I only buy my Weatherbeeta’s there, their return policy/Weatherbeetas warranty is so easy. I usually get to exchange same day. Love Dover’s return policy. Please don’t ruin it!!
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Wow, just Wow. All the Horsewear products have a warranty. This item was damaged within the warranty period. Dover did finally replace the item with a new waterproof sheet after two phone calls and quite a bit of tracking down of the original item. The item had been used very little, so yes, I was disappointed that it didn’t hold up. I have had numerous blankets that I have used for multiple years and have NEVER had one tear in the lining.
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Right, but your original reason for starting this thread was the apparently unforgiveable mistake of them sending you the wrong item. You have now confirmed that they have sent you the right item, so all is well. A mistake was made and you called it a “fiasco” and seemed to want to start an internet pile on to make yourself feel better.
People make mistakes, and the company rectified it (and I suspect maybe let you keep the “cheapy fleece” they accidentally sent you). You got a replacement for something that I personally don’t think you should have got a replacement for, but it is their company policy and they honoured it. I’m sorry you had to make an extra phone call, but sometimes crap happens, and you ended up with what you wanted. You probably spent more time posting on the internet about it than it actually took you to get the problem rectified. . .
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Wow…again what a bunch a nasty responses. To be CLEAR… I contacted Dover prior to sending the item back and they said yes, send it back. I told them I did not have a receipt. Had they said no, we can’t do that, I would not have sent it back. The MANUFACTURER warranties the item not Dover, so I am not out to screw them. I was just dumbfounded that someone would look at a turnout sheet and think, sure let’s replace it with a fleece. TWO VERY DIFFERENT ITEMS. The person in returns obviously looked up where I had purchased a fleece and used that to return the turnout and replaced it with a fleece. Seems like laziness to me. I did NOT know that in store purchases do not show up in their system. I just thought it was very annoying that I was told a manager would call me and that not only didn’t happen, but was never even logged in their system as part of the conversation that did happen. So sue me if I came here to complain that I wasted a bunch of my time, the customer service people’s time for something that should not have happened. And NO I did not get to keep the fleece, I sent it back with the return label provided. I have used Dover for many years, but will reconsider what I buy based on this experience, knowing that the returns situation is not reliable.
I used to work at Dover a few years ago, so I’d be happy to explain the return process in the simplest way possible. Dover’s main warehouse is split into two different offices within a massive giant building - the call center (which is where all the offices are and is relatively small) and the warehouse (which is where all the items and orders are packaged). The warehouse is ginormo.
When an item is returned, it is sent back to the warehouse. Someone in the warehouse sees the box is stamped for returns and sends it to the return’s office, which is an office in the call center. Then a return employee will go over the item (FYI returners, consider washing your items prior to returning it! these people open returns in their nice office :winkgrin: nothing like pulling out a filthy, dirty item in your business/office clothes). Once the return employee has gone over the item, they will place a NEW order in their system. The order, once placed in the system, will then route internally to the warehouse to be printed.
This new order is only “loosely” associated with the old one, and the only people who are able to see that it is associated with the old order/return are the customer support/phone agents and supervisors in the call center - those in the warehouse do not see order history, at all. Additionally, those in the warehouse don’t have access to a computer (except for a few supervisors and those in monogramming) so it’s not like they’re viewing your purchase history before they package your stuff. There is nothing on screen in the warehouse to my knowledge that says anything about the type of order (IE return order, replacement order, exchange). That may have changed since I’ve worked there, but I strongly doubt it has as I dropped off a coffee for a friend there last month and the interface/system was still the same.
This new order manifests in the warehouse, where a warehouse employee (called a picker) sees the order print on screen and has to go “pick” the item from 1000000s of other items in the warehouse. All the items are assigned “item numbers”, so when an order prints out on a ticket, it is not “PURPLE AMIGO RAINSHEET” – it is “ITEM X10014856035686835”. In Dover’s case, the item numbers are organized by row/column, which at least makes it easier to pick the item. There is an abbreviated text next to the item number that will say something like AMIG RNSHT, but a lot of the workers in the warehouse are not horse people and are not intimately familiar with the products and their functions.
As someone who once erroneously volunteered to cover a friend’s shift in the warehouse, let me tell you it is very, very easy to pick the wrong item and it’s absolutely overwhelming in there. I can only describe it as chaos, but the pickers/normal warehouse people are VERY efficient at their jobs. They do have someone that goes over the order once it is all picked to prevent this type of error, but they’re still human, and humans can make mistakes.
Anyway, long story short, it was probably just a benign error and I am glad Dover rectified it for you.
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Thank you for the detail about the Dover warehouse. I had a feeling it was something like that. And I agree that this definitely does not meet the definition of “fiasco.” Come back when it’s related to your health insurance claims.
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If they told you to do it, why would they give you the side eye?
Maybe because it was filthy :no::
This is like the time I returned a filthy bareback pad to them like a year later when I found one with buckles in a better place, and they took it back without question and only a side eye at the register.
OP, Everything you described is part of normal life. The vast majority would view your ‘fiasco’ as just a mildly annoying blip, and not worth a mention.
We ALL have Snowflake moments in our lives. I think that people are just trying to point out that you may be having a temporary Snowflake moment.
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Seems like a mistake to me.
ETA - Also, to be clear, Horseware’s warranty applies only to their turnouts remaining waterproof and breathable for a minimum of 3 years.
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People like the OP and the person with the dirty pad are the reason that good companies do away with their generous return policies. The marginally offensive behavior and the outright greedy people with no sense of right.and wrong wreck it for the rest of us make no mistake, we all pay for it in the end… Higher prices, more restrictive policies .
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BW it was great of you to provide that detail. I think people don’t realize how automated warehouses are. It’s not usually Ms. Doe walking around hand picking items based on a detailed description. It’s a pick list pulled by number by someone who only has those numbers, not the detail the customer sees on their “order”
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This is kind of like the Costco return policy. I once watched someone wheel in an old, rusted out and obviously used to death BBQ. They didn’t have a receipt or any proof of purchase other than “We bought this here a long time ago and no longer like it. We’d like to exchange it for something else.”
The good old people of Costco looked up this person in the system, found out they’d purchased the BBQ over 15 years prior and at the time, it was a $500 appliance. This person obviously used this item a lot (and yes I was being nosy), but Costco gave them $500 in store credit and took this decrepit piece of equipment back.
I was amazed.
