Contact REI Corporate

I am going to do the Camino 05/08. I began preparation for this on 4/05, by going to the REI in Friendswood, TX. I looked for an Osprey Talon 44 backpack. It was not available at the store, so the cashier ordered it for me. He requested payment to be able to place the order. I submitted a $100 REI gift card and a $25 Visa Gift card. Payment went through, he took my email address an Member #, and told me that it would be in the following week. At that time I went ahead and bought shoes and made an appointment for an outfitting so that it would coincide with the arrival of my backpack.

I returned the following week 04/10 for my outfitting with Derek Lucas. My bag hadn't arrived. He looked in his device and said that my backpack was in transit and that it should be arriving anytime. Derek spent several hours with me assisting me to select various clothing and miscellaneous articles. He said that it was important to have the backpack, because he needed to know if everything that I purchased was going to fit. So after I purchased an additional $1200 in goods, Derek said that I should make one more appointment the following week to gage the size of the backpack.

I called the store today 04/13 to make a 2nd outfitting appointment and to check the status of the backpack. Chelsea made the appointment for 04/16 at 130 with Derek, and checked on the Backpack. She saw that the order had been cancelled last week because the credit card had been declined. I was very upset at this because I received no notification that this had happened. She said that all that she could do was to place the order again. She also checked if there were any store that had it, and found it in the Galleria. I asked her if the Galleria could send it to her store and she said that it would take just as long as if she had ordered it (5-7 business days). So I decided to take the 20 mile drive from my house to a very congested area that I never go to, to acquire the backpack because I wanted to be ahead of the game.I didn't want to receive any more surprises from REI. Needless to say, the voyage took 3 hours of my time. When I arrived to the REI on Westheimer, the bag was waiting for me. The cashier asked me how I was doing and I told her that I was very upset at having to come all the way out there because somebody had dropped the ball with communication. She went into my account to see what had happened and found out that the cashier that took my order had misspelled the name on my email to afred, instead of Alfred and that is why I received no notification. She said that I should make a formal complaint when she heard that I drove so far to get it.

The logistics and time constraint of doing a trek like this is very stress full. Little surprises like this can make the difference of not being able to make the trip, specially if you are not preparing with ample time.
I would like to know if my $100 Gift Card was charged at the time that I ordered the backpack, because there are still more items that I need to Purchase. Derek has been very helpful with the outfitting and Chelsea did her best to resolve my problem.

Sincerely,
Alfred Sheridan