Customer Service at House of Staunton is very poor

I wonder why the Customer Service at House of Staunton - who manage the chess.com shop - is so poor; even 3 weeks after my complaint about the SquareOff Pro that they sold me, they have yet to reply. I bought two sets at over US$400, and it has turned out to be useless (I can't get any pairing on chess.com, and on the occasional opportunity that I get on lichess.org, the SquareOff app behaves erratically - making mistakes in how my moves are recorded, not communicating my moves to chess.com or my opponent's moves to me, or simply disconnecting me from chess.com, resulting in me being timed out). I have demanded my money back, but the customer service at the House of Staunton does not even bother to reply to my emails! This is terrible. 
#chess.com
#house_of_staunton
#SquareOff

+100

I've said it before, they are not a reputable seller. On their website they only post 3, 4, and 5 star reviews about their products. Honest bad reviews are never posted. I bought a dubrovnik set from them a long time ago that was very poorly made. One knight looked like it belonged to a different set it was so bad and one piece was even chipped. It turns out it was the last set they had and they couldn't replace it, which is probably why it was all bad pieces. It took way too long to get them to agree to take it back and refund it. Even after they received it I had to follow up to actually get my refund.

I checked my Square-off Pro chessboard yesterday by playing three 10 minute game on chess.com and it works perfectly well. I have had Square-off Pro for three years and it has been working like a clock. House of Staunton customer service is one of the best among chess retailers and I would like to thank them again.

@SpanishStallion. I see that you have been consistently posting messages supporting SquareOff Pro and now you are supporting the House of Staunton. I am beginning to think that you might be part of that company - or someone planted by them to counter any negative messages about them, because my experience is diametrically opposite to yours. I sent them an email more than 3 weeks with not even an acknowledgement of my message, let alone a substantive reply, and you call their service "one of the best"!!!!

I am sure that you are trying to stygmatize Square-off, House of Staunton etc. You are either jealous of their success or a rival. I wasted over half an hour of my time playing three 10 min games on chess.com using my Square-off Pro to find out if there was any issue and as expected it worked perfectly well as usual. As for House of Staunton they have a customer service which is immefiately available on their website and they always answer enquirs within minuted. The fact that you are posting stuff against HOS randomly and indiscriminatelly everywhere in the forum proves you are a spammer. In fact, you don’t need to say anything about these and other companies on here as nobody here can do anything. You must contact them directly and speak with their customer service only!

@SpanishStallion. You are just a spammer, with a vested interest in SquareOff / Miko and/or House of Staunton, masquerading as a regular chess.com user. I know what I experienced, and I know that you are lying. Stop spamming my messages. After this, I will just ignore your posts and block you as well.

@sundarsg Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Shawn Sullivan and I am the President of the House of Staunton. When you left the feedback on Google, I had my team research your name (as it appeared on Google), but we were not able to find any orders or emails to our customer service team under your name. A link to this story happened to appear on my Google feed, which is how I was able to find it.
Would you mind direct messaging me on chess.com with your order number so I can assist you. I read the above message thread and see that you are referring to a Square Off pro Chess computer. I just searched our system for Square Off Pro orders to India (based upon the flag on chess.com), but the last one we shipped to India was in 2023 and it was under a completely different name.
I very much want to assist you, so I do hope you reach out to me.
And I am sorry that you've had these difficulties reaching us. I am at a loss why we're not seeing your emails. When you emailed us, did you get the autoresponder message acknowledging we got the email? What email address did you email? 

@spanishstallion Thank you for the kind words.
And you are absolutely right. Our website has live chat available every weekday, as well as telephone support, so there are many ways to reach us.
If you go there now, you can click the button and our average response time on live chat is under 1 minute.

@alphalio. Thanks for reaching out. The email address I used is: customerservice@houseofstaunton.com, because that is the email address from which I received the acknowledgement of my order. Also, the email from your company specifically asks that I should write to this email address if I have any questions. So, I think I used the correct email address to send my request.

The reason that you are not seeing my name or any recent delivery of SquareOff Pro to India in your system could be because I asked for it to be delivered to my nephew in California.

