What’s up everyone? That special time is upon us, the holiday gift giving and receiving season. We all know that unless the gift is cash (always the right size and always the right color) we are going to have to return and exchange some products at some point.

This leads us to the topic at hand, how Getzs.com will be handling return / exchanges this year. Here is a brief (and candid) run down of our “Holiday Return and Exchange Policy”.

First and foremost, check this out:

** WE HAVE EXTENDED OUR WINDOW FOR RETURNING AND EXCHANGING PRODUCTS FOR THIS HOLIDAY SEASON **
Any order placed between October 1st, 2007 and the end of the December 2007 can be returned or exchanged until January 20th, 2008.

Secondly, unfortunately we do not cover the cost of shipping a products back to us. You are responsible for any shipping charges incurred when returning a product or exchanging a product.

Now that you know that important information, read on…

– Returns –

Returns are never a problem, please fill out the return / exchange form with as much information as you can. Your name, phone number, and order number are essential. Please note that returns will be refunded to the credit card used for the initial purchase. So if your sister buys you a Carhartt jacket and you decide you don’t want it, the funds are going back to sis’s credit card. Not only is that our policy but it is that of our Merchant Service payment processor as well. We apologize for any inconvenience, but it is out of our hands. Also note that refunds do take up to 4 business days (after we receive your return) to reflect on your credit card or banking statement.

If you would like, by request only, we can issue you a Getzs.com gift certificate for the refund amount if you wish to use the funds to shop with us in the future. Please include your email address in the return information so we can issue you the gift certificate code.

As always, it is our discretion to reject any return that we deem unsellable. So if you send us back something that your cat slept on for a week, someone smoked a pack of cigarettes around, or you wore to work, we are going to reject it. We respect you, we don’t send you used stuff when you purchase it, please respect us in return.

– Exchanges –

We like exchanges. Again, please fill out the return/exchange form to the best of your ability (your name, phone number, and order number are the essentials). Also let us know what you would like done, do you need a smaller size, different color, different product? Please be specific. There are two things I want to throw on the table about exchanges. Especially after the holiday rush, some products may be either out of stock for a period of time, or sold out entirely. If that happens to a product you would like to exchange to, we will contact you immediately.

Here is the other thing. The powers that be require us to charge $6.95 to cover reshipping the exchange back to you. Please remember that unless accompanied with a check or money order (please don’t send cash), the $6.95 will be charged to the card used for initial purchase, so Aunt Judy might wonder why she received a $6.95 charge from us, and that is the reason. Please allow up to 4 business days for an exchange to be re-shipped out.

As always, it is our discretion to reject any exchange that we deem unsellable. So if you send us back something that your cat slept on for a week, someone smoked a pack of cigarettes around, or you wore to work, we are going to reject it. We respect you, we don’t send you used stuff when you purchase it, please respect us in return.

– Mistakes –

I am not saying we make alot of mistakes, in fact, you would be surprised if you saw this place, that we don’t make more they we really do. I think our error rate last year was less than 1% of total shipments. If you have received an incorrect item or package, please let us know immediately. Call us at 1.800.746.7438 and we will take the necessary steps to make it right. We will cover all shipping charges to make your order correct, including arranging for a shipping carrier to get the incorrect merchandise from you.

Sometimes we ship items in separate packages and those packages do not arrive on the same day. If you are missing part of your order, please let us know, chances are good that they are on the way in a separate box or bag.

– Lost Return/Exchange Forms –

It’s going to happen, no big deal. Please visit http://www.getzs.com/returnform.pdf to print a new one. Please make sure you use this form, it really speeds up the process of a return or an exchange.

We hope that this information helps make your life a little easier this holiday season. We truly appreciate your business and we will do whatever we can (within reason) to make sure your shopping experience has been an excellent one. From all of us, to all of you and yours, Happy Holidays….

If you were shopping on Getzs.com Monday night you may have noticed that our site was not available. I would like to explain to you, our customers how a series of events caused Getzs.com to be off-line between 9:00P to 1:00A EST Monday night.

Our website is hosted by Rackspace, in it’s Dallas/Fort Worth data center. On Monday evening, a truck accident damaged the transformer that powers our data center. Backup power immediately came on as it was supposed to, and everything continued to work as it was supposed to. However the power company rightfully decided to cut power to the area in order to allow safety workers on the scene to rescue the truck driver. The power outage then caused the data center’s backup cooling system to fail. As the heat in the data center rose higher there was risk or hardware failure and permanent data loss. The Rackspace team decided to shut down some of the servers to lower the heat. Unfortunately, our server was one that was shut down, causing the Getzs.com site to go off-line.

The server was powered back up at 12:05A EST and we were able to get the site back online at 12:45A Tuesday morning. With a little bit of testing we confirmed that everything was working correctly and there was no data loss.

Our Rackspace server has never gone off-line since we have started using them as our primary hosting. We have been in contact with Rackspace and they have been completely honest about every detail that happened to cause the outage and have insured us that they will do every thing they can to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. We believe that every action they took was necessary, even though it involved shutting down our server. In effect it allowed EMTs and Firemen to safely rescue the injured driver.

We apologies to you if the outage prevented you from visiting Getzs.com on Monday night or Tuesday morning. We at Getzs pride ourselves in making you shopping experience as convenient as possible and this includes being available 24/7 all year round.

For more information on the DFW Data Center incident click here.