I've seen a lot of decent reviews for ModBargains within the most recent posts, alone. I'm not sure why my experience was so different, or if we have allowed some things to slip by.

I have been planning to get a front tow-hitch installed before I start school again (Monday - I am a full-time student at DeVry University, so we have very short breaks). I had to make a decision between a couple of hitches (https://www.ranger-forums.com/forum2...ad.php?t=66533), but decided to go with the Hidden hitch. I had heard good things about purchasing from ModBargains, so I elected to go this route rather than purchasing from someone else, and they sold this particular hitch.

I was not nearly as comfortable with the transaction process as I normally am with similar purchases. Moreover, I ended up receiving the wrong part. While mistakes happen, and I fully understand this isn't unheard of, this also isn't the first time that I have seen these particular issues come up.

The first concern I had when ordering was that shipping charges were not included in the invoice until after you received your bill, so to speak. It's a little thing, but this is the only retailer that won't calculate it until you provide your credit card number a second time, leading to my larger concern. After receiving an e-mail that my order had been received, I was sent an e-mail from PayPal asking for my Credit Card information again. At this point, I would have called ModBargains and canceled my order had someone not mentioned that this is normal for the company. It is a HUGE red flag when you receive an e-mail from PayPal that a company is requesting payment AFTER you have already given them your credit card information.

Once I took care of the payment information, I received the process confirmation e-mail the next afternoon. This was acceptable. However, I had not heard from them again until nearly a week later (I was almost to the point of calling customer service and asking what was up with my order). That e-mail was finally telling me that they had the product, there were no problems, and that they had set up shipping and gave me a tracking number. Great! and the hitch was delivered the same day. The shipping speed was excellent, and I was more than happy with their ability to get the product out of the door at that speed. I don't mean to sound whiny; however, when you are used to receiving this type of response from online vendors instantly, the time period between the payment confirmation and the shipping confirmation is way too long. The point of the tracking number is to plan for the arrival of the product. If I had the tracking number, say, two days before it actually arrived, I could have set up an earlier appointment to get it installed. This kind of planning is impossible when you have no idea where the product is. Amazon, for example, will send you a shipping confirmation message within 24 hours of your order and will provide a tracking number even though the item hasn't actually shipped yet. While I understand they may not be the best example to compare to ModBargains, this is no different from what I have experienced from other online purchases.

The lack of ability to plan ahead for the arrival of the hitch and attempt the installation at an earlier date as well as receiving the wrong product has been extremely costly. Working full time while attending school full time leaves me with very little time to do this kind of footwork. Moreover, given the nature of the part, we had not noticed that it was incorrect until we both drove up to Absolut Offroad for the installation. Given it takes them time to get the truck in the shop and taken care of, waiting around is not an option. This results in extra trips to Absolute. Once school starts, it is very difficult to take this kind of time to schedule an appointment with Absolute at a time that works both for me, and whoever follows me up to the shop. The cost of gas makes extra trips to Absolute Offroad much less desirable (especially when paying my own gas and covering gas for the person who was nice enough to give me a ride). Beyond the poor payment processes and the lack of timely communication, I would normally allow a minor mistake such as shipping the wrong product to go. However, Outdoorsman also had an issue with a product he purchased (https://www.ranger-forums.com/forum2...ad.php?t=61697). While this was taken care of very well, my concern is the possibility of a higher error rate with ModBargains purchases. I don't have the time or desire to deal with this even occasionally. I'd rather pay an extra 20 bucks and have it take an extra day to ship feeling more confident in the product from the retailer, and not in a situation where I have to provide sensitive information (credit card) to the retailer and to paypal for one purchase.

I will be working with the ModBargains customer service to get this corrected, and I have no doubt that it will be taken care of with no complaints from me, their customer service track record cannot be overlooked. The fact that it happened coupled with the extra trips and the mediocre ordering process leaves me quite frustrated with the experience so far. I appreciate your time reading this. I will contact Alon personally to see that I can get all of this cleared up as quickly as possible.

 

This sucks man. I hope it gets resolved soon and you're taken care of. I'd be happy to drive you back to Absolute Off-Road whenever you get the correct hitch.

 

so what hitch did you get then?

 

I think it was a rear hitch for a Ford Econoline if I remember what the shop said. They also said the part numbers don't match up.

 

I had a few problems with them too, but they got them all worked out but it took like 3 weeks to get all the stuff for my brakes. First they never contacted me that the stuff was backordered. Then I get the order and no rear shoes or hardware they said it came with, call them up and they ship out the rear shoes no hardware, well I wasn't waiting another week so I just went out and bought the hardware. I hate how you dont know how much there shipping charges are also. I not sure if I will be ordering from modbargins in the future either.

 

Jason,

First of all, I am at the office right now and will be figuring out what happened with your order right now. I would have appreciated a call to either myself or a customer service agent here before a public bashing of the company, but we will take care of you, I guarantee that.

I just wanted to come in this thread before it blows up and people start running their minds, but I will come back to comment about the shipping prices and paypal etc...

 

correct, it was a rear-hitch for an econoline. I didn't notice it until after-the-fact when Bryan pointed out that it had the U-Haul logo on it...kinda strange and unexpected. Nonetheless, I contacted Alon and I know we're running into a holiday weekend, so I will attack it full-fledged next week. I only have a few days before school starts, and I need to relax a bit, lol....I'm sure the support people will be much happier to deal with it Monday than this afternoon. Frankly, I would too.

EDIT: just saw your post Alon. Much appreciated. I don't mean this as a direct attack on you or ModBargains at all, I just want to express my concerns. If there is a reasonable explanation, there is no problem, I am merely sharing some observations. I will be leaving for work now, so I may not be able to get back to you until later. Again, I don't necessarily expect all of you to work around the clock on this, but I appreciate your quick response. Thanks.

