Do Not Buy From "Hard Rock Vapor"!!!

Okay, so I rarely buy clone equipment. Someone on this forum (sorry, a can't remember who it was) mentioned that they have a Helios RDA clone by EHPRO that they absolutely love, and that it is extremely cheap. So I figure "What the Hell" and look around the web to check it out. I find one on hardrockvapor.com for $7.00 - Damn, it IS cheap! So I decided to order one...

I order it (plus $2.54 shipping). I click the buy button, and their system responds with a "wrong credit card number" type message. Huh, I must have put in a wrong number somewhere, so I re-enter it. Then I get a "declined" error. No freakin' way. I may not have much, but i DO have $9.54... So I go check out my bank account, and this is what I see:

<PICTURE REMOVED BY STAFF>

Uh, oh... WTF IS THIS?!?!?

So I call and speak with Bob Lewis, the owner. He says he'll look and see if the order went through, and call me right back. The number shown on the bank statement is Bob's personal number. He called back an hour later and said that there is no order for me, and to contact my bank because my bank must have made the mistake. Wait a second here... You're trying to tell me that YOUR company had nothing to do with this and that it's MY bank's fault? Yes. You need to call them.

This dude would accept NO RESPONSIBILITY for the fact that there are 8 pre-authorized sales, to my account, with only 5 of them credited back. I only knew about it because the second time I clicked the buy button the transaction was declined because my bank's software recognized there was a problem.

So...

I'll be calling my bank in the morning to get this taken care of.

Oh, and @HardRockVapor - do you have a response???

one of 2 things happened

1. you hit the PAY or whatever button more then once

2 theres a bug in their software which is causing this. this bug may be being caused by the credit card processor and not the website itself.


I highly doubt they are trying to do that on purpose.

The fact the owner does not know how to look this up and see the transactions worries me, but many of these online credit card processing systems are cryptic and you have to get on the phone and hope customer service answers etc.

If I were the owner
i would apologize, do what needed to get you your money back and then be on the phone with my software people figuring out WTF happened. ANd probably thanking you for letting me know something is wrong

Mattp169 said:

1. you hit the PAY or whatever button more then once

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Twice. Once when it said there was a problem, and once when I "corrected" the problem.

Mattp169 said:

2 theres a bug in their software which is causing this. this bug may be being caused by the credit card processor and not the website itself.

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They use BigCommerce. Very reputable software.

Mattp169 said:

I highly doubt they are trying to do that on purpose.

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So do I. But to sit there and accuse my bank of being the problem, he should have (like you said) apologized and tried to find out where the problem lies. Nope. Zip, zilch, nada. "It's not me, it's your bank". Well, then how did MY bank get the charge from Hard Rock Vapor? Very shady character, IMO. I looked him up on LinkedIn and if you check out his profile, his other ventures seem shady, also.

<LINK REMOVED BY STAFF>

Do a little poking around the web to check out his credentials, like his <LINK REMOVED BY STAFF> website.

As a consumer , I see you did the right thing and tried to communicate with him, the ball was in his court . There are lots of online stores to do business with . An I'm sorry, let me help you, goes a long way . Talk to your bank , sort it out ,and say by to that dude . Hope it works out for you .

Those are my plans exactly.

Mattp169 said:

If I were the owner
i would apologize, do what needed to get you your money back and then be on the phone with my software people figuring out WTF happened. ANd probably thanking you for letting me know something is wrong

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If I were the owner I would be doing exactly what you said PLUS sending out a FREE $7 atty to him right away.
How much you think he pays for these $7 attys?
Like 4 bucks? (When you buy 1000 you get them very, very, cheap)

Don't feel bad. Vapor range did the same thing to me. They ordered like 10 items on my cc and luckily, capital one don't play that. Gotta be careful.

I called my bank today. They can't do anything about the pre-authorizations today, but said they will "drop off" automatically after one more business day. I said I'll call back after Monday if they're not gone, and she said to definitely call back if they're still there on Tuesday and she'll get it taken care of.

