Scent Matchers - SCENTMATCHERS SCAM, claims can reproduce discontinued perfumes, takes money, delays production, sends generic scent as recreation and refuses returns! Cadillac Michigan
I placed an order online, and paid at the time of purchase, with SCENTMATCHERS.COM to reproduce the discontinued scent Love's Musky Jasmine which they claimed confidently they could reproduce accurately.
Their website lists orders as shipping within 3 weeks of order placement so after about three and a half weeks of placing the order I emailed Scentmatchers to ask when I could expect my recreated perfume and was given a vague answer that some perfumes were more difficult to reproduce and to check back in a week. I emailed again approximately 10 days later and was told the perfume would ship the next week. It was an additional 2 weeks before I got a shipping notice in my email that my perfume had shipped.
I received the perfume a week later, at this point it was approximately 8 weeks since I had originally placed and paid for the order. (I myself work in a custom business and I am empathetic to custom orders as they can take longer than anticipated so I wasn't too alarmed by the delay). It is interesting to note here that absolutely no paperwork was sent with the perfume, not a receipt, absolutely nothing.
Once I received the perfume I was immediately disappointed as it was a generic Jasmine scent, but thought perhaps my memory was weak so I waited until I met with a friend who had also used the scent and she agreed that it did not represent the original Love's Musky Jasmine in any capacity. At this point I had the bottle for approximately 3 weeks and according to the SCENTMATCHERS website I understood that I had 30 days to return the product if I was dissatisfied for any reason.
I then contacted Lance Masters at support@scentmatchers.com to let him know I was unhappy and would be returning the perfume and to please credit my form of payment for the $59.99 as I did not expect to be credited for the shipping charges. I was told simply that I was outside of the 30 day return period. I then responded that I had only had the perfume in my possession for 3 weeks and that it would be back to him within the 30 day period. He then replied I can only return within 30 days of placing the order. I told him this was laughable as the perfume had not even been created within 30 days of the order being placed and the very term "RETURN" implies that I had received something, as you cannot return what you have not received.
I repeatedly asked for the name of the owner of the business, although I suspect it is Lance himself and got no reply. At that point he ceased to communicate with me. I now believe that this is his scam and not a scent recreation business what-so-ever. Taking orders, waiting until the 30 day period is over, then sending a generic scent in a seemingly customized bottle and refusing returns based on some erroneous return policy.
I will say that had Lance been apologetic in any way for my disappointment and made some effort to rectify the situation I most likely would have been fine with a credit or some sort of compromise, but he offered and suggested nothing which has led me to believe that he never intended to recreate anything.
Unfortunately my only recourse is to take whatever measure I can to let others know that SCENTMATCHERS is a SCAM and makes fraudulent claims that it has no intention of following through on.
DO NOT place an order with SCENTMATCHERS.COM!
Ruth
Jersey City, New Jersey
U.S.A.
6 Updates & Rebuttals
Scentcrafters
Cadillac,Michigan,
U.S.A.
Last general comments
#7REBUTTAL Owner of company
Wed, February 03, 2010
I think one thing that has not been addressed is that the customer keeps referring to having to wait a year for a refund. This is really a distortion of the truth. The customer did not like her first bottle. We offered to try again at no charge and she sent us a sample. We then sent out this second bottle. Then over a year later she contacts us via e-mail for a refund of her original purchase price based on what we had written about offering refunds in this complaint. At this point we no longer have tracking info for a shipment occurring over one year ago so we decide the only fair thing to do is send the customer a check for the original purchase price in full.
In the end the customer received 2 different bottles from us and a full refund. I think we've been more than fair.
tamara
plattsburgh,New York,
USA
slander/libel/unprofessional
#7Consumer Comment
Wed, February 03, 2010
I think it's really lame to expect someone you have stolen from to IMMEDIATELY drop what they are doing to correct THIER name. This company strung me along for over a YEAR, and was quite rude about it. I have all of thier emails as proof. Now this company is using slanderous and libelous tactics to try and get me to say something that just isn't true. So finally I get a check, WHICH HAS NOT CLEARED YET, and they didn't return my bottle as they promised they would and I don't think it's an emergency that I tell everyone that on this forum. Where is my bottle? Where is my replacement money? Don't promise to return a bottle and then don't. That is theft as well.
These people are STILL unprofessional by posting something they had no right to post out of context because I didn't do what they wanted me to do as fast as they wanted me to do it. IF the check clears, I will consider posting that it did, but these guys seem to love to dig thier own graves by not letting things be for a few hours.
Again, they made me wait a YEAR so I think they need to just live with the fact that they are thieves for a little while. If the response came with the least amount of apology, it may be a different story. But I REFUSE to help them clear their good name (what a joke) immediately. It would be wise if NOBODY EVER gave them business again. Funny how these people have the patience of an infant while I was forced to be patient for a year and my emails were perpetually not responded to nor were my phone calls. Now they can't be patient for even a little while. They are just not professional. End of story. Consumers--You have been warned.
Scentcrafters
Cadillac,Michigan,
U.S.A.
We have refunded the customer's money
#7REBUTTAL Owner of company
Tue, February 02, 2010
The customer said she would post here after we refunded her money. She has not. Instead we'll post the e-mail exchange we had with her. She refers to a $250 waste, which I believe she is saying the extremely tiny sample of perfume she sent us to match. We needed to use this to try to match the fragrance and there is none left. We have no interest in keeping a small perfume sample for any reason. Here is the e-mail we received:
From:
This sender is DomainKeys verified
"tamara manor" <tamaram777@yahoo.com>
Add sender to Contacts
To:
"Scentmatchers LLC" <support@scentmatchers.com>
well hello there. gee I'm sorry, I have a policy that I don't make it easy on people who rip me off, since your company made me wait over a year, and you still have my sample which cost me $250. So in life, you make your bed and this one you're gonna have to lie in for a little while. Ta!
