Any idea what's going on with La Couronne du Comte?

[inkstainedruth]

If you got nowhere with PayPal, your credit card company will definitely be the next step, given that you paid for something you never received.  At the very least, you should be able to get the charge removed.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

5 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

At the very least, you should be able to get the charge removed.

 

I’m curious to know what more, or what else, you imagine that the credit card provider could entertain doing for the card account holder, within reason in the situation. Pay him/her interest on the amount? Credit the account according to the more favourable USD-EUR exchange rate today, even if the original payment was made in US dollars? Compensate for his/her inconvenience, pain and suffering? Extract an apology from the merchant (or the curator of the bankrupt entity) on his/her behalf? Award punitive damages? Tell PayPal off? 

[TSherbs]

4 hours ago, The Phoenix 924 said:

Unfortunately, PayPal said they couldn't do anything for me because it's well over the 180 day limit. I'll be contacting my cc provider to see if they can do anything this week.

Good luck. Don't give up. 

[TSherbs]

4 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

If you got nowhere with PayPal, your credit card company will definitely be the next step, given that you paid for something you never received.  At the very least, you should be able to get the charge removed.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

Agreed. Time limits be damned. Fight, push, request, explain why the time limit was breached (no fault of the buyer)...etc...

[mulrich]

Surprised to hear they filed bankruptcy. I guess that means I should stop checking the website to see if the “malfunction” is fixed. 

[mizgeorge]

Paypal have just resolved both my claims in my favour. One was well outside the supposed time limit, but, like so many others, had a proposed delivery date set in the future at the time of order.

 

It may have helped that I had copies of correspondence showing that I was still waiting that fell within the 180 days, but I don't think that's a requirement.

 

I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised.

[A Smug Dill]

@mizgeorge That is great news! Congratulations.

 

I wonder if the curator of the failed business ended up dispatching any at all of the outstanding orders that could be fulfilled with whatever little stock that LCdC had on hand when it sank? I'm not sure whether now PayPal simply becomes a significant unsecured creditor in our collective stead. It's not as if the remaining stock can be easily liquidated at the prices at which we had ordered and paid for them, although I don't know whether it would have been financially worthwhile, what with international shipping costs, to reduce its debt and invalidate some of the (received, or foreseeable) chargeback actions requested by customers through PayPal or their credit card providers.

[Just J]

I'm curious, wondering if there was some point in time where this vendor changed their billing policy from not charging customer's credit cards 'until the order ships out', to charging when the orders were first placed, or at some intermediate point.  Either way, should've been a clue.  

[Paul-in-SF]

1 minute ago, Just J said:

I'm curious, wondering if there was some point in time where this vendor changed their billing policy from not charging customer's credit cards 'until the order ships out', to charging when the orders were first placed, or at some intermediate point.  Either way, should've been a clue.  

 

This vendor started getting a lot of criticism at some point, for saying that items were in stock when they were not -- perhaps that should have been the clue. Since reading some of the complaints about this vendor, I have been more wary when shopping online with all vendors to make sure what I order is actually in stock (I haven't encountered any vendor lying about that point, but a few listings I've seen have buried it in the fine print). 

 

I wonder if putting a hold on the credit card for the purchase amount for (say) several weeks before actually charging it would be a problem, either for the buyer, the credit card company, or the vendor. 

[A Smug Dill]

On 11/3/2022 at 10:04 AM, Just J said:

I'm curious, wondering if there was some point in time where this vendor changed their billing policy from not charging customer's credit cards 'until the order ships out', to charging when the orders were first placed, or at some intermediate point.

 

I don't ever recall La Couronne du Comte having a policy of not immediately taking payment when an order is placed and accepted in its online shop. Such a policy, in my experience ordering from several dozen different retailers (with independent online shopping websites), is extremely rare in the online retail world, especially when powered by software such as Shopify and has direct integration with PayPal for processing payments.

 

Amazon is the most notable exception to it. When I bought from Santini Italia last, some years ago, to the best of my recollection there was no website integration with PayPal, so they were happy to defer sending me a manually generated invoice in PayPal later, once they returned from Christmas holidays and was ready to start (nib customisation) work on the pen I ordered. Everybody else, including several US-based retailers (although I generally avoid ordering from American retailers because they don't usually offer free international shipping past certain pen thresholds, and are thus not competitive), will charge before an order is considered fully placed and accepted.

 

23 hours ago, Paul-in-SF said:

I wonder if putting a hold on the credit card for the purchase amount for (say) several weeks before actually charging it would be a problem, either for the buyer, the credit card company, or the vendor. 

