Thursday, June 04, 2009

WARNING about Fabric Club online

I'm working in my sewing room today, cleaning and organizing my stash. I unrolled a piece of fleece I bought last year and hadn't taken out of it's bag yet from www.fabricclub.com and it has a gigantic hole cut out of the center of it. Lucky I wasn't making a blanket or something that required all the 5 yards I purchased. Nothing was mentioned in the website listing about that fabric having a flaw. That is only one of the reasons why I will NEVER shop with Fabric Club again.

Let me back up. FabricClub is a bolt end internet store that sells some designer fabrics in small pieces, sometimes they have larger yardage available. I'd been shopping with them for quite some time, and had spent literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars (actually over a thousand easily) on fabrics. I got to know the owner (Rick) through calls and emails. Some fabrics were ok (none were great) and some were damaged or had stitched up cuts in the fabric, I was willing to work around that for the price. But a year ago I had the ultimate bad experience.

I ordered well over $100 worth of fabric from them. I paid via paypal just as I'd done before. I've never been able to use my "club discount" but that's another story entirely. I didn't think much about the order and got busy with other things. It was summer, I belive it was before August but I'm too lazy to look it up. By the end of September I realized that I hadn't gotten my order. By this time it was too late to make a claim via paypal (my fault) as that has to be done within 30 days. I emailed and called Fabricclub and eventually they got a box out to me, the tracking information showed up on my paypal transaction. The receipt in the box showed that this was box 1 of 2 and that over $56.00 of fabric was not in that box.

I waited and waited for the second box. I wrote. I asked for tracking information. Excuses for not having it or having to look for it were given each time. They ship priority mail, so there should be tracking information. My mail lady knows me well so she would have seen the box if it were at the post office. I wrote again. I called. I spoke to Barbara, I'm guessing Rick's wife. She said no problem, a refund would be issued if they couldn't find the fabric or the tracking information. I told her I'd rather have the fabric but that I'd look for a refund. After 2 weeks and now no responses to my emails, I sent them a paypal invoice for the amount on the fabric that was not in the box. Nothing. I sent reminders 2 or 3 times, nothing.

Still to this day I have not gotten a refund nor the fabric from FabricClub. Since they put the tracking information on box #1 into paypal, they effectively said they sent the order, and paypal won't do anything about it even though only half was sent. I write to them periodically and I never receive an answer. If the box was lost it would be able to track, unless it wasn't sent at all. Honestly, to keep my business, wouldn't you think it would be worth the $56 or $57 dollars that they should refund me? I mean I've spent probably over a thousand dollars with them in the past. I'm a business owner too...There have been a very few boxes of mine that the post office lost and I give the tracking information to the customers and have refunded the people if the package was lost.

This hole in the fabric just makes me fume on top of losing the money.

So it is not lightly that I advise you NOT to shop with www.fabricclub.com. Don't put yourself in a position to have your money taken and not get any customer service. :(

1 comment:

Anita said...

Holy cow! I thought we were their only victims. We both purchased a fair amount of fabric from FabricClub.com on the same day. My mother's order was over three weeks late and POSTMARKED for the day after she wrote to complain. My order was sent nearly a week after my inquiry. If that wasn't bad enough, BUT..

They did not send us what we ordered! They sent us a bunch of random fabric and they shorted the yardage as well. NEVER, NEVER buy from this company.