Tamara
Don't stop believin'
--- On Tue, 2/2/10, Scentmatchers LLC <support@scentmatchers.com> wrote:
From: Scentmatchers LLC <support@scentmatchers.com>
Subject: Re: read your response on ripoff.com
To: "tamara manor" <tamaram777@yahoo.com>
Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010, 9:17 AM
Hi Tamara,
I noticed you have cashed your check. However, you have not updated the www.ripoffreport.com post as you said you would. Please look into that.
Best Regards,
Adam Schultz
Sales Manager
Scentmatchers LLC
tamara
plattsburgh,New York,
USA
I'll believe it when I see it
#7Consumer Suggestion
Wed, January 20, 2010
I previously reported on this forum and was recently updated that the company wants to make good. So I just emailed scentmatchers.com to see if they mean what they say. They have my money and my original sample, which cost me $250 to find another bottle of on ebay. Just reporting to you and will update if they really do make it right.
Tamara
Scentcrafters
Cadillac,Michigan,
U.S.A.
Scentmatchers Response
#7REBUTTAL Owner of company
Wed, January 20, 2010
Hello,
I am 50% owner of the parent company of Scentcrafters.com and Scentmatchers.com. These are two separate companies. Scentcrafters.com makes custom perfume for individuals and companies. Scentmatchers.com duplicates discontinued perfume and cologne for individuals.
I would like to generally address some of the comments here.
I think that a couple recent testimonials on our Scentcrafters.com page go along ways towards showing we are definitely not a scam or out to defraud anyone. We have testimonials from both the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and Cops And Doughnuts, a bakery store owned by 9 police officers in Claire, MI. They can be found here:
http://www.scentcrafters.com/testimonials.html
I've read over the comments above and I think that some are very legit. We did have a terrible return policy at Scentmatchers.com. It was a 30 day money back guarantee from the order date. Many customers did not receive their bottles for more than 30 days. When they went to return we (stupidly) stuck by our written policy. We compounded a bad policy by being inflexible. We have changed this policy well over a month ago to make it 30 days from the date of receipt of the product. Meaning people have 30 days to return the product after they receive it. Note that most perfume and cologne companies do not allow returns AT ALL once a product has been opened.
If anyone reading this was a past customer and had a problem with the old policy mentioned above please contact us at support@scentmatchers.com and we'll send you a refund check. We apologize for the bad policy and want to make it right.
We have also had some Customer Service issues. I think it takes a certain temperament to work in Customer Service and we've had the wrong people for the job. We've replaced our Customer Service Manager and it is our priority to make sure that our customers receive top notch customer service at all times. We do process literally thousands of orders a year and most of our customer's are extremely satisfied, however, even these few complaints are far too many for us to be happy with.
Finally the return policy complaints do reference our product quality. All of these complaints are for Scentmatchers.com. What Scentmatchers.com does is match/duplicate discontinued perfume and cologne. So customers that order are so in love with their favorite fragrances that they want them reproduced even after they have been discontinued. As you can imagine they have very high expectations. We almost always meet these expectations. In some cases we cannot, and we even state this on our site, that we are not always successful. What we do is very difficult and we are successful a vast majority of the time.
The rest of the complaints seem to be either people that have never purchased from us, the same people commenting multiple times, or in the most upsetting cases, completely made up stories. I think you can pick out the more bizarre ones yourselves, the only thing we can think is that it's either our competitors, or customers we've made so angry with our previous return policy that they've decided to lie and fabricate. This site does not verify the identity of posters, nor can it realistically hope to. Nor does it take any steps to ensure that anything they are posting is true.
This will be our one and only post regarding on this website. We don't feel it is the proper format to handle specific customer complaints. If you have any specific questions for us please e-mail us at support@scentcrafters.com or support@scentmatchers.com.
Thank you for helping make our company better. Because of your complaints we have changed our Return Policy and hired a new Customer Service Manager.
Best Regards,
Adam Schultz
Sales Manager
Scentcrafters.com & Scentmatchers.com
tamara
plattsburgh,New York,
USA
SAME DEAL in NY
#7
Fri, August 21, 2009
I cannot even express the disgust I feel about this shady company. I have read all the reports here and my experience is the same EXACT thing as everyone else. SCENTMATCHERS/SCENTCRAFTERS is nothing but 100% scam!
I have my receipt for the product which was just an email-- they sent a little business card with their non fragrance fragrance which I sent back to Michigan ($4.80+ insurance)and sent them my only teeny sample I had left in my bottle.FYI- The post office could not track this down. I used the machine at the post office and may have misplaced my receipt but the company said they got it and they redid it and resent it so why should the post office pay for their stealng?
I have been to the Attorney General's Office and just filed with the Better Business bureau. This company has not responded to the GA whatsoever. I have a stack of emails between me and Scentmatchers/Scentcrafters/Adam Schultz.
I cannot get a refund via a credit card as some others have because I paid via echeck (never pay by echeck) as now they have my bank account information and the bank only investigates scams up to 3 months going backwards.
They emailed me and said they had sent it to me and when I asked for tracking info they stopped communicating with me. Like Ruth said, if they were in the least bit cordial we could tolerate this but they are just scam artists. If anyone knows how to recoup my loss, I would appreciate it. I had to buy a bottle of my fragrance on ebay for $250.00 as it is retired and hard to find and I still don't have my original bottle back. So they have my $66 plus I had to fork over $250 to buy a new one and my time is valuable too. Thanks.