Between the Reddit subpost on Dimond Bike's lawsuit and coupled with the story of the 2018 Chevy Silverado, it's a 1 star review for me.
By Tyler G.
Ruster Sports order and billing problems
On 4/18/2015, I purchased the Armored Hen House from the Ruster Sports web site. During the order process there were several problems with billing, shipping and customer service.
First, when I used a coupon code, the price automatically increased from $625.00 to $662.50.
Second, I included my shipping address to Puerto Rico, which is different from my billing address, which is in Florida. There were no problems entering in this information, however the shipping address was deleted from my receipt. Instead, the receipt stated that this was a “Local Pickup” and had no shipping address. Since the company does not list an address nor phone number on its web site, it would be impossible to pick up the item.
Third, the company charged $30.00 in sales tax, even though this was an out of state purchase from Iowa. While trying to correct the company’s error, I discovered that the tax I paid is not even being reported.
Finally, the company shipped the order anyway without contacting me, but sent it to my billing address instead of my shipping address.
Since, there is no phone number on the web site, I initially contacted the company via their online email system, notifying them of the problems with their order process. No one ever responded to that email.
After I was unable to get any response from the company, I was able to email the CEO/owner, who emailed knowingly of the web site problems, “It appears there is a glitch with the coupon code for Endurance Nation offering both free shipping and a discount.”
Also, the CEO/owner explained, “If we ship the case out of state a customer is not responsible for paying sales tax. We handle the accounting of sales tax internally (not based on what the website says) based on sales that are conducted within Iowa which includes all local pickup options for shipping.”
Interestingly, I confirmed with another customer, who made the same purchase in February 2015 and lives in Oregon, was charged for tax, even though there is no sales tax in that state. He emailed with the COO, who had been aware of the web problems. Apparently, this has been going on knowingly for many months, if not longer.
When I pressed the company on this issue, the COO tried to hide they do not report the tax I paid by saying, “The only reason the case was shipped free of charge to the address provided was simply because you were wrongfully charged tax so I simply converted that value to shipping to save the headache of contacting you and sorting it out.”
