Awful experience ordering from Timbuk2’s European distributor | Dafacto
Dafacto

The personal website of Matt Henderson.

Awful experience ordering from Timbuk2’s European distributor

30 June 2015

Update — Timbuk2 is really a great company. After posting the story below, the head of Timbuk2 European operations reached out to inform me that the company operating the Timbuk2.eu website is unaffiliated with Timbuk2, and that later this year Timbuk2 will have its formal Europe-wide distribution channel in place, hopefully putting an end to this confusing situation.

And in the meantime, they’ve dispatched to our office the bag that my colleague intended to order. Even if it’s not their fault, they don’t want any such situation to be associated with their brand. What great customer service!

As a long-time satisfied Timbuk2 bag carrier, all purchased back when I lived in the US, I convinced my Finnish office colleague to give their products a try. As we live in Spain, he ordered a bag through what appears to be Timbuk2’s European distributor, timbuk2.eu. The experience was absolutely awful.

  1. One hour after placing his order for an XS-sized bag, he realized that the material was different than the same-colored S-sized bag he had been looking at when deciding what to order.
  2. He immediately emailed Timbuk2 to change the color of the order, so that his XS-sized bag would at least be made of the material he wanted.
  3. His email, and three follow-ups went unanswered.
  4. Doing some googling, he found a second website apparently operated by the same people. That website listed another email address, and so he tried there.
  5. He received a reply simply stating, “Here’s your tracking link”, with no reference to the change of order he’d requested.
  6. To add insult to injury, the tracking link was to someone else’s order! (Somebody in Germany!)
  7. After three more emails went unanswered, he finally wrote, “If you don’t confirm my change of order, I’m going to cancel the order.”
  8. That email was immediately answered with, “Here’s a different tracking link. Your bag arrive soon.” (in broken English).
  9. All subsequent emails asking, “But did you understand my change of order?” went unanswered.

Today, his bag arrived, and his order had indeed been changed—and completely screwed up. They sent him the wrong color and wrong size! (They sent him an S-sized bag, of another color.)

He doesn’t know what to do now. Should he accept the wrong-sized bag, in the wrong color? (He spent a couple weeks with my own XS- and S-sized models, before carefully deciding that he wanted the XS size.) But he can’t bear the thought of trying to organize a return with these people.

It’s simply hard to imagine that a company with the brand trust that Timbuk2 has in the United States, would condone such awful operations in Europe.

Enjoy this article? — You can find similar content via the category and tag links below.

Questions or comments? — Feel free to email me using the contact form below, or reach out on Twitter.