I want my two dollars! AKA Shame on Butterflymall.com! A Rant by Guest Bloggist Deb
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: My Chemical Romance : Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge
First off, I apologize in advance-this is going to be a seriously long bitch-fest post on my part, devoid of any humor (unless Meg edits and adds quality snark). I’m. That. Fricking. Mad. Over freaking $47 owed to me. Seriously. So here’s the story.

Last Christmas, being the intrepid bargain shopper that I am, I used a website called Butterflymall.com for a bunch of my gift purchases. Ya’ know, to save a little coin. For those of you unfamiliar with Butterflymall.com it is a shopping site where, when you make purchases from other retailers (like Nordstrom’s, Gap, etc.) through the butterflymall.com site, they promise you a percentage of your purchase as a rebate in the form of a future credit or mailed check AKA cash money. So if you go through their site and make a $100 purchase from say, Gap.com, they offer a 4% rebate off that purchase. The retailers pay Butterflymall.com a referral fee and they purport to send a percentage of the savings back to you. Sounded pretty sweet to me!

Stay with me here, it’s gonna’ get fugly.

Now there are a few of these sites that legitimately offer this advantage and are actually reputable, Ebates.com for example. I made a few purchases last year through them, requested my owed rebate check and it was delivered within a few weeks. What attracted me to Butterflymall.com was that their rebate percentages were much higher than the others and they were getting a bunch of press, so I signed up. (Once again proving that if it sounds to good to be true…it is!) All was good in the world of online shopping, until I nicely requested my promised rebate check.

It then turned quickly into a massively annoying poop fest!

To make a REALLY, REALLY long story short (unlike Meg, I can do that!), I made several requests for the aforementioned check, starting in mid-February, and by late September, I had received jack for my efforts but a few canned email responses telling me they were “processing” my request (after seven months? When their website states it takes a few weeks to a month) AKA ‘blah, blah,blah,blah…go away little missy.’ Come on! How stupid do you think I am? Apparently, a total moron…

Most sane people would have given up by now, as it is ‘only’ $47 at stake here. I say “No way Jose! Not on my watch!” They have thrown down the gauntlet after bitch slapping me with a totally stinky glove! I never give up on this kind of shit! Bring it on bitches! So I turned to Google, the search wagon of life, looking for other complaints. At first, not much turned up but shameless press releases given by their CEO, Dan Sonerhell. Oops, I’d better keep him anonymous, so we’ll just call him ‘San Oderhell’, who is a former public relations executive and now touted as an “Internet shopping guru”. PUHLEEZE! I mean, sure he might be great at P.R., but it is obvious he doesn’t know Dick, or Jane for that matter, about customer service!

Finally (finally!), I stumbled onto a website that had a message board where there were numerous posts from rampant fashionistas about Butterflymall.com, and how no one who used them received a check. EVER. This was one pissed-off group with post after post ranting about how they were duped out of their great bargain by Butterflymall.com’s refusal to send the promised rebate. Refusal, or completely inept business practices, no one could really decide which.

Here’s a tip: never, ever, piss off shopping-obsessed gals, because they are nothing if not bargain savvy! Hell, if I bought a $900 Louis Vuitton handbag via Butterflymall.com’s arrangement with eLuxury.com (which, BTW, offers a 5.6% rebate, reducing the cost of the bag by $50.40, IF they actually honored it-fat chance!), I’d rant all day long on a message board too. I found out from the fashionistas that the only way anyone EVER got their rebate from Butterflymall.com, was to report them to the Better Business Bureau.

Can you believe that steaming pile of crap?

So, I followed their advice and submitted a report to the BBB.org (Better Business Bureau), but not before I emailed Butterflymall.com one last time, telling them I was reporting them to BBB.org if I didn’t get the money they owed me.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. No response. In fact, that rat bastard, ‘San Oderhell’, deleted my email without even opening it!

I now realize that I am dealing with a company whose employees and CEO have the collective intelligence of Jessica Simpson! I mean, WTF! Is it chicken or tuna?

About a month later I got an email from one of their representatives stating that Butterflymall.com researched the situation, realized I was owed money and that they had promptly sent me the check and they considered my case “closed”.

Mutha’ trucking liars!

It is now December of 2005 and I have yet to see my “promptly sent out check”. I just re-submitted a complaint with BBB.org, as well as Fraud.org, and Consumeraffairs.com for fraud.

Why expend all of this effort over a measly 47 bucks? Because nobody slaps me upside the head with a stinky glove and gets away with it! It’s all about the principle at this point! Seriously. My hope is twofold: One, that no other poor slob gets suckered in as I did by Butterfly.com and that two, others out there who are wondering why it’s taking eons to get their promised rebate checks, Google this company, stumble across my guest rant and realize that they aren’t going to get a check from Butterflymall.com in this lifetime or any other! Maybe they, too, will get pissed off enough to take a few minutes to report them to BBB.org. Or even better, one of the retailers paying this company referral fees will see this and yank their contract with Butterflymall.com!

(Hey, if you’re gonna dream why not dream really big!)

And maybe, just maybe, ‘San Oderhell’ and his merry band of village idiots, errrr scam artists, errrr employees, will get their act together and deliver on what they promise!

So buyer beware! Don’t buy into the happy promises painted by Butterflymall.com! You will come away from the experience feeling as bitter and unfulfilled as if you had just eaten an entire box of Snackwells…