Balla Bracelets – the dark side of customer service

I normally wouldn’t call out a company in public, but in this case, I just have to. Bottom line, do NOT do business with Balla Bracelets. I had an awful experience with them. Here’s my story.

In November, I started getting emails from Balla Bracelets. Now I had bought bracelets from them a few years ago and all went well. They have pretty beaded bracelets, nothing too fancy, just cute. I always like to support small businesses, instead of buying everything from Amazon. They were offering free shipping and a free bracelet – what a deal. So I ordered 3 bracelets on November 30.

A week after I ordered, I got an email from Lindsey at Balla, offering me a free bracelet if I posted a picture of me wearing my new bracelet. I sent a response back to her saying that I’d be happy to do so, except I haven’t received my bracelets; I also asked her to check my order status. Never got a response.

In mid-December, I sent another email to them, asking about my order. Several days later I get a response from Angelica, saying that everything has been delayed due to COVID, but they expect to be back to normal shipping and delivery by December 23.

Late January rolls around, still no update and no bracelets. I sent another(!) email to them asking about my order. Nothing. A week later, I sent another email. Nothing. I know these requests were received because I got confirmations.

Now, I am getting upset. So I contacted them via their Facebook page, both on their page and via direct message. Nothing.

I tried the same on Twitter and Instagram. Nothing.

Now, I know someone is there since there are active social media postings from them. I Googled them and found lots of complaints against them for not filling orders or responding to inquiries. I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and within 30 minutes I got a personal response back from them saying, “Thanks for your inquiry. Yours is one of many complaints against this company. We will try and contact them but they have not been very responsive. You may want to dispute the charge with your credit card company.”

So that’s what I did and this was surprisingly easy, it’s all automated. I immediately received a provisional credit.

So the message from this long story:

• Do NOT do business with Balla Bracelets.
• Google a company before you do business with them, even if you’ve done business with them before.

What customer service nightmares have you experienced?

Dark side photo is courtesy of Brendan Keene | Flickr, under Creative Commons licensing 2.0.