Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

[bgavin]

I tried to buy 200pc of 3300/6.3 MCZ and an XP-90 heat sink from Wai Fong in Hong Kong.
The shopping cart crashed after the PayPal transaction, and the purchase is stuck in the cart. PayPal transferred the money, and it is gone into limbo.

Wai Fong will not respond to any email.
PayPal is farting around sending emails to which they get no reply.
I waited long enough to escalate to a claim, and have to wait for more emails to Wai Fong.

I'm getting concerned about losing my $155 USD, even though I paid with a credit card. I'm surprised, since my previous two transactions with Wai Fong were exceptional.

FWIW, I think the shopping cart crashed because I was using Firefox. The Wai Fong site looks like hell with FF, but OK with IE.

[willawake]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

well if you paid with credit card and used paypal then you are doubly protected. probably there is language problem. know anybody who speaks chinese

[ss627]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

Call paypal. Their CSR's are usually helpful.

[bgavin]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

I got my refund.
I had to wait until PayPal allowed it to escalate to a Claim.

Once that happened, Wai Fong did respond and provided a refund.
"Note from Merchant: sorry, our system have problem"

I figure the problem might have been caused by Firefox.
I still need those caps, so I will try again with IE6.

[kc8adu]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

I got my refund.
I had to wait until PayPal allowed it to escalate to a Claim.

Once that happened, Wai Fong did respond and provided a refund.
"Note from Merchant: sorry, our system have problem"

I figure the problem might have been caused by Firefox.
I still need those caps, so I will try again with IE6.

i doubt firefox is the problem.the cart should have been tested with all browsers before going live.unless of course they were lazy or in a hurry.

[Toasty]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

Perhaps it was, at the time it was created. But there have been several "upgrades" to IE & Firefox over the past 2 years. I know on my site, some customers have problems with IE7. I have instructions posted on how to resolve issues if they have them.

It's nice to think the site designers should make the effort to make their sites compatible, but the browsers are just as responsible (if not more) to be "backwards compatible" with the sites.

JM2C

Toast

[willawake]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

bleh....check it on ie6, ie7, firefox, opera, safari

i do. and spend hours to make one line sit right on each browser

[bgavin]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

I just placed another order with Wai Fong... and got the same bug.
This time I used Internet Explorer 6.

My PayPal account was charged and transferred, and the shopping cart is still full with my items.

Shit.
Here we go again.

[ratdude747]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

"sorry, our system have problem"

[bgavin]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

This time, they have somebody on staff who speaks English.
He manually processed the order, and it shipped today.
This is much better, but still not acceptable.

I need to find another supplier for Rubycon MCZ and Sanyo polymers.

[Wizard]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

Do, do NOT use IE 6. It's unsecure and OLD, extremely buggy.

And are you updated on all latest updates and FF 3.0.11, IE 7 or IE 8?

Cheers, Wizard

[ratdude747]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

wizard, that assumes bgavin is using xp, and not 2k or lower

also, this applies if wine (windows for linux) is in use

[Wizard]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

Ah, there will be issues. Sigh.

Cheers, Wizard

[bgavin]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

Do, do NOT use IE 6. It's unsecure and OLD, extremely buggy.

IE6 is also the most highly used browser on the planet.
It's quirks are well known by the developers, and they write their web code to IE6 quirks.

Wai Fong displays correctly in IE6, not in Firefox.
This is telling. Their web code is tailored to IE6.

Their shopping cart continues to crash. I suspect it can't handle English.
At least they responded to me email this time, and made sure the package shipped. It should arrive in a day or two.

[Wizard]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

Cool. Tried IE 7 as a test on that shopping cart issues?

Cheers, Wizard

[bgavin]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

No.
I could easily put IE7 or IE8 into a virtual machine.
I won't allow it on my real machine, but my VMs are all ghosted and easily restored.

This weeks EWeek magazine ran a browser comparision.
IE7, IE8 came in at the very back end of of standards compliance.
No surprise.

Opera and Safari were the most compliant. Firefox behind all except two IE.
That was a surprise.
Opera got the nod for the fastest browser.

As a computer servicer, I have to stick with the lowest common denominator of mediocrity.. this is what is found on the vast majority of machines I service.

[Wizard]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

Oh interestingly. Thanks for this.

Cheers, Wizard

[bgavin]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

I'm still waiting for my Wai Fong purchase.
That was done a week ago last Friday. Shipped on Monday, but their tracking number is bad.

I paid $30USD for FedEx shipping, been 6 days now, and no package.

I did find a new source for bulk purchase of premium caps, so Wai Fong has permanently lost my business.
A shitty web site, and the inability to deliver premium-price shipping is unacceptable.

[ratdude747]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

agree

[bgavin]

Re: Bad Experience with Wai Fong Purchase

I finally got my package, and the order is (mostly) correct.
They substituted 4v polymers instead of the 820/2.5 I ordered.
I can live with that.

What burns my bird is the $30 USD I paid for shipping.
They did not use FedEx as done in the past, but used Express Mail.
Then the US Post Office dorked up the delivery.
They failed to leave notice, knock on the door, nor deliver my package.

I never was able to access my tracking record on the Honk Kong postage site, but did find that same tracking number works on the USPS site. I hoofed down to my post office and got my package. They send it back to Hong Kong after 5 business days.

All in all, the last two purchases from Wai Fong were far too much grief to consider using them again. Their web site is unreliable, and the shipping is slow and expensive. This is a real shame, as my first transaction with Wai Fong was simply perfect.