On March 31 I ordered 2 x $100 gift vouchers from the Bergdorf Goodman website to be emailed to a friend who lives in New York. They accepted my order and sent me a confirmation email. At no time did they indicate that they would have a problem processing my order because I live outside the USA.
On April 1 they sent me an email telling me they'd had a problem processing my order and asking me to call them. I was reluctant to call because I live in Australia so the call would not be toll-free for me but after a few email exchanges I had no choice but to call. What followed was THREE WEEKS of emails - 48 from them, 27 from me - three phone calls - two made by me, one from them at MIDNIGHT because apparently they can't work out the time difference between Texas and Sydney - during which time I supplied pages of phone and fax numbers for my credit card company so Bergdorf Goodman could contact it and verify my billing address. But they continued to email me, asking me for the same information over and over again. I was essentially doing their job for them - how hard is it to look up a credit card company phone number? I found it myself in three seconds on the internet - but still they couldn't process a simple transaction.
Finally, on April 23, they said they had cancelled my transaction because they couldn't verify my address. I was so angry, I immediately wrote a letter to the vice president of customer care. I posted it on April 24. Today is May 5 and I have yet to receive a response of any kind and my friends have not received their wedding gift.
Needless to say, I am extremely disappointed with Bergdorf Goodman. Apart from offering a service it clearly cannot deliver, it seems extremely badly organised and the left hand doesn't seem to know what the right hand is doing. There seems to be no communication between the "customer care" (what a joke!) staff and when I spoke to them, it was like speaking to a Stepford Wife! They would just keep saying, "We sincerely apologise ma'am, " over and over again, but they were clearly not sincere because they wouldn't actually do anything to help solve the problem. They would assure me over and over again that it would be dealt with and then the next day there'd be another email from someone else asking for exactly the same information I'd given them the previous day.
So please think twice before ordering anything online from Bergdorf Goodman, especially if you live outside America. I have ordered plenty of merchandise from places like Amazon with no drama at all, so Bergdorf's either needs to sort out its processing issues or stop offering this service until it can actually deliver.
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