iHerb

I sent an email to let iHerb know my credit card was compromised around the same time I had an auto-ship. I have been receiving automated emails for weeks saying they are behind on getting to the issue. Finally they blocked my account and are asking for an explanation of "why" there was a chargeback. If a human would read my email from the begininng, then IHerb could resolve their own question and I am happy to give them the new credit card #. I have spent alot of time on-line trying to communicate with iHerb thru their chat, email and it is maddening to resolve giving them monies. Not sure what else to do, except realize they don't want my money and my business.
Original email sent on Nov 4th
LINDA NEIRA HALE
November 4,2022 at 7:29 AM

Hello iHerb,

My credit card on the order below was compromised and the card was canceled. The purchase from iHerb was flagged and will probably come to back to your company as a fraudulent charge. This charge is accurate and the order did show up at my house I am keeping this order.

I have received my new credit card in the mail and wanted to make sure I get this issue settled with your company. Once you review it, please let me know how to correct the payment and activate my account again.

This is only the second negative review I have left in my lifetime. I don't tend to review things one way or the other because it takes time. However, the experience that I had with iHerb was extremely frustrating and I will certainly never order anything from their company again. I see that many other people have had similarly negative experiences as well. I ordered several items and paid extra for 2-day delivery because I was going out of town and needed to take the ordered supplements with me. I have ordered 2-day delivery from Swanson and other companies with no problem. If only I had ordered from Swanson this time. IHerb has some great prices, but this makes little difference if your item/s never arrive. It has been almost 3 weeks and I have not yet seen my order. Two day delivery... at this point I would be happy if it had been a two week delivery. I would like to request a refund but cannot do so because my account is somehow "inactive." I have tried multiple times to reset the password or to even be able to access information about getting a refund, but it is impossible to get info about the refund without logging into my account, which requires a password that I am unable to get. I have tried everything that seems available on their site but to no avail; no response from customer service other than a useless chat bot and automated email. They indicate they will send a code for a password reset but the code never arrives. This is literally the worst customer service experience I have ever had with an online retailer. At this point I am doubting I will see either my order or to obtain a refund given the inadequacy of their response so far which is non-existent.

First order went fine. Second order took over an hour to "submit" with no reason. 24 hour later received an email that there was an issue processing the order and to log back in and fix (with no instructions on what I was supposed to fix). Logged back in and wasn't sure if I fixed, duplicated the entire order, or didn't do anything at all. Tried calling to find out if I had processed correctly and found out THEY DONT HAVE A PHONE NUMBER. You get a message that they do no customer service over the phone? This is where I started to panic. I immediatly used the website to send an email explaining that I wasn't sure if I had correclty addressed the issue, but if there was any sort of delay in the order I needed to cancel since no one would be home for an extended period to bring the package in. No response. At the end of the day I received an email that the package had shipped and would now be arriving the first day of the vacation. I tried again to contact customer service and did online chat. He could not cancel. So now I have to pay someone to go to my house and take the package off the front porch. Will not use this company ever again.

I am updating my original review below... I finally received a call back from a manager at iHerb. He sounded sincerely sorry on behalf of the company, helped me personally, did what he said he would. I also asked him to explain to the powers that be, that they need to bring back phone support. I am sticking with my 1 star rating for iHerb because after many months of waiting to see whether they will bring back phone support or not, iHerb has not!

Original Review:
I am... Oops, I meant I was a loyal iHerb customer for about a decade, and was very satisfied until recently. You never really know who you are dealing with until there is an issue. An item was missing from a recent order No problem. The problem is that trying to get the issue resolved turned into a mountain of necessary extra work and aggravation. I ended up going back and forth for almost one week with iHerb though email because the representative did not seem to comprehend what I was requesting, no matter how clearly I communicated my needs. Deciding that I need to put an end to this runaround, I decided to call. I found out that iHerb no longer offers phone support A growing trend today among businesses, a foolish one, at that. Forced to write, I thought I would try the only other option, live chat. I explained to the chat rep that I have a serious health issue and therefore typing is extremely difficult and taxing for me, and kindly requested that they make an exception and grant me phone support, but was denied. I asked for a manager and was told that one was not available. I requested that when a manager becomes available, that they contact me. That was 24-hours ago and still nada. Also, my issue is still unresolved. Aside from the considerable aggravation and loss of time over an extremely simple and straightforward issue, what does it say about a company if they will not accommodate a sick or handicapped person!?

I have been a loyal customer to Iherb for 3 years now but since my last order with them which was placed on 10 Oct, 2018 (# *******) I will never ever again buy from Iherb. Their customer service is inconsistent, incompetent, irresponsible and careless. They don't give a $#*! to customer's order/ shipment/ inquiries.

