Sorry to hear you had problems.
I was almost tempted to buy the mavic wheelset myself before they instituted the £50 minimum
purchase clause.
From what you say, I think the only thing Xpedia did wrong is to charge your credit card before
actually knowing they might eventually run out of wheels.
If they were out of the fork you wanted than they should have said, sorry we can't put a blue
wheelset aside as in order to take advantage of the offer, everything must be instock.
e.g. the special priced wheelsets are first come first served.
In which case you would be bummed and probably slagging them off on this newsgroup anyway but at
least they would have been up front with you and you wouldn't be expecting them to sell you the
wheels at the special price.
But by debiting your card, they got greedy. They should have said no to you in the first instance.
In the end they only muddied the water on who's right and who's wrong.
By the way, its not uncommon for retailers to only offer discounts/special offers/incentives to
items instock instead of with special orders. Did the ad that promoted the wheelset have this
disclaimer on it? If not, it probably should have.
my two cents.
<gary.bartram*removethisbit*@lineone.net> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 9 Oct 2003 02:28:40 -0700,
[email protected] (martin) wrote:
>
> >
> >but it was a couple of years ago
>
>
> Heres what happened to me.
>
> I ordered some Mavic Cosmos wheels (blue) which were on special offer if I spent £50 or more on
> another item.
>
> I bought a set of forks thus qualifying me for the offer. Xpedia emailed saying the wheels were in
> stock but not the forks, they would wait until the forks arrived and ship with the wheels. Fair
> enough I thought.
>
> Anyway after a couple of weeks and a few emails from me requesting my order they told me that the
> wheels were no longer in stock but the forks had arrived! I could however buy the Black Mavics at
> an additional cost as the blue ones were were no longer available from Mavic. I replied that I
> would accept the alternative wheels but only at the same cost as the original order.
>
> So it seems that one of two possible scenarios has taken place:
> 1) They sold me the blue wheels and while awaiting my forks they decided to sell my wheels to
> someone else......or......
> 2) They used the offer as bait for orders and did not actually have the blue wheels in stock.
> (Trading standards are investigating this possibility).
>
> Eventually they refunded my money but I'm still not too happy. I may consider claiming the
> difference if I buy from elsewhere. Advice on this would be appreciated.
>
> Buyer BEWARE!!!
>
> Cheers, Gary.
