After a few posts by Brant W. Fowler the Editor in Chief of the online site the owner W. Alan responded.

They have left my posts intact and some from "The Dark Shake", however some have been deleted.  This is, according to Alan, because some people are specifically trying to cause issues. Which as we know gang mentality works.

Any way, here is some of his responses.

W. Alan - July 7, 2007 - 6:06pm

Regardless of the people who have posted here, even when told in a POST above this that emails do not always work (as our SPAM filter is rather picky), that think that several emails to us not replied to means we are ignoring you (we cant reply to emails if YOUR server is doing somethign that flags it as SPAM to us), it is not the case.
Most of the problems we have had lately are because of shiping delays. Datk Towe Guidebook has NOT released. Wildcats #2 has NOT released. Ect, ect, ect.
When you request orders to be held till all items are released, and you have preorders, saving on shipping means that sometimes you will be delayed.
I apologise for any probelms anyone may have, but when you ship thousands of orders a month, odds are there will be problems with a few, no matter how much you try. We can only do so much, and replying to emails we dont get is not something we can do. We are trying to add a "Live Help" desk (and you can always call the Winston Salem store at 336-794-3692) to fix that, but it will take time.
Also, while we have hundreds of satisfied monthly customers, there are always those that may feel we owed them more, regardless. Sometimes we made the error, and sometimes we bare the error that they made - to their satisfaction or not. We try, but again, even a 98% success rate means that tens of customers will have issues we need to help resolve.
Please be patient with us, and use the phone or the forums if your emails are not answered. If we arent answering, writing more wont help.
Thanks,
Alan

W. Alan - 6:06pm

Also, this forum is to help those that need assistance with any miscommunications about their orders, and to assist in rectifying any problems. Post not for that purpose will be moved or deleted.
Thanks,
Alan

W. Alan - 6:06pm

I'm deleteing these "conversation" posts later once their read, but it was July 4th holiday, and the store is still recovering from an electrical attack that took our computers... you think giving me a bit of time on a reply would not be quite decent of you?
Also, starting from the front, resolving some issues from people posting:
One person order a subscription to start, not actual product, which is why they got nothing (their sub cancelled after many automatic emails to them telling them books were pulled, about to expire, expire, ect). I would hope theyd post an apology for getting people riled up, but I expect none....
One is a person who, when their order was held up by a late book, wants their sub balance (small amount) refunded to a card instead of given as a balance, as it is stated will be done. We disagree... hardly "dogpile" material.
One was an order that the tracking through the post office just stops. We're contacting the USPS for a claim, but I hate taking flack for their loss. Sure we'll send a replacement in the meantime, but to get beat up for not knowing the package we paid to send got there is, again, quite harsh.
And I continue through the list, as I always do. Customer service is hard, and I'm sure we fail some of your expectations, but we try, and appreciate people chosing us (even those with bad experiences).
Sometimes the customer yelling "Foul" is the one who is wrong.... remember that. Sure, we're wrong a time or two oursleves - but that is what we pay a phone bill for (when lightning doesnt decide to strike it). Call if you need extra help, or are confused/misunderstand.
Thanks,
Alan

I still think their forum is screwy on the times...

My response at this time:

Hey Alan,

Agreeing with Oxide, I'm in Australia, and I am more than willing to call your store, however I doubt you're there most nights between 10pm and 6am to take that call.

I understand the dogpile mentality that you've referred to and thats why when DS mentioned contacting some US investigators I mentioned that I'd rather avoid doing such, especially until someone started responding.

If the main problem at work here is your spam filter, then why aren't you at least doing a cursory glance over the emails that your filter is marking as spam before deleting them?

Most spam filters need to be trained and if you aren't spending time marking emails as not being spam then your filter won't get better.

Regardless, if I sent you cheques for orders would you throw them away because you tend to get a lot of junk mail?

On your help pages you specifically mention contacting those addresses for feedback and I would suggest that this changes if you are ignoring those same addresses - it doesn't help any of your customers and just further upsets us.

And in quite a few cases here our emails were replied to at some stage and we were told that our cases were being looked at and received no further response.  That is the basis for me being upset over this issue.

"Customer service is hard, and I'm sure we fail some of your expectations, but we try, and appreciate people chosing us (even those with bad experiences). "

I'm sure we all appreciate this but telling us that you decide not to read our emails because of a spam filter is a bit wrong.  I've worked in a company that relies on online ordering and received quite a lot of spam to go through, and even though we filtered it, we would also read through the filter when we could - at least looking at the topics to see if they related to our business.

That said, I appreciate that you are responding to our concerns, however, responding to them like you have here I have no idea if you are responding to me at all.

You could have also contacted me privately on the address I provided with my order, which I think would be the best place to take this, mate.

That said, I would suggest three actions that would possibly be the best way for your company to proceed if a SPAM filter is all that is causing you bad relations with your customers.

1) Add all customers email addresses to the SPAM filter to ignore any emails from those addresses.  That way your paying customers are always having their emails sent through.

2) Provide a feedback form on your site, rather than an email address, that sends mail to a private internal address, and is protected by a CAPTCHA if need be.  That way your primary way of being contacted is protected and assured.

3) Have a task system in place so if one of your representatives does get contact from a customer, like I did from Tim telling me he was checking into my order, that they, or someone else, actually does check into it and gets back to the customer.  There is nothing worse than telling someone you're onto something and then forgetting about it.

Like I said, I appreciate that you're willing to talk to us here and haven't taken the criticisms too badly, but I hardly think you can call us (or some of us) at fault because we've been trying to do the right thing contacting you several times, and giving you the benefit of the doubt for some time.

At this point Alan hasn't contacted me privately, which I thought would be better than just answering peoples problems on the forum - better for him because he can deal with any of his stores problems privately, and better for us as we'd get a conversation in play.

Anyway, at least they're dealing with it, but it seems a bit off for an online retailer to blame all their lack of communication and customer service problems on a SPAM filter.  Any way you look at it, SPAM is a problem on the internet, but many other retailers deal with it fine without any of it affecting their customers.