 

I just looked into the whole papyal thing payment thing after you paid with a credit card.

When you input your CC information it does not get processed until we are ready to place your order.

When we went to process your credit card we got 2 error messages
1) Wrong billing address
2) Wrong Expiration date or card ID#

I am not sure what the error was, but it is our protocol to send a paypal request if the credit card did not work.

Still looking into why the wrong hitch was sent

 

I wouldn't call this a public bashing at all. He is stating exactly what happened and his concerns. If a person can come into the review section here on R-F and say how amazing and great ModBargains is I see no problem in a person talking about their bad experience with the company.

 

x2 thats the whole point of this section of the forums.

 

Good luck with your hitch issue.

Myself have had no problems with Mod Bargains. GREAT comminucation with Alon via AIM, which was really neat compaired to dragging out in emails or pm's. I reccommend them. Every company has their "issues" from time to time. Summit sent me the wrong headers for my truck, so, I called them up, they sent me the right ones, and i send the wrong ones back. No probs.

 

Alon is a good guy, i bought a mag lite holder from mod bargains and he was very prompt with his responses to my concerns. It did take a while for the part to reach me but he responded to each of my e-mails and eased my concerns.

 

Yeah he wasn't saying not to buy from them. I've always seen Alon fix probelms when they are any, I'd buy from Modbargins if they're shipping prices weren't so high.

 

Alon is a good dude, he will get this straighened out

 

I want to first point out that I have never bought from this company. Mistakes do occur and I can understand the frustration. I also want to say that I order a fair amount of products via the web because I work two jobs, go to school, etc. and the way a lot of companies send tracking is unacceptable. You say they sent tracking and the product arrived that day. Sometimes it takes a day or so to be able to track because of the input of orders and the emailing them out. Also, depending on FedEx or UPS and how close you are to the shipper, it may not take 3-4 days to come, rather one or two. Last, I use Amazon and I don't like how they say your product will arrive by July 14th, for example, if I were to order today. They give a tracking, but what is the point if the company still waits three days to ship out. I can't get any info. till the item is physically sent to begin with and by then I could have the product. I would rather have the couple of days delay in shipping and then get an email you're product shipped. That way I can get real life tracking and a better estimate.

Look at this message for a product I ordered Sunday night. They use the postal service and couldn't send an email with tracking because there isn't any. Plus, instead of an email saying your product shipped today, yesterday, etc., I had to call tonight and found out the product left the 1st. Then all orders don't ship in 2-4 weeks because mine was shipped within one week.

Hope the return process works out. I found that the more important the product, the greater the chance of damage, wrong item, longer shipping time, etc. It is the disadvantage of not walking into a store and getting it right then and there.

 

So we screwed up, big time and I apologize for that. Errors which started from a bad listing from a guy who was only with us for a few weeks, at the very beginning of the Ford product line. This is not excusable, and I am not asking for anything other than the ability to make up for it.

We're going to get a return authorized from the warehouse and will have the hitch that was sent to you picked up (will give you details on that later) and we will send out the correct hitch (I am making 100% i get the right part number) as soon as possible

 

just as i expected alon would fix it.

 

That sounds like the Alon we all know. I understand it isn't a one man show and you have to rely on other people to do their job and when they screw up it looks bad on you. I'm glad to hear it's getting resolved.

 

And I actually picked up another job so I'm not in the office as often to hold peoples hands....but everyone gets taken care of one way or another

 

I have no experience with mod bargains, but why the heck are they using Paypal??? Whats wrong with running the credit card transactions themselves?

personally, I hate paypal because of all the spam I get from them as well as the ridiculously high transaction fees to receive money.

 

WTF is wrong with paypal? I've used them for 2+ years now with no problems.. they get my money back when someone tries to screw me over.. and I can issue refunds when need be.. do you even know the bs you have to go through to setup your own system to run credit cards? the fees may suck, but you pay to play online.

 

I think they use both b/c when i bought my scanguage i just put my debit card numbers in. I actually put the EXP date in wrong told alon on aim and it was fixed in 5 min.

 

I wanted to provide an update. As of the 12th, I was able to get a refund for the hitch.

The return and such was taking a little more time than I expected. I hate to sound like the one guy with an issue, but I just decided, in late July, to order a hitch from JC Whitney and ask for a refund from ModBargains. i did that and had my hitch installed before the 1st week of August. Working with ModBargains was not fun. The first couple of people I talked to didn't seem to believe that I sent back my hitch. I understand that the products come from partners, but I had to provide them with the FedEx tracking number before I got an e-mail that PayPal had money for me....but I don't have a paypal account. Someone did follow up, however, with a phone call to confirm that I wanted a refund. After that, it was taken care of.

I know this was a different aspect of the business, and Alon was helpful. I know I'm the minority as far as it comes to problems with ModBargains, but this was exceptionally frustrating, and I mean this with all due respect.

 

i tried ordering a front hitch from modbargains last week and then got an email from somebody saying that the price on the website was "wrong" and that the hitch "may not be available"

so i write back and see how much it "really" is and the guy says its gonna take some time to figure out so i just said to cancel it. havent heard back nor has my card been charged. wierd lol the should UPDATE THE WEBSITE!!!! lol

 

Yeah I hear you 08XLT4x4. I like to try and support forum vendors but if I can get the product faster and cheaper with an outside vendor I will. If I'm spending my hard earned money I want to get my porduct fast and without hassle. I'm glad everyhting got worked out for you Dusty.