October 30, 2005

Barney Update

Here's an update on the failure of CharacterStore.com to send the Barney costume we ordered for my three-year-old son for Halloween: Their customer service rep finally called back late Saturday and was, at first, very defensive, claiming they never processed an order. However, we had the order confirmation email. Then he said they had to cancel the order because we had given an incorrect Visa account number - but the purchase price was listed as a "pending" charge when I checked debit card account on the bank's website.

The service rep then said they had run out of Barney costumes - but their website is only "updated" for inventory every 48 hours - and had tried to send us an email to tell us they had cancelled our order but they didn't have our email address. However, they had sent us that order confirmation email so, obviously, they had our email address...

I suggested to him that, in the future, when they cancel a customer's order for a child-sized Halloween costume a few days before Halloween, they should call the customer. That would be good customer service.

End result: The pending charge for the Barney costume was never completely processed, so they don't owe us a refund. And they're express-mailing us a free Elmo costume. It's a size too big, but maybe he can be Elmo next year, if at age 4 he still thinks Elmo is cool. If not ... eBay!

Meanwhile, we bought Bennett a non-Barney dinosaur costume at the Halloween Express store at Cool Springs Galleria. He likes it very much.