Delray M.

Adorama is a half billion dollar company for a reason.

I ordered 2 cloth back drops for photography use once, received them, but had no immediate use for them so I put them on a shelf and forgot about them. Flash forward a year or so when I need cloth back drops and was slightly confused that BOTH of the back drops I had were green(!). I thought that was odd, but I didn't remember exactly what I had ordered. After some thought, and checking my order confirmation, I realized I never ordered green cloth back drops at all.

So I made a long shot plea to them to take them back & give me a credit, or exchange them, and they refused. They wouldn't even buy them back as used (one was used once) backdrops. Nothing.

As for sales of used gear, you will get no deals from them. They ride the line of market value like champs. I've purchased many used items from them through ebay and they're never a single dollar below the prevailing market value.

As for sale of used gear to them, you will not receive a fair deal. Unless you're desperate, avoid selling them your used gear because what they do is make you a decent (not great) offer based on your initial description of the gear, then you ship your gear to them, then they "evaluate" that gear and make you a real offer that will be 70% of the initial offer.

Everyone has bank horror stories, and banks are pretty much universally despised, but THIS bank...

I had a business (DBA) checking account with Citizens and then one day the bank agent tells me I have to open a personal account because I'm not allowed to deposit checks made out to my name into my DBA account. This was an outright lie. And, the guy even pressures me to open a 3rd account, a savings account that I didn't want or need.

My first mortgage was with Citizens and the process of getting approved was akin to (I'd imagine) trying to get an exit visa in post war USSR. I had to re-submit signed documents multiple times and when I asked why, all I got back was "just do it." I'm not even kidding. The process took months.

On my 2nd mortgage (what's wrong with me?) the process was maybe 5% less aggravating but I had 3 closing dates come and go with no explanation and the home seller ended up losing money do to the repeated delays. I'm lucky he didn't say - forget it, and sell to another buyer.

I bought a 5 year 3% CD and Citizens math indicated I'd receive a certain amount upon maturity. As it turns out, the projected maturity amount is about 15% less. More lies from Citizens.

About 3 or 4 years after I closed my Citizens business bank account I get an *MICC check from them which is a refund amount from a merchant that they disburse when the refunded funds don't post to a bank account. Since the funds wouldn't post to the account (because the account doesn't exit) what does Citizens do? They mail me a check made out to that same business, which is defunct. They could have made the check out to my name which would have ensured I could access the funds. They could have contacted me to get information that would have ensured a successful transfer of the funds.

So right now, I'm on the phone with about the 15th Citizens Bank customer service agent I've spoken to (one of whom promised me a new check in 2 weeks - 4 weeks ago), trying to find out how I can get my refunded funds. They are having someone call me back...

The check I got came with a letter saying to reference "MICC" If I had questions for customer service. Not a single one of the 15 or so people I spoke to knew what an MICC check was. I had to explain it to each and every one.

Exasperating. I get locked out of my account and the ONLY way to regain access is to recall the last 3 items I bought on amazon - which was over 3 months ago. And I have to ask, how is ANYONE going to do that when they're ordering from multiple websites on a regular basis? Not to mention, I can't even look at my order confirmation emails from amazon to see what I ordered. Why? Because they no longer provide item information in order confirmation emails (they used to). They just give a date, dollar amount, and an amazon link to the order page (which is useless if you get locked out of your account).

Other issues:

They did away with commenting on user reviews. So there's no interaction allowed anymore between consumers.

If you order anything that comes in a glass jar, like nutritional supplements and the order is fulfilled by amazon, you're guaranteed to get broken jars. And guess what? They do not allow returns on that kind of item.

I had an order literally disappear from my account page. I had the confirmation emails FROM AMAZON but they could not find the order in their system. So what do they do all of the 4 times I contact them about this? They initiate a fraudulent activity notice which locks me out of my account - FOUR TIMES. There never was any fraudulent activity. So I got stuck with an item I needed to return.

I've been an ebay user in good standing with perfect feedback for over 20 years. I even excused a $2,000 loss years ago when they found in a seller's favor over an inoperable item I bought and returned. However, I currently refuse to do any buying or selling on ebay because they forced me to refund a large amount of money for an item I auctioned off, AFTER the winning bidder received the item. Did the winning bidder give me my money back? Nope. Is that ebay user still on eBay? Yep. Ebay has more rules and loopholes than any other similar platform and they WILL burn you if you deviate even a little bit.

CL is a horrendous platform. Anyone can flag your posts and get them removed, and it seems even CL mods can judge users and remove their posts without any warning or explanation. It's basically the Twitter of online classifieds since apparently, any mouth-breathing, hot pocket eating CL moderator can sit slouched in their cubicle and remove posts, no matter how innocuous they are. Do they then issue an explanation? No. Are there prompts not to post stuff they don't like? No. Do they have a functional help forum? No. It's like a game for them.