum is a collaboration of the Bangor Daily News and Northeast COMBAT/The Maine Center for the Public Interest, Maine’s membership-funded nonprofit consumer organization. For help or to request individual or business membership information write: Consumer Forum, Bangor Daily News, PO Box 1329, Bangor 04402-1329.