I'd watch that account closely. There might be more fraudulent charges coming.

Hi folks! Just to clear the air ..... I did speak to this "customer". He fails to understand that we do not receive information directly from the banks when someone try's to make a purchase and fails. We NEVER SEE the order unless it is completed. We have no idea who this person is or why their order was not processed by their bank. We have never seen this type of incident before except when someone repeatedly puts the wrong credit card info in over and over trying to get it to go through. And then, we would not see it unless we went looking for it in our merchant account log ... something we rarely or never do as we are only concerned with actual orders.

We never got an order from this person ... we never were paid for any orders from this person .. we have been in business since 2013 and have never even had a charge back or complaint.

Of course we are sorry for any inconvenience .. however .. we had nothing to do with it.

HardRockVapor said:

We never got an order from this person

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So then why did your company's name show up 8 TIMES on my bank statement?

HardRockVapor said:

We have never seen this type of incident before except when someone repeatedly puts the wrong credit card info in over and over trying to get it to go through.

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I gave you the benefit of the doubt, and put my info in a 2nd time, and ONLY a 2nd time. Turns out I was correct the first time. Huh.

HardRockVapor said:

however .. we had nothing to do with it.

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Once again, if this is true, then why did your company's processing service charge me 8 times??? The only reason 5 of those 8 were immediately credited back to me is because my bank rejected them for possible fraud.

Once again ... we have no idea. We do not see what goes on in the background between the banks. We only see orders that are processed.
When you called me the call was auto-forwarded to me as everyone was apparently busy with other customers at the time you called. From pulling up our account I could only see that we had no orders from you.

Later in the afternoon I went to the "back door" so to speak on the merchant account and was able to see your failed attempts. However, we do not see your card number ... nor do we see the reason the bank did not approve your request.

Again, sorry for your inconvenience but we really have no control and nothing to do with how the banks go back and forth or why they may hold up a request. We only have control when a paid order hits us .. so we can fulfill it.

They say any press is good press but I do not agree. We are just small business fighting for customers like everyone else. We did nothing wrong .. we just happened to be the "sitting duck" when your problem occurred. We have excellent customer service .. our customers are very loyal and we care about them .. they are the reason we are in business. I am sorry you had this experience but it was totally outside of our company and between the banks that handled your request.

I'm chiming in on this. Although I had originally thought better of it.

@HardRockVapor I would recommend learning some people skills, before you use the fall back excuse "out of our hands".

This order was placed with you. While you obviously did not design or maintain the billing software portion. You are running online sales. You ARE responsible for ensuring its reliability. As it directly affects your business and credibility.

You are certainly not helpless in this situation. You are paying for the use of said software. You are their customer. If it's free, nuff said.

I would have responded to the OP immediately. While calling support with the other hand. And I may not have found anything. But I sure wouldn't have responded in the manner you did.

The charges originated from YOUR business site. Regardless of what mistake you think the OP made.

A simple apology, and a request that the OP contact you if the charges couldn't be reconciled with his bank. Would have went a long way in showing you actually cared about your online sales and reputation.

And it may even have gotten you a positive review. From a failed sale. Those are worth 10x a review from a 100% satisfied customer.

Just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

Enough said. We have excellent people skills and our customers love us.

We have no control over people that try to buy and repeatedly enter their card when they are declined. If you have a store than you know we never even see this type of transaction if it happens .. . we only see actual orders. If this person did not call us we would have never known it happened. He called because he was distressed that his bank was holding his funds .. not us. We never even got an order.

Time to move on ....

time to move on alright,,,to a different vendor

HardRockVapor said:

Enough said. We have excellent people skills and our customers love us.

.....snipped....

Time to move on ....

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Glad to see those skills in operation here, today OCT 11. Yesterday being Oct 10, the first time you thought is was necessary to even speak about this. Rather than Aug 30 or Sep 01

I can actually chime in on this.

