CAPITOL LIGHTING

This was actually our second purchase from Capitol Lighting. It started great. We placed our order on August 18 and selected some lights based on promised 2-3 day shipping, as indicated on Capitol's website. The order was actually placed in the store.. We had a somewhat restricted schedule because of contractor availability and coordination of efforts among several vendors. One of the lights got delivered as promised and it was perfect! However, after waiting 2 weeks for 3 more lights that were supposed to be immediately available, I made several calls only to find out that these lights were on back order with an indefinite delivery date because they were on a boat from China and who knows how long it will take to clear customs. Although Capitol supposedly has a system to notify customers of a problem, that never got to us. Further, their website continued to show those items as 2-3 day delivery even after the problem was identified. Our salesman tried to find alternatives, but what he came up with were of a type that we had very specifically said "NO" to when we were in the showroom. So we cancelled the order on September 9 and asked for a refund to our Credit Card (we had already paid for the entire order). I saw on our credit card account that a pending transaction (for $1.00) was posted the following day. However, no actual credit was posted (and AMEX advised me that a credits is posted within 24-48 hours after the merchant processes it. When I talked to the store manager, she told me that Corporate had trouble for two days following the 9th where no credit card transactions were processed. When I asked why we weren't notified, she said "We should have been." At no time did we ask for any compensation other than the credit due us. We are totally disappointed by Capitol Lighting's inability to communicate in a timely gfashion with correct information. Also, we are disappointed that nothing was said that would indicate what they would do to insure this type of problem would not reoccur. So, while their selection is great and their pricing is competitive, their poor customer service will assure that we will seek other lighting suppliers in the future.