 

Yes and no. VISA and Mastercard will, of course, allow merchants to put pre-authorisations through, which lock up that amount of available credit in an account, that the merchants can later ‘convert’ into actual debits. However, many shops use software application platforms such as Shopify to build their online shops, and I see nothing that suggests Shopify provides an option for that sort of credit processing; and I don't think PayPal does, either. So it is a problem at an implementation level, not a technically unsolvable one, but one that cost-benefit analysis cannot justify the alternative: not every small-to-medium business enterprise is going to develop their own software (but of course Amazon does), and there is zero legal requirement (as far as I'm aware) or little customer expectation globally that actual charging of the credit accounts will be deferred.

 

[mirko]

I too have an outstanding order, but only the last portion of a large order that was mostly fulfilled. I'll swallow that loss.

I do not dare to calculate how much of business the got of me, too confronting, but I am really sad they went down.

Regionally, I have personally witnessed the demise of great pen stores in Eindhoven, Weert, Maastricht, now Tilburg in the last decade and a bit.

 

The only fountain pens you can find in real life, and even that with effort, are low end Parker, Lamy nowadays. So sad...

[mizgeorge]

6 hours ago, mirko said:

I too have an outstanding order, but only the last portion of a large order that was mostly fulfilled. I'll swallow that loss.

I do not dare to calculate how much of business the got of me, too confronting, but I am really sad they went down.

Regionally, I have personally witnessed the demise of great pen stores in Eindhoven, Weert, Maastricht, now Tilburg in the last decade and a bit.

 

The only fountain pens you can find in real life, and even that with effort, are low end Parker, Lamy nowadays. So sad...

Why swallow the loss? You can still access 'your account' on the website, and it should clearly show the items that have not been shipped, which makes the claims process much more straightforward.

 

I agree it's terribly sad to see so many business failing to thrive or even survive, but there's no reason why as a customer, you should suffer with them. They have had your money for more than long enough.

[inkstainedruth]

On 11/2/2022 at 7:22 PM, Paul-in-SF said:

I have been more wary when shopping online with all vendors to make sure what I order is actually in stock (I haven't encountered any vendor lying about that point, but a few listings I've seen have buried it in the fine print). 

I've had that happen on eBay.  Seller had a pen I wanted, and 100% positive feedback ratings (well, not so much now...).  Dickered a bit on the price and I said "Okay"and hit the "BiN" button.  Then 2 days later I log in to email to see a notification from PayPal that the transaction had been CANCELLED.  Seller claimed to have TWO of the pens in stock and then suddenly DIDN'T?  And eBay's attitude was "No, you can't provide feedback because the transaction was cancelled...."   Well, not by ME, it wasn't.  And you know what?  I started being a lot more careful about reading the feedback about other sellers of the same pen and seeing people saying stuff like "Bought this in good faith and then the pen is suddenly OOS?"  So I figured, if THEY could do it about sellers pulling that sort of BS on them, I certainly should be able to when it happened to me.  So I did.  

I've also found instances with other sellers of the same pen where the listing (depending on where you look) say DIFFERENT things about where the pen is coming from -- and by different I mean different COUNTRIES.   And when I query the sellers, I get either doubletalk blather or the sound of whooshing noises of the concept of someone actually *calling* them on the BS going over their heads.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[TSherbs]

6 hours ago, mizgeorge said:

Why swallow the loss? You can still access 'your account' on the website, and it should clearly show the items that have not been shipped, which makes the claims process much more straightforward.

 

I agree it's terribly sad to see so many business failing to thrive or even survive, but there's no reason why as a customer, you should suffer with them. They have had your money for more than long enough.

right on

[The Phoenix 924]

On 10/16/2022 at 3:13 PM, The Phoenix 924 said:

Unfortunately, PayPal said they couldn't do anything for me because it's well over the 180 day limit. I'll be contacting my cc provider to see if they can do anything this week.

Just as a follow-up to this - I finally contacted my credit card company and, after explaining the situation, they're issuing a provisional refund. I'm assuming that means they will be attempting to contact LCdC to ensure everything is above board, but I expect that should be that as far as it's concerned.

 

It's disappointing that LCdC is out of business on a number of levels - at least it sounds like my money won't be burning down with them.

[TSherbs]

excellent ^^^

[Geert Jan]

A quick follow-up, based on a fresh report from the administrators

• No restart of the business (talks fell through), and all stock has been sold
• Apparently there are still items that were brought in for repair waiting for collection. The administrators claim they tried to contact the owners to no avail. If you had something in for repair and not yet received it back, it's worth a try.

I'm still sorry to see them gone, despite the shortcomings of their business

[Ayami_109]

Thanks for the update @Geert Jan, I've been following this thread with interest

[RJS]

I bought from LCDC a few times in the past, and while they were always very slow at delivering anything (or replying to emails), the prices and products were always good, and the wrapping of all items was delightful. I thought about putting in a new order tonight, and tried to go to their website with that intention... only to find it's vanished. Now I see why they didn't reply to an email i sent them late last summer. That sucks that they treated their repeat customers poorly in the final days of the business.