I sell RC cars locally and at swap meets and such. Our old CC vendor did this to a customer, who's bought several times for me. We ran the card twice, it error flagged twice.

So, the customer calls his bank. It ran a $200 charge 11 times.

After 5 HOURS of back and forth on the phone, it turns out it was a software glitch on the side of our CC vendor. It was a MASSIVE fight. Luckily, he and I bank at the same place, and we know the regional manager very well. We got it all fixed in a couple days. But, the CC vendor dropped us because all the transaction errors got charged back, or some BS.

For the record, I gave the customer the car he was after for free to try and make up for it. He's still my customer, and has bough over $3k in cars and parts since.

Truthfully, I'd say both parties here could have been a bit less brash. The OP doesn't understand how the back end works. Without the successful CC transaction, the order doesn't process, so Hard Rock won't see it at all. But, with a bit more people skills, Hard Rock probably could have had the pic sent the OP posted, and gone straight to his CC vendor.

I've also seen where a pre-auth will hang for a day and drop off, since the approved response failed between the banks, in which case the OP should have listened to his bank, given it a day to reset, and checked again. This happens more than you would think. I see it a few times a year on my own accounts.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

nophix said:

I can actually chime in on this.

I sell RC cars locally and at swap meets and such. Our old CC vendor did this to a customer, who's bought several times for me. We ran the card twice, it error flagged twice.

So, the customer calls his bank. It ran a $200 charge 11 times.

After 5 HOURS of back and forth on the phone, it turns out it was a software glitch on the side of our CC vendor. It was a MASSIVE fight. Luckily, he and I bank at the same place, and we know the regional manager very well. We got it all fixed in a couple days. But, the CC vendor dropped us because all the transaction errors got charged back, or some BS.

For the record, I gave the customer the car he was after for free to try and make up for it. He's still my customer, and has bough over $3k in cars and parts since.

Truthfully, I'd say both parties here could have been a bit less brash. The OP doesn't understand how the back end works. Without the successful CC transaction, the order doesn't process, so Hard Rock won't see it at all. But, with a bit more people skills, Hard Rock probably could have had the pic sent the OP posted, and gone straight to his CC vendor.

I've also seen where a pre-auth will hang for a day and drop off, since the approved response failed between the banks, in which case the OP should have listened to his bank, given it a day to reset, and checked again. This happens more than you would think. I see it a few times a year on my own accounts.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

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Very well put. And I certainly agree, the OP should have let the 24-48 hours pass at the bank. And this probably would have been the end of it.

Neither party is free of guilt here. Neither appear to have tried to de-escalate the situation.

As I stated earlier, a positive feedback from a mishandled transaction, goes a very long way in my decision making process. I'll buy from ANY vendor who goes the extra mile.

But cop an attitude with me. And my money leaves. I work HARD for my money too. Being a business owner does not make your money more important than mine. And as a former business owner, retired. I'll be the first person to tell you. Your customers money is the most important money! Because you want it to become YOUR money.

You can't please everyone, I certainly couldn't. But you can try to make the situation better. People see effort, whether they see anything else.

Card info must have been correct for it to hit a pre authorization on his card. No way it could be wrong or a decline and show up on his online banking activity as a pre authorization debit.

It's something with your merchant services, if his bank declined the charge, it would be just that... a decline.
If he truly hit the buy button twice and it hit the card 8 times, your merchant services screwed up.

Nothing you can do until the pre auths drop off in a day or two but for the owner of a company to say "I don't know, deal with it yourself " is not retaining or winning any new customers.

You did nothing wrong other than not taking a minute to get to the root of the issue and providing good CS. Upgrade to a better merch service that may cost a little more but will create less hassles for your customers for a better payoff in the long run.

PuffPuffPass said:

Glad to see those skills in operation here, today OCT 11. Yesterday being Oct 10, the first time you thought is was necessary to even speak about this. Rather than Aug 30 or Sep 01


View attachment 30575

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Kinda says it all right there .

