My husband is a chef and has been saving up to buy a good set of knives. He knew what brand he wanted so we researched and came upon this site premiumknives.com having a little bit lower price on all the knives he was looking for. It came to about $40 savings to buy through them. We placed the order online, a very hokey looking site, not very slick (should have been the first warning). Regardless the next day my credit card was charged $495.00. He was thrilled as we both thought this meant the order was in motion. For two weeks we checked their (also hokey) status page. This page is VERY confusing. It is a table-grid that shows you all the things that CAN go wrong with your order, but it is not straightforward enough to tell whether they are suggesting that these things are actually going wrong with your order, or not.

Every day he'd ask me to check it and after several days it said my credit card was "declined" and it was holding up the order. Funny, my online credit card statement showed that we were charged the very night we placed the order. Then it started to show that my delivery address didn't match my card (not true). THEN it said it was on hold because Fedex couldn't deliver to my address (also funny, considering I have shipments sent here with no problem from other retailers, I live in a major downtown area). Now 16 days later, we receive an email saying our order has shipped. Yet, it shows that the order total is $116. We ordered 8 knives that totalled $500 (which we were charged). There is NO explanation of what knives are coming, what knives aren't. No mention of back order etc. Now suddenly there is a link to a form we're supposed to fill out to state we are by law, old enough to buy a "switchblade". Gee, IF I was ordering a switchblade it seems like this form should have been part of the original order, don't you think?

The website claims "Live Customer Service". This is a FALSE claim. When you call their number you get a recording asking you to leave a message, and this promises an email response within 48 hrs. So trying to resolve any sort of issue with this people is a joke. The partial order is to be coming here in a few days and we plan to refuse the order, since they have a "no cancellation policy". I do not believe any of this order will be hassle free. ALSO I find it amusing that the order status page said "Call us Immediately!" regarding my credit card decline, but they reference a number that nobody answers.

I am taking it up with my credit card company and plan to dispute the charge. If you can't offer any customer service that isn't a cheesy canned email response, then don't advertise "Live Customer Service" on your website. This wasn't just a small order, $500 to us was very big - and it represented a lot of savings on my husband's part. Very sad, this was his first online purchasing experience and it has been nothing but a headache. If I have ANY problems regarding a refund, I will be reporting them to the Better Business Bureau in Nebraska where they are located.