BuyCostumes - Scary Costumes and Customer Service

Ok - I finally made a decision on our Halloween costume, more on that later.

I ordered the costume one night after work this week on buycostumes.com. After clicking 'purchase' I get a prompt for an offer to buy face paint and a pumpkin pacifier. I actually pause and think about what a BS move this is to get you to buy more stuff...and then, in spite of myself, I buy the face paint. It's less than $2 and I'm thinking whiskers.

But when I click through, ii realize it also defaults to add the pumpkin pacifier to my order. I notice immediately on my receipt and email customer service, notifying them of the error. A real person responds in less than 15 minutes (impressive), however tells me my order has already shipped (at 10:30 pm) and therefore can't be changed.

Forgive me, I'm reluctant to believe this is really true.

I'm manipulated into a purchase, that can't be reversed, so my only course of action is to spent $7 (an estimate) to return something I didn''t order. Instead, I will keep the costume and pacifier (which I'm dying too return, but in the end it really only negatively impacts me - I'm out shipping costs, need a replacement costume, and obviously my point will be lost on them as they don't care about my business).

Instead I encourage you to shop elsewhere. There are many great options (try here, or here) for costumes online. Not to mention lots of great stuff at the Gap and Target.

I never bitch about this kind of stuff, but this crappy customer service really got under my skin. I don't know how in this day and age it's even possible.

Scary - and not in a good Halloween way.