My game-mad friend @lgladdy told Twitter about his poor (and possibly illegal) experience with ShopToNet. According to his Tweet, Liam placed a pre-order with ShopToNet for a computer game. They took the order, but then when they processed the payment, they took more than Liam had agreed to. Ouch.

So, not having heard of them before, I had a look at ShopToNet and found their Twitter feed – and with it a massive slanging match.

It appears another Twitter user, @cmoorin, was having trouble with his order. However, instead of taking the usual customer services route of trying to find the problem and solve it, ShopToNet seemed to take offence and called their customer “wrong”, illiterate and even accused him of scamming them:

ShopToNet get it very wrong indeed

Granted their customer misunderstood something, but instead of explaining and appeasing their customer, they resorted to sarcastic “well, find a new supplier” responses and calling @cmoorin a “scammer”

And all in public view of social media. The equivalent of yelling at a man your shop, in plain sight and earshot of your other customers. You. Just. Don’t. Do. That.

ShopToNet’s misunderstanding with a customer – and with social media – now means that thousands of would be customers are jotting them down on their ecommerce blacklist and people who don’t even buy video games often are writing blogs such as this and delving through thier T&Cs, uncovering irregularities.

And as I hit ‘publish, they are still arguing with the poor lad…

UPDATE: They admitted that even after order they would have tried to charge more money to @lgladdy if they had his card details. Horrendous.