Patrick F.

I originally ordered a NaceCare GVE 370 "George" Wet/Dry/ Extractor Vacuum with a 26A kit on Amazon.com. That was a horrible experience in and of itself, but NOT the fault of the manufacturer. What follows IS the fault of the manufacturer. Parts were missing from the Amazon order and the Amazon vendor would not do anything about it, so I called the manufacturer to get information about the specific parts I needed to make the equipment work.

First of all: I called and stayed on hold for 3.5 hours, with the same extremely annoying repetitive message playing over and over and over every 10 seconds -- they don't answer their phones. So I gave up and emailed their sales general mailbox.

Second: they don't read their emails. I emailed them a photo of the extractor kit that was supposed to be included with the original order, asking them to please identify the specific parts that were missing based on a photo. All they said over and over and over again -- over multiple weeks with days in between emails--- was you need to contact Amazon to resolve your issue. Even though I already send the amazon vendor wouldn't supply it. Then after many more emails explaining that I just needed the parts in the photo identified, they told me the name of the whole kit, which I already knew, and not the individual part names/numbers of the three parts I needed. It was a huge waste of time so I just ended up just buying a whole new extractor Kit for $300+ when all I needed was two parts from that kit.

Third: once I did get the extractor kit and finally got set up to use the very expensive equipment, it broke within a week and is now unusable. When you call the manufacturer for a warranty claim, they don't answer the phone, but they do call you back. So perhaps it's a sales department issue.

Either way I am concerned their equipment is poorly made and I will never waste my time calling them for sales ever again.

After several thousand dollars in positive experiences with WebstaurantStore over a couple of years, they have now lost a customer (and quite a bit of future revenue from my business) forever.

I purchased a ~$750 Avanti brand countertop display freezer. It arrived and did not work despite following the instructions in the manual to the letter. Upon calling customer support they said "we're declaring this defective" and sent me another unit of the same model. That was the right thing to do, but that one didn't work either!

In addition, with the second freezer they also mistakenly shipped me a 100 pound box of freezer paper that I did not order.

I called them again and said that this was causing a lot of disruption to my business and I needed a resolution quickly because of lost sales and incovenience to my customers having large defective freezers taking up space in our lobby. They said this is a known issue with this freezer and my options were take A) a THIRD replacement of the known to be defective unit or B) take store credit.

I said given the track record of TWO defective units, that I'd pass on a third since i simply don't have time to deal with it, or have any belief that the equipment would be reliable in the long term. I have very specific space requirements for the freezer unit I need and none of the other options on their website met those needs aside from this defective series. I said "if you can source one of this superior brand, I will happily use the store credit toward that purchase." (That was reasonable on my part and the right thing to do on their part.) They told me they couldn't do it and so I'm stuck with store credit at a place where they KNOWINGLY sell defective merchandise.

Now I am stuck having to buy a very expensive freezer from another supplier AND I am further stuck with the significant financial and time related costs of legally and properly disposing of TWO defective freezers. It ain't gonna be cheap.

To add insult, this company was more than happy to send over a fedex shipping label for the return over their 100lbs of mistakenly delivered freezer paper that they went out of their way to "thank me for my honesty" for returning.

WebstaurantStore could have easily saved this relationship by doing the right thing, or perhaps by even arranging to have the defective equipment removed from my property. Instead I have lost time, lost sales, a lobby full of defective freezers, credit I can't use and an even more expensive freezer on the way from their competitor who I will return to instead of Webstaurantstore forever.