Either Iherb or your shipping company (DHL which Iherb choose to affiliate with) refused to take responsibility for my order.

I used to place many orders to be shipped to Hong Kong and there were no problem. But my last order was sent to Vietnam as I wanted to give my mom a gift. I thought Iherb would know how to handle the shipment with customs and their DHL logistic company in Vietnam, but I was wrong. Other foreigner friends of mine have had no problem with Vietnam custom and logistic from Iherb, except me as I am a Vietnamese so they want to suck my blood. Now my order is still with Custom clearance in DHL's custody and they help nothing beside asking me to do their jobs: custom clearing with full of paper works, taxes (import tax, VAT, etc) clearance, fee for checking products hygiene or I have to get a hygienic certificate from manufacture which Iherb failed to provide it (Iherb even asked me to contact direct to manufactures in the US to get one), etc.

With all the troubles I and my family are going through in Vietnam, I finally requested Iherb to help ask DHL to ship my order to Hong Kong rather than return it to their warehouse as it would reduce costs for customers and waste everyone's time. But they refused to help.

I will keep writing bad reviews about you, Iherb, until you get your $#*! together and serve the customers right. Stop putting your right/bull$#*! first as we are your customers. You failed to do your job and refused to compensate the customers.

Iherb is a bad company. Don't ever shop with them.

My invoice from iherb says it is in Canadian $ but my credit card did an exchange of Canadian to US dollars. Definitely was misled.

I have had the most horrific experience with iHerb. I placed an order worth $ 75 from India and when the order arrived, I was informed that I'd have to pay an additional $45 in customs duty on the order. This would make the price of the product far more expensive than what it was sold here in India for. I decided to send the product back to iHerb as they had not warned me about these exorbitant customs duty that I'd have to pay.

When I tried to contact them about getting a refund, their customer service team informed me that the cost of returning the product would amount to as much as I had paid for the product and hence I was not eligible for any refund. They then made an offer to refund 50% of my customs duty should I choose to accept the order and pay the taxes. I figured this was a better option than losing all my money so I paid an additional $45 in taxes.

When I requested iHerb to refund 50% of the taxes I paid back to my credit card they then told me that they would only be able to give me this amount in store credit. This credit is absolutely useless to me because shopping at iHerb is ridiculously expensive for someone living outside of the US since there is such a huge surcharge of customs duty.

Apparently on iHerb's website, it is listed in fine print that "Duties and Taxes may be collected at delivery ", but what is the expected amount of that never stated. Most people don't even read this fine print, and those that do probably are unaware of how steep these charges are. IHerb ought to be giving an estimate of these charges upfront to their customers so that they can make an informed decision.

I feel cheated and disgusted at the service I received at iHerb, they clearly don't care about customer satisfaction at all and have lost me as a customer forever. I would like to reach out to as many people as possible, shopping from this website to let them know how terrible they are and don't care about informing you of the actual price that you will end up paying for the products you purchase.

Their no name brands are totally garbage, don't waste your money, placebo pills, garbage, I bought Melatonin Natrol, 10 mg, I took two pills, no effect and tested it three times.

I live in New Zealand and took at face value the iherb website's claims to provide fast and reliable service. I used their recommended shipping method, DHL Global Priority Mail. My first order, in July, arrived promptly and safely. I repeated the order at the end of August and that second order has not arrived. I had to send four emails to iherb before they replied to me. They suggested the delay was due to "International Shipping; Local Customs Regulations or your Local Delivery Provider."

As a retired journalist I have the time and some idea how to research this. The NZ Customs hold comprehensive records of packages sent to New Zealand residents which are currently being held for inspection or have been returned to sender or destroyed. My contact there told me that under my name and address, there is no record of a package from iherb.com falling into this category. The local delivery provider (New Zealand Post/DHL Courier Post) also have no record of receiving the package and referred me to DHL Global Mail headquarters in Frankfurt.

DHL Global reported: "We find only the DHL World track system following package status and can tell you that the packet was not sent from the USA since 30.08.2013."

I passed on this info to Customer Service at iherb and they have repeated their previous response, adding: "We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you and we appreciate your patience."

Well, frankly I need the product and my patience has run out. I'd advise international consumers to be very wary of this company. They appear to have little idea about how to conduct an online or mail order business. They say there is no way to trace a package once it has left the US, but in this day and age that is not true. My first package arrived with no less than four bar codes attached at various stages of its journey. All these will have left a footprint, even if it is not readily accessible to the general consumer. In this case, I have DHL's report that the package never left the US.