Online Retailer Review: Entertainment Earth

By Nathan Stout (of According To Whim.com)

My work’s CEO used to have this little speech on our internal website about giving good customer service. This is what he said:

“Research shows that a bad service experience will cause an individual to tell an average of 40 people over time about their experience. Conversely, they will only tell an average of 5 people about an excellent experience.”

With that said I am going to tell you about an unpleasant experience I had. I am not just aimlessly attacking some company, this is a legitimate gripe.

Entertainment Earth is an online store that has all sorts of Scifi/toys/movie memorabilia. Here is why you shouldn't do b2b with them. As many of you know I have a hobby business: Renegade Anime. I sell Japanese models (among other things). Well, AMT (the model company) released a series of cool Star Trek models in 2010. I thought they would fit in well with my business so I started looking for a wholesaler of their models. On their (AMT) website I found a link to Entertainment Earth (who is listed as a wholesaler of their models). I emailed them and setup a wholesale account and made a $530.00 order. The models were listed as in 'Pre-Order' and would be released in January.

I go on with life. Less than a week after the order I start seeing the models out in stores. Ok, that's cool. That means I should be getting my order filled soon (so I can have them to sell at the upcoming Comicon). I wait and wait and then I finally get word from Entertainment Earth... The price of the models have all gone up (in some cases $4.00 more each). Seesh! Ok, fine. I wait and wait and next time I log into my account I see that they are sill in 'Pre-Order' status but the date has been pushed back to February! Well this sucks!

I start looking online for other wholesalers and I find 2 who say they can get them to me quicker (and cheaper). I then send an email to my Entertainment Earth contact telling him I need to cancel my order.

I get an email back that says I can do that but according to my wholesale agreement they will charge me a 15% canceling fee.

REALLY ENTERTAINMENT EARTH???

So you basically get unsuspecting businesses to make an order... you then JACK up the price and say 'too bad for you... you will pay one way or the other'.
Does this mean that they can get someone to make an order of any size then increase the price to a million dollars and the person who placed the order is stuck paying the 15% fee if they back out?

THIS IS BAD BUSINESS ENTERTAINMENT EARTH.

I could understand if it was a straight up deal where I made an order then backed out without good reason but

1. You increased the price after I agreed to buy the items.
2. You pushed back the release date to a time in which the models will do me no good since my event will have passed.

#1 above should be an agreement breaker and I will ask to talk to a higher authority in the company and plead this case with them.

After much back and forth I get an email that I misread initially. My rep told me he got authorization (since the price increased) to cancel…

That’s all I read. I just assumed that he got the order canceled. I thanked him profusely and went about my business. I later got an email when part of my order shipped. I went back to that email and finished it:

My rep told me he got authorization to cancel one of the items on the order.

REALLY ENTERTAINMENT EARTH???

So to make up for trapping me in their scam me they showed their benevolence and canceled one of the items on the order (by one item I mean one of the models which I had ordered a case of).

To add salt to the wound they charged me $2.00 for something called a consolidation fee. WHAT?! The items I ordered (4 different models) were each ordered at case quantity. There is no need to ‘consolidate anything’. Just another nail in the coffin. I basically shut my mouth and took their punishment for my transgression. I never made another order with that company. Too bad because they carry quite a bit of cool stuff...