Did I offend anyone by posting this info? I don't want to "step on anyone's toes" here. If I have, then it wasn't intentional. I was just trying to bring to light an incident that had happened to me and to warn others to be cautious when dealing with this vendor.

CrazyChef said:

Did I offend anyone by posting this info? I don't want to "step on anyone's toes" here. If I have, then it wasn't intentional. I was just trying to bring to light an incident that had happened to me and to warn others to be cautious when dealing with this vendor.

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Certianly not me. I wish more would post issues they have.

Probably the vendors toes lol
But that could have been avoided if they got on the issue and explained what was going on and that the pre authorizations would drop off in a day or two.
I guess an apology for the hassles their merchant services provider caused you would have been nice in addition to letting you know what happened but niceties are not required, just info at that point.

Clearly neither party is at fault here. I can understand OP's frustration and venting on the forums, but @HardRockVapor has sufficiently cleared their name.

Save the torches and pitchforks for another day, minions.

CrazyChef said:

Did I offend anyone by posting this info? I don't want to "step on anyone's toes" here. If I have, then it wasn't intentional. I was just trying to bring to light an incident that had happened to me and to warn others to be cautious when dealing with this vendor.

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highly doubtful anybody got in a tizzy over this ,other then hard rock ,

i appreciate these type of posts ,i don't need or want the aggravation of dealing with "i don't give a fuck" vendors

V4P3R eMAG said:

Clearly neither party is at fault here. I can understand OP's frustration and venting on the forums, but @HardRockVapor has sufficiently cleared their name.

Save the torches and pitchforks for another day, minions.

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Nice try, but no.

V4P3R eMAG said:

Clearly neither party is at fault here. I can understand OP's frustration and venting on the forums, but @HardRockVapor has sufficiently cleared their name.

Save the torches and pitchforks for another day, minions.

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So everything is all good now that you've signed off on it for OP?

There are no pitch forks at this gathering, there was nothing about vendors name being cleared because it was just an issue with his merchant services.

The problem was instead of providing good customer service and picking up the phone to call his end that created this and find out whats going on, he told the customer to buzz off (my words) and call his bank.

He probably didn't know how this works until this came up and he got an education here in this thread and hopefully will be better equipped to keep the next customer that this happens to satisfied. He is not the only vendor that does not know the banking system or specifically merchant services.

In the long run he would have been much better off taking 10 minutes out of his day to place a call. Instead there is a thread that is not helpful to his business and this won't run him out of business or anything but you cannsee that there are at least a few potential cutomers in this thread that wouldn't place an order with him now and who knows how many that will read the thread but not post.

But I guess it's all ok now and the thread should be closed to any further discussion

Wow ... so much chatter here maybe I should give you all some facts to chew on. It is obvious we care .. otherwise why respond at all?

1. CrazyChef is not one of our customers and does not have an account with us
2. When this occurred .. I took the call .. apologized for any inconvenience.. said I would check on it.
3. After checking all our records I found NO ORDERS from this person and NO ACCOUNT opened on our site
4. I called this person back within an hour and very politely explained the situation to him .. very hard as he was so mad at his bank for holding his funds that I could barely get a sentence out.
5. Later that day when I got back to the office I researched this incident thoroughly in the "back end" of the merchant account and found EIGHT failed attempts to run this card and different times over a period of 2 minutes.
6. I called my merchant account and we found that it failed every time because NO VALID ADDRESS .. the address give was C/O (in care of) XXXXX with NO STREET address ... duh
7. Again, very politely I informed CrazyChef that we had collected NO MONEY and that the authorizations would fall off his card at HIS BANKS discretion
8. I was at all times polite and attentive .. cannot say the same for this person .. I understand he was upset .. but it was his own mistake and not ours
9. There was no order ... the card was never charged .. no money changed hands

Now .. why, you ask, did I not reply to this post sooner? Simple .. I do not hang out here .. never knew this post existed until Saturday when I just bumped into it accidentally. I responded ASAP

As far as our merchant account goes .. they are top notch .. they have protected us from fraud exceedingly well since 2013. We have never had an incident like this before .. and do not (I hope) expect to see it again. However, we have no control over someone putting the wrong information in when they try to buy something and no control over how many times they hit the button!

