Terrible Customer Experience: Held My Money Hostage After Cancelling My Order I recently had a frustrating experience with theshoecompany.ca (The Shoe Company), which is affiliated with the U.S. site DSW.com. I placed an order through their Canadian website, only to have it canceled due to the item being out of stock. While such issues can happen, what followed was completely unacceptable.Instead of promptly refunding my payment, they left the transaction in a "pending authorization" status on PayPal. Most reputable retailers would immediately refund the payment or release the authorization in such cases. However, The Shoe Co. refused to manually cancel the authorization from their PayPal account, leaving my money in limbo and completely inaccessible.I reached out to The Shoe Co. for help, but their response was ineffective and dismissive. They repeatedly failed to take responsibility for the issue or resolve it in a timely manner. This forced me into a frustrating back-and-forth between their customer service and PayPal, who informed me that the authorization could only be canceled by the merchant. Despite this, The Shoe Co. refused to act, leaving me with no choice but to wait for the authorization to expire automatically—an absurdly long timeframe of several days.This situation is entirely unacceptable. The Shoe Co. should never advertise items they do not have in stock, let alone take payment for them. To make matters worse, instead of acknowledging their error and rectifying it immediately, they created unnecessary inconvenience by withholding my money and failing to address the issue efficiently.To anyone considering shopping with The Shoe Co. or DSW: be warned. If something goes wrong with your order, you may end up stuck in a bureaucratic mess, with your money held hostage and no resolution in sight. This experience has left a very bitter taste, and I will not be shopping with them again.I urge The Shoe Co. to seriously review their refund processes and improve their customer service. Holding onto a customer's money after canceling their order due to no fault of their own is not only unprofessional but also a complete violation of basic customer trust.
