Borders Boycott

Yes I know this is not a proposed topic, but I have to put it out there and it's a fairly good forum, no?

In March my mom ordered Stephen's birthday present and Tim's graduation present from Borders.com. Yes..the issue dates back to MARCH! She also ordered a birthday present for my nephew and divided the shipment so that Stephen and Tim would get their stuff here and Nick would get his stuff at home. She more than qualified for free shipping but paid to expedite to Stephen so he'd get it before his birthday. Sooo...Borders messed THAT up. Shipped both parts to her. Including the expedited part and their solution was to simply refund the shipping charges. Great. So my mom sent the books here for the boys. Stephen read one of the books ordered and started on the second one. He was on chapter 5 of The Softwire: Betrayal on Orbis when he realized his book was missing 3 chapters and about 40 pages! Everything from the end of ch 5 to the beginning of Ch 9 was missing. YES this was a publisher issue but Borders should have replaced it right? So my mom called. They sent me a Fed Ex call tag and I said that upon receipt of the book, they'd send a replacement. Seriously people? OK. Book was received late April at Borders. Mom called AGAIN when they didn't send out the new book. Oh we'll get it right out. She indicated they had moved and the book should be shipped to Stephen not to the address they screwed up and shipped to in the first place. Guess where the brain trust shipped it? Yup. To a house they no longer live in!
Tired of the run around she went INTO the store. The lady in the store who was really most helpful was unable to get anyone in "customer service" (let me note I use that term very loosely). Finally the sales associate was able to get someone to say they'd send the book out. Three weeks ago. Yesterday my mom returned to the store saying WE don't have the book, SHE doesn't have it, so where IS it? The nice lady again tried to get "customer service" but was not able to get an answer. I'm going to add here that it is NEVER good when the actual sales associates of a company are unable to get to customer service. Kinda makes the consumer realize we're out in the cold. So the sales associate in the Strongsville, OH Borders is ordering the book to ship to their store and she is going to ship it to us. Wow. The books were ordered in March and it now looks like we'll be getting the product at the END of June? Quality customer service, Borders! This is a case incompetence at the highest level. I have a 6 year old who could have fixed this problem better than Borders's outsourced customer service. I am irritated, frustrated and annoyed. No wonder this company is bankrupt! So, Borders, you are out! And I encourage you all to do the same. Do they not realize I have a choice? I can shop at Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, I can join a book club online, I can even go to the LIBRARY! I've looked at a number of online booksellers and compared. Most are very close in price on most items. Why do we pick one over the other? Reliability. Satisfaction. The knowledge that I WILL get what I paid for.

Let me clarify, I'm not mad I had a problem. I'm more irritated that they can't fix a simple issue for a 9 year old boy. That's really it. Can't or won't. See, the real test of your service, to me, is when a problem arises, how is it handled? Certain places have dealt with them beautifully and I am a loyal customer because of it. Others, like Borders, have completely dropped the ball and I'm done.