We are always concerned if anyone has an issue and we respond quickly and with compassion. Our customers are very loyal and we have never had a negative review or ANY issue from anyone. You know .. we all buy stuff online from other folks too. Treat folks the way you want to be treated.

In short .. as always we responded promptly and politely. We spent time finding the problem and related it to the customer .. he was obviously unhappy (I would be too if my bank tied up my funds 8 times .. even if it was my mistake). This person simply failed to understand that we did nothing wrong .. we just looked at what he and his bank did and reported it back to him.

thanks for your time

HardRockVapor said:

Snipped...
7. Again, very politely I informed CrazyChef that we had collected NO MONEY and that the authorizations would fall off his card at HIS BANKS discretion

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Well, kudos to you on that, that's all you can do.

fq06 said:

Well, kudos to you on that, that's all you can do.

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Which is pretty much all they can be expected to do.

The customer isn't always right. That's some PR bullshit dreamed up for a commercial. For some reason, vapers in particular think every business should roll out the red carpet, kiss their asses, and offer free product with every order. God forbid that something actually does go screwball, and customers light up Facebook, forums and Twitter to call on the masses to march with picket signs and internet outrage.

And this one in particular over a $7 clone atty? Really?

Props to @HardRockVapor for paying it this much lip service. Goes above and beyond IMHO.

V4P3R eMAG said:

Which is pretty much all they can be expected to do.

The customer isn't always right. That's some PR bullshit dreamed up for a commercial. For some reason, vapers in particular think every business should roll out the red carpet, kiss their asses, and offer free product with every order. God forbid that something actually does go screwball, and customers light up Facebook, forums and Twitter to call on the masses to march with picket signs and internet outrage.

And this one in particular over a $7 clone atty? Really?

Props to @HardRockVapor for paying it this much lip service. Goes above and beyond IMHO.

Click to expand...

wait
you did the same thing basically with the juice maker. LOL hypocrite

This happens to me too, I followed the link posted by vapor joes, found the website, added to cart click pay here, it didn't go thru, did it again error, please check account number, did it again same message!! I finally gave up, but when I checked my bank, it was there pending, I called my bank CHASE they said they can't see it on my LIST!! Hmmm!!
Next thing I know my account was HACKED!
Hacker spent 750 bucks at HOME DEPOT then the next after I cancelled the account they still tried to purchase $400 worth of goods at Macy's, same city TORRANCE CALIFORNIA..
After that incident,I stop buying online unless it's PAYPAL!! sorry vendors but I just can't trust online shopping without PAYPAL!


VAPE ON

ej1024 said:

This happens to me too, I followed the link posted by vapor joes, found the website, added to cart click pay here, it didn't go thru, did it again error, please check account number, did it again same message!! I finally gave up, but when I checked my bank, it was there pending, I called my bank CHASE they said they can't see it on my LIST!! Hmmm!!
Next thing I know my account was HACKED!
Hacker spent 750 bucks at HOME DEPOT then the next after I cancelled the account they still tried to purchase $400 worth of goods at Macy's, same city TORRANCE CALIFORNIA..
After that incident,I stop buying online unless it's PAYPAL!! sorry vendors but I just can't trust online shopping without PAYPAL!


VAPE ON

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Besides eBay and totally wicked can you give me some pointers on who takes PayPal in the US?
Thanks

I sell CD's, Vinyl, Music memorabilia, and sports cards on eBay so I have money in my PayPal more often than my bank account.

5150sick said:

Besides eBay and totally wicked can you give me some pointers on who takes PayPal in the US?
Thanks

I sell CD's, Vinyl, Music memorabilia, and sports cards on eBay so I have money in my PayPal more often than my bank account.

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If you go to PayPal website you can seArch for a VAPE store that uses paypal.
It's like Apple Pay , Google wallet if u go to the store, and this stores have website as well.


