On 6/11, I emailed the folks at Nöni Organics with a few questions about their amber saddles. Their answers were prompt and courteous, so I felt comfortable ordering from them; I did so on 6/13, expecting my plugs to be shipped by the 15th and in my hands, at the latest, by the 22nd or so.

Nothing happened for nearly two weeks. I emailed them on 6/25, and they said that there had been a death in the company, but that they had received my payment and my plugs would be out in a week or a week and a half. Though this exceeded the manufacture time for even out-of-stock products, I sighed and accepted the state of affairs.

A week and a half later, give or take, on 7/7/03, I emailed about a tracking number. I never received a reply. On 7/9/03, I called the number provided on their website, and spoke to someone who assured me that my plugs had been shipped the week before, though he couldn't give me a tracking number. He told me to call back in an hour or so, so I could get a tracking number from the person in charge of them.

When I did so, I was hung up on immediately after stating my name and asking for a tracking number. Calling back a third time, I spoke to the same man again, and he told me that the woman that is apparently Holy Keeper of the Numbers of Tracking had gone home already. He took down my phone number and promised to have her call me with it today, meanwhile explaining that they weren't really open this week due to a move. Wonderful, more excuses. I readied an email to send the following business day, since I really didn't expect them to call me.

They never replied to that mail (which I was indeed required to send, since they never called), or to several that were sent afterward. They also stopped answering their phone at all for several days. By this point, it was too late to get a refund through PayPal. Considering their lack of response and my lack of other options, I decided it was time to do something serious, so I wrote them a nice long email explaining why they were committing credit card fraud.

They actually replied to that one. Of course, they told me that my plugs were shipped and kept being returned to them, and that they'd tried to contact me about this several times. I'm led to believe they tried to contact me (if they did so) by mumbling my name quietly in their California offices; they certainly didn't use newfangled methods like "email" or a "telephone". There were no delivery attempts to my address here; UPS confirmed this. Nöni said, of course, that they'd provide no refund until the package was refused and returned to them again, using in the process a bunch of big words they obviously didn't understand.

I wrote back noting my expectations for a tracking number, since they were obviously UPSing the package to me. It should be a simple matter, I reasoned, to provide a tracking number that proved they'd done exactly what they said, had they done so. I got a refund on 7/31, accompanied with a nasty sullen note, instructing me to return the plugs when I get them or they would send the IRS (yes, the IRS) after me, and telling me I was on the.

The plugs arrived the same day as the refund -- much to my shock. I've returned them unopened.

Nöni promised me a pair of free plugs I'll never get (since my questions about their delivery times and reliability put me on their banned customer list) in exchange for their consistent lies about the status of my order. They were nothing less then unfailingly rude to me from the time they got my money on, and it required a crowbar to get even false information from them; really, I'd half assume the plugs they did finally send were poisoned or something. I don't understand why they couldn't provide a tracking number when they had actually shipped the plugs, which would have made me just as happy as a refund, and I don't understand why they expected me to believe them without one after a month and a half of misdirection and lies from them. The package itself had "3rd attempt!!" scrawled indignantly on it... in the same handwriting as the address on the front, not the UPS guy's handwriting at all.

I had a really bad experience with these guys. They never made a sincere apology, and I can't help but wonder if my experience was just par for the course with them -- I certainly wasn't treated like the sad anomaly I know companies can have. I can't review the product because I never saw it, and the customer service department has no idea what "customer service" means.