Lite Machines...how do they get away with treating customers like crap ?
Aaaah, the old "he said, he said" story. It's happened to me b4 and it'll happen, from time to time, again to many of us.
Paul,
Do you have the original online order form submitted by Matt ?
Matt,
Do you have the original order form ? I'm assuming you either printed out the online order when you pressed the "order" button or received a confirmation e-mail of the order ? What exactly is the part description ? Did it have "117" in the description like Paul said ? Maybe you can post a picture of it here.
Anyway, not that I have a clue as to what a crutch is or what it looks like but I do know that customers have a tendency to assemble things b4 fully verifiying it's the right one or trying to make the wrong part fit anyway. Is this wrong ? Technically, yes, but it is human nature.
Lastly, many of us love a certain vendor because we have never had a problem or the problem was minor or very "black & white". It's a tough situation for the vendor to know when to eat their costs in the name of "customer service" or refuse to budge for a customer who may be taking advantage. It's a tough call. To further complicate things, many online stores operate with a very low overhead and low markup so the profit margin is tight. That's one of the reasons why shipping is a frequent sticking point since the item's cost may be passed on to the manufacturer but the shipping is absorbed by the vendor. The problem with that is shipping costs are higher for the customer than the vendor due to volume.
Another example of why we need to be careful when ordering and verify our order b4 using.