VAPE ON

Temco uses PayPal, too.

i thought paypal was cancelling accounts if the coaught you selling vape supplies, like they did to mama js

Yea good luck with that, 5% of the vape shit I order takes PayPal...

ej1024 said:

This happens to me too, I followed the link posted by vapor joes, found the website, added to cart click pay here, it didn't go thru, did it again error, please check account number, did it again same message!! I finally gave up, but when I checked my bank, it was there pending, I called my bank CHASE they said they can't see it on my LIST!! Hmmm!!
Next thing I know my account was HACKED!
Hacker spent 750 bucks at HOME DEPOT then the next after I cancelled the account they still tried to purchase $400 worth of goods at Macy's, same city TORRANCE CALIFORNIA..
After that incident,I stop buying online unless it's PAYPAL!! sorry vendors but I just can't trust online shopping without PAYPAL!


VAPE ON

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PayPal does not allow vape stores. I contacted them and they initially said using them for our vape store was fine. But when I double-checked (just to absolutely verify that it was ok), they said

'Please be advised that PayPal cannot be used for any electronic cigarettes, components or liquids. I apologize for the confusion and I appreciate your efforts to resolve any confusion.'

Vape store (in the US) are not allowed to use PayPal. If they get caught and/or someone reports them, their accounts get cancelled. Vape stores in China *can* use PayPal.

CrazyChef said:

Temco uses PayPal, too.

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resistance wire has other uses, like in toasters.

CrazyChef said:

Oh, and @HardRockVapor - do you have a response???

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So you sat there and hit Pay over and over 8 times and are mad because the owner decided you had a tumour and then only credited you back with 5?
Make sense thats crazy

Barbara E. said:

PayPal does not allow vape stores. I contacted them and they initially said using them for our vape store was fine. But when I double-checked (just to absolutely verify that it was ok), they said

'Please be advised that PayPal cannot be used for any electronic cigarettes, components or liquids. I apologize for the confusion and I appreciate your efforts to resolve any confusion.'

Vape store (in the US) are not allowed to use PayPal. If they get caught and/or someone reports them, their accounts get cancelled. Vape stores in China *can* use PayPal.

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Not true, the reasons vape stores won't use Paula is because according to. Vapor DNA, expensive!!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

MrScaryZ said:

So you sat there and hit Pay over and over 8 times and are mad because the owner decided you had a tumour and then only credited you back with 5?
Make sense thats crazy

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Read the original post.

CrazyChef said:

Okay, so I rarely buy clone equipment. Someone on this forum (sorry, a can't remember who it was) mentioned that they have a Helios RDA clone by EHPRO that they absolutely love, and that it is extremely cheap. So I figure "What the Hell" and look around the web to check it out. I find one on hardrockvapor.com for $7.00 - Damn, it IS cheap! So I decided to order one...

I order it (plus $2.54 shipping). I click the buy button, and their system responds with a "wrong credit card number" type message. Huh, I must have put in a wrong number somewhere, so I re-enter it. Then I get a "declined" error. No freakin' way. I may not have much, but i DO have $9.54... So I go check out my bank account, and this is what I see:

<PICTURE REMOVED BY STAFF>

Uh, oh... WTF IS THIS?!?!?

So I call and speak with Bob Lewis, the owner. He says he'll look and see if the order went through, and call me right back. The number shown on the bank statement is Bob's personal number. He called back an hour later and said that there is no order for me, and to contact my bank because my bank must have made the mistake. Wait a second here... You're trying to tell me that YOUR company had nothing to do with this and that it's MY bank's fault? Yes. You need to call them.

This dude would accept NO RESPONSIBILITY for the fact that there are 8 pre-authorized sales, to my account, with only 5 of them credited back. I only knew about it because the second time I clicked the buy button the transaction was declined because my bank's software recognized there was a problem.

So...

I'll be calling my bank in the morning to get this taken care of.

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ahh I see