TLDR: Keith Apgar is very very customer-unfriendly. He simply assumes stuff without bothering looking into it and when asked for completely justified refund, he told me I'm an "ass-hole" (WTF spells it like that?) and blocked my email.

Timeline of events:

• On June 10th I ordered a Rottendog WPC89 driver board.
• On June 11th the order was shipped via UPS.
• On June 16th I received an email from UPS asking for duties and fees to be paid.
• I've paid these literally minutes after receiving the email.
• On June 26th I got concerned that the package hasn't moved (according to UPS tracking).
• I called UPS on the 26th to confirm the status of my package.
• They told me it never left the US as it already two business days overdue. I should ask the shipped to open a claim.
• Directly after that phone conservation, I send an email to [email protected].

Here it is in full:

Hi,

The package with the tracking number 1Z976A0RDK21999144 never made it to Canada. I just got off the phone with UPS and since it's 2 business days past the expected delivery date, they asked me to contact you, so you can file a claim with them.

I've ordered plenty of other stuff in the meantime from the US and it all arrived without a problem. Even stuff send with USPS. Just my luck that UPS is acting stupid right now.

Cheers,
Mike

The tracking number is real, so feel free to confirm the status of the package yourself.

Here is Keiths reply, also in full:

1Z976A0RDK21999144
Tracking shows it just cleared customs, that is usually where the bottleneck is."

Here is my reply to that, also in full:

No, I called ups. It cleared customs 12 days ago. According to UPS it is still hasn’t even left the original sort facility.

Give them a call yourself. It is lost. It will never arrive.

I've received no further communication until I send another email on July 14th:

Keith,

Please follow up with UPS or provide a refund. This has been over a month now and there is zero chance of it arriving. In the meantime I’ve place other orders from the US and they all arrived after around a week each. It’s not COVID. It’s not “normal”. It’s lost.

Please take care of your customers.

Regards,
Mike

His reply:

Michael,
You can stop saying it's lost now...
The tracking shows the delivery was attempted but the addressee refused to pay the duty fee.

Jun 16, 2020

https://www.ups.com/track?loc=en_US&tracknum=1Z976A0RDK21999144&requester=WT/trackdetails

Why it has not been returned to us we do not know.
We do know that UPS is a very reliable shipping company.
We also do not have a lot of free time to chase packages around the world, there are many lost packages by USPS, many thousands of dollars worth of packages lost.
We will contact UPS and have the package returned to us, only then will you receive a refund.

Now am I taking crazy pills here? Where in the tracking information does it show that I refused to pay the fees and reject the parcel? It hadn't even left the United States, yet, so how could I have done that?

Anyway, here is my full reply:

I paid them online three weeks ago. The tracking hasn’t changed since 17th of June.

It is lost. Stop being so damn condescending. You behave as if I’m some idiot who doesn’t know what he’s doing. I’m 50 years old and own over 30 pinballs. I’ve ordered stuff literally hundreds of times.

The package is NOT in Canada and nobody made any delivery attempts. The tracking doesn’t say at all what you claim. Stop making shit up.

Call UPS. Get confirmation that I paid customs and duty and you will see that they don’t know where it is.

Start believing me and don’t treat me like a retard.

There was no reply. So I send another email the next day, this time attaching three screenshots from the UPS website, my payment confimation from UPS and a payment receipt from UPS. I've attached all three to this post:

Here is proof. The tracking information I can see (detailed). No mention of a delivery attempt or a refusal to pay customs/duty.

Further down you can see a screenshot of my payment to UPS ($117.77 CAD).

I've done nothing wrong, but while I was searching for my PayPal receipt, I saw that you refunded me 85% - shipping on the 19th of June without even notifying me.

I've had enough of this bullshit. I want the remainder of my money back. I want the full $299 + $43 UPS. This item was either never shipped or it got stuck, and instead of reaching out, you interpret the available data in the worst possible way and then issue a partial refund.

What gives you the idea that it was out for delivery and I refused to pay the charges? Can you attach a screenshot of the tracking info you see on your end?

What would be my motivation here? I still have a broken Addams Family.

If you would open a claim with UPS you would see that the item never left the US and that they will refund you in full. If you actually received the item back, then UPS did something seriously wrong.

I got a reply through their ordering system email after (I guess they added it as a note to the order?)

Michael, The UPS tracking clearly states that there was a duty fee that was not paid. This order was returned to us by UPS June 19 2020 and at that time we refunded you less 15%, We do not refund shipping when the item is refused.

I replied to them this:

I want you to take a screenshot of that information and send it to me.

It is simply not true. I paid for the duty. I showed you the emails from the 16th. It was paid. why do you ignore everything I say?

Why do you refuse to call UPS and find out the facts? I called them twice now. I had to open a claim on your behalf.

If the driver returned that package to you, then that is because he never even took it to the warehouse. He forgot it in his truck or something and simply gave it back to you with bogus information. It never left the states.

Here is Keiths reply to me only an hour ago:

Michael,
Sorry this did not work out, We had had this happen before where an international customer refuses to pay the VAT and the item is returned to us without any explanation or warning. We just figured it was another order that had ended the same way. It was your first order with us so we had no history with you.
The only thing we noticed in the UPS tracking is that it was not scanned when it was returned to us. But that is not unusual in SC, USPS does not scan when they pick up or drop off which is why their tracking system sucks. We have 18 lost packages somewhere on this planet with USPS International.
Again, sorry but we had no reason to not assume the worst.
There are other Rottendog dealers that ship to CA, although these times are very different in shipping internationally.
A lot of uncertainty these days. Covid is raging here in the east coast southern states.

Here is my reply to that sorry-not-sorry mess:

Keith,

At least now you admit that your reaction was knee jerk and not in line with reality.

I would like the remaining 15% and the shipping back. You will get the shipping back from UPS once their investigation concludes. They promised to call me on Monday about the $117.77 they owe me for my pre-payment of duties.

Yes, shit happens every day. What truly bothers me is how you reacted to it. You immediately assumed the worst, was super condescending and basically refused to even talk to me.

Now that you finally looked into it for real, you had to admit that I was right all along.

Yes, there are others I can buy boards from. Your website came up first when searching for “rottendog wpc89”. That’s all.

Regards,
Mike

This was his final reply:

Fuck off, hows that for reality.
Blocked your email because you are an ass-hole.

I wish I was making this up. I wish Keith Apgar wasn't a totalitarian jerk that always assumes the worst about his own customers. I'm really relatively laid back but sentences like "but we had no reason to not assume the worst" really make me angry. Maybe Keith was a US-cop before starting his Pinball business? Man, fuck that guy and his shitty website. I hope he goes bankrupt.

I opened a PayPal dispute about the remainder and got it back. Now I just have to fight UPS for the duties and fees.

Anybody know a good, reliable website where a Canadian can order Rottendog boards that doesn't treat their own customers like dogshit?

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I think a lot of you are doing exactly what Keith did: you don't read and understand the whole thing. You don't understand what happened. You skim over some parts of read the headline and then have an immediate knee-jerk reaction of "buyer is impatient, his fault, durr durr".

That's no what happened at all. What happened is that Keith assumed that I refused to pay duties and thus assumed that the item had been returned to him. He did a partial refund of 85% minus the shipping. I didn't notice the partial refund because it landed in my spam folder.

He refused to look into it despite several emails with screenshots. Apparently he had "no reason not to assume the worst". When asked for the remaining 15% + shipping (a combined $87) he told me to fuck off and blocked my email.

How is that fair? How is that just? I had to involve a third party (PayPal) and even phone UPS twice to get my money back. How would you feel if this happened to you?