clsund
Member
Hi everyone,
just wanted to share with everyone what has been going on with my business relationship with Algae Barn.
I've purchased a bunch of stuff from them. I recently purchased a pair of their captive bred Mandarins. Knowing that they need a lot of pods, I bought a large amount when I purchased them as well as a can of Cyclopeeze. I spent a good amount of time on the phone with Kevin trying to learn their feeding protocols with the Cyclopeeze. When it appeared that the Mandarins were only interested in feeding on live food, I then was forced to start a subscription order with them for live pods so that I could ensure they were properly fed.
The trouble started when I got an email from Algaebarn about a clean up crew package. I added it as a one-time purchase item to my subscription order. All good right? Well, the day my subscription order was supposed to ship, I got an error message saying that the clean up crew was out of stock. Cool, no problem. I'll just take the pods. But apparently, the pod order also got cancelled with the clean up crew. But no where in the error message did it say my pods were cancelled as well. After a few days when the pods should have arrived and they still hadn't, I called Algae Barn and spoke to Kevin who had no idea that their System was doing automatic cancellation of entire orders when something was out of stock. Oh, and the clean up crew had been added to my subscription order as a permanent recurring item.
At this point, I was getting kind of exasperated with them but kept the cool. I made sure that they were going to send my pods. This isn't the first time I have had issues with them. I had previously signed up for email updates on Mandarins but never got them. What was really weird was that even though I had only looked at the Mandarins on the website, I started getting emails from them telling me, "Looks like you left something in your Cart." When I would go back to the website to look, it would say, "Out of stock." This happened multiple times on multiple days. In a very friendly and helpful way, I called and spoke to Kevin and alerted him to these glitches in their website. I mentioned both not receiving the Mandarin updates and their "You left something..." emails to Kevin. He happily thanked me for my help (though it took multiple back and forths for him to understand what I was trying to tell him.)
Now comes the gut punch- this morning, I found the smaller of the two Mandarins dead on the bottom of my tank AND another error email from Algae Barn about my order. My oldest boy was the one who found "Peach" on the tank floor and started crying. I was devastated. I whipped off another email to Algae Barn about the error message and the now dead Mandarin, stating that I felt the failure of my pod order was the cause of the death of Peach. And I stated that the failure of the pod order was absolutely their fault and expected a replacement Mandarin to be sent.
I got another email this afternoon stating from Kevin that Algae Barn was not responsible for Mandarin feeding once it was delivered. While I would usually agree, when your company fails to deliver said food that I had ordered to feed said Mandarin, I would completely disagree.
Anyways, I'm waiting to hear back from Algae Barn at this point and wanted to share my experience with the community.
At this point, I would say, Buyer Beware. I've definitely been helping them work out their glitches and suffering the consequences. Also be aware that if they screw up, they won't take responsibility for their mistakes.
just wanted to share with everyone what has been going on with my business relationship with Algae Barn.
I've purchased a bunch of stuff from them. I recently purchased a pair of their captive bred Mandarins. Knowing that they need a lot of pods, I bought a large amount when I purchased them as well as a can of Cyclopeeze. I spent a good amount of time on the phone with Kevin trying to learn their feeding protocols with the Cyclopeeze. When it appeared that the Mandarins were only interested in feeding on live food, I then was forced to start a subscription order with them for live pods so that I could ensure they were properly fed.
The trouble started when I got an email from Algaebarn about a clean up crew package. I added it as a one-time purchase item to my subscription order. All good right? Well, the day my subscription order was supposed to ship, I got an error message saying that the clean up crew was out of stock. Cool, no problem. I'll just take the pods. But apparently, the pod order also got cancelled with the clean up crew. But no where in the error message did it say my pods were cancelled as well. After a few days when the pods should have arrived and they still hadn't, I called Algae Barn and spoke to Kevin who had no idea that their System was doing automatic cancellation of entire orders when something was out of stock. Oh, and the clean up crew had been added to my subscription order as a permanent recurring item.
At this point, I was getting kind of exasperated with them but kept the cool. I made sure that they were going to send my pods. This isn't the first time I have had issues with them. I had previously signed up for email updates on Mandarins but never got them. What was really weird was that even though I had only looked at the Mandarins on the website, I started getting emails from them telling me, "Looks like you left something in your Cart." When I would go back to the website to look, it would say, "Out of stock." This happened multiple times on multiple days. In a very friendly and helpful way, I called and spoke to Kevin and alerted him to these glitches in their website. I mentioned both not receiving the Mandarin updates and their "You left something..." emails to Kevin. He happily thanked me for my help (though it took multiple back and forths for him to understand what I was trying to tell him.)
Now comes the gut punch- this morning, I found the smaller of the two Mandarins dead on the bottom of my tank AND another error email from Algae Barn about my order. My oldest boy was the one who found "Peach" on the tank floor and started crying. I was devastated. I whipped off another email to Algae Barn about the error message and the now dead Mandarin, stating that I felt the failure of my pod order was the cause of the death of Peach. And I stated that the failure of the pod order was absolutely their fault and expected a replacement Mandarin to be sent.
I got another email this afternoon stating from Kevin that Algae Barn was not responsible for Mandarin feeding once it was delivered. While I would usually agree, when your company fails to deliver said food that I had ordered to feed said Mandarin, I would completely disagree.
Anyways, I'm waiting to hear back from Algae Barn at this point and wanted to share my experience with the community.
At this point, I would say, Buyer Beware. I've definitely been helping them work out their glitches and suffering the consequences. Also be aware that if they screw up, they won't take responsibility for their mistakes.
