Complaint Review: Pet Stones USA - Internet

 My Baby passed away towards the end of April. We looked online and saw on a third party website where pet stones usa custom made headstones. We ordered the headstone through the third party site, then after emailing Christy the picture and specifications of the headstone she mentioned we could order a stand through their site. It was a difficult time for myself and the family, made even more so by the unusual amount of rain we had during that time. It stormed during his service and we had to keep pushing the burial back due to all of the rain and standing water. We were finally able to put him to rest, although due to the standing water and rain soak ground it was still a task. However, once buried the rains returned. Due to the dampness of the ground his headstone and stand was not put together and setout until towards the middle of June. It remained in the original packaging set away. After the stand and headstone was setup, we had a view of it from the window. The next day we went to check on it and we noticed it had fallen over. When we went out to try to stand it back up, the stand shifted a bit and we noticed the screw laying on the ground with the nut still screwed on. The screw had snapped/broken apart from its weld point. When the headstone fell over it ended up receiving a crack across the top. We of course were devastated, the children started crying, as did I, because we just want him to be able to rest in peace... We tried looking up the information on third party site, but was unsuccessful, we then tried finding a customer service number for the third party site. We tried gluing the screw back on when we could not find the information, but since there was really nothing for it to adhere to, it would not hold. We then began searching for the emails of purchase. It took some time to find the emails, as I could not remember the company name and we had hundreds of emails since that time. Once we found it I contacted Christy explaining that due to all of the heavy rain we just now had a chance to set out his headstone and stand, unfortunately it broke and how do we go about getting it replaced. I thought they would send us a return label to ship back the defective item and replace it at no charge since we did nothing wrong. She stated she could understand the stone breaking, but not the stand. She then asked for pictures, I sent pictures of both. She then stated she couldn't see what I was referring to and asked me to resend them, which I did, this time I took them closer up and placed the broken screw againgst a background where anybody could see it. Brent then emailed me stating it was an easy fix, and told me to go to Lowes and pick up another screw and bolt and screw it in the hole. I had to explain to him just as I explained to Christy, that it cannot be screwed in because there are no threads for a screw, nor is the hole deep enough because it was welded onto a thin sheet of metal. For whatever reason they could not grasp this concept, which tells me they had no clue of their own product. He replied, well I don't know what you want me to do, you can purchase another one, we will give you a discount. Why should I have to repurchase a product that was obviously defective from the start and didn't even hold up to do what it was designed to do. He then tried to say oh well the screw looks like it is bent, so something had to fall on it to cause it to break. The screw is not bent, which you can see from the photos, if something fell on it how did it completely skip the top screw and hit the bottom one, which is directly under it, not damaging any other part of the stand? It doesn't make sense... Anyway, we went back to the third party site and after some time finally found the customer service conatct information and contacted them to try to resolve the issue The portion purchased through the third party is currently being resolved, so I will no get into that... Unfortunately, I only purchased the headstone through the third party site and the stand through petstonesusa.com, which I am currently trying to get resolved. We currently have his stand resting on top of pieces of brick, with a larger piece of brick behind it to hold it up and it has been holding thus far... At this point we just want a full refund for all of the stress and aggravation this has caused us. It should not have been that hard to send us a return label, and replace the items at no charge, since the screw snapped off the stand from the weld point. This was obviously a defect in manyfacturing, since it did not hold up as it was designed and/or intended. Thank you!