My order for two SquareOff Pro sets (Order # 17000018420) was placed through the Chess.com Shop on January 2, 2025 - but because I used my nephew's name and address for shipping, your message uses his name (while replying to my email ID registered with chess.com)!

My nephew brought the two SquareOff Pro sets to India for me by the end of January 2025, and I left one in Bengaluru and brought the other one to Malaysia with me (as I spend time in both countries, and wanted to keep one in each place).

In early February, 2025, I played some games on chess.com and lichess.org (the set that I left in India remains completely unused); it worked reasonably okay for the first couple of weeks (though it was slow in finding opponents, and made occasional errors in recording my moves). Subsequently, it became impossible to find an opponent on chess.com and next to impossible to find an opponent on lichess.org.

Also, as I noted earlier, I faced other problems such as: suddenly in the middle of a game, my moves not being registered with website (though the app recorded the move), or my opponent's move not being communicated to me, apparently because the connection between SquareOff Pro and the website being dropped.

I contacted SquareOff helpdesk by email and though I got an immediate response (from Miko, which is the company that has bought up SquareOff), it was simply saying that my request was forwarded to their team and that they were working on it. After many reminders (to which I would immediately get the same response that their team was working on it!), I finally got a substantive response after 3+ weeks, and a phone call was arranged for me with their tech support.

When that could not resolve the issues, I demanded a refund and that is when I was referred to the House of Staunton, as the vendor who sold me the product. I first contacted House of Staunton at customerservice@houseofstaunton.com on March 27, 2025, and despite 3 reminders, I am yet to receive any response; not even an acknowledgement!

As advised by you, I will DM you with further details such as my email address, my nephew's name (so that you can find it in your system), etc.

Thanks for getting back to me, and messaging me privately with your order specifics. I have forwarded it to our customer service team and I'll make sure that our team responds on Monday AM.

I searched our customer service system for your email address and it could not find any messages from you. Our system doesn't allow us to delete messages so, if we had received them, I would have found them. I am very much at a loss as to why we never received the messages. I am sorry you had these difficulties.

But I am glad that we were able to communicate and rest assured we will make things right. I am also going to forward your message directly to Miko.ai and seek their guidance on your issue. We've sold quite a few of the Square Off Pro computers and this is the first time I've heard about a customer having such problems. I've only heard good things about the Square Off pro.
In the future, please feel free to visit our website during normal business hours (central time) and use our live chat. Rather than send an email and wait for someone to respond, you can chat directly with our customer service team members and they'll respond within a minute.

Have a good weekend.

Update - I emailed the Miko.AI team with a copy of your above message and cc'd you on the email so you can reach out directly to them. I want to make sure that you get the support you need.

@alphalio. Thank you for your response.

It's really strange why your system is showing no emails from me. I definitely sent my email (along with the full trail of my email communication with Miko) and 3 remainders (making it a total of 4 emails apparently lost in your system!!). I will forward those messages to you by email, just to prove that I'm not making this up.

I have seen your message to Miko. However as I've mentioned, I have already been in communication with them. In fact I contacted your company only after my efforts with Miko were not fruitful.

I understand. I was hoping that my messaging them might help get you the assistance that you need. 
In any case, we'll reach out to you on Monday and make things right. I'd like to make arrangements to have you return the computer to Miko.ai (They're based in India) and get you the refund.

@alphalio. Thanks very much indeed for your help and support.

Yes, I am aware that Miko are based in India (as I learned during my long phone conversation with their tech support - which was very friendly but ultimately did not resolve my issues).

That would be great if I can get a refund by returning the two sets (one completely unused, which I had left in India and the other one, which I brought with me to Malaysia and has been sparingly used) to an address in India. I will be back in India in the last week of May and I can return the items soon thereafter.

PS: By the way, when I just sent you my email trail showing my email of March 27, 2025 and the 3 reminders, I did get an automatic reply from customerservice@houseofstaunton.com - for the first time! Really can't figure out what happened with my previous 4 emails sent to the same address! Mysterious, indeed.

That is strange. The auto-responder has been in place for more than 2 years, so it would seem that our mail server never received the 3 emails, which explains why we never saw them. 
I was reviewing your order this morning and noticed that the original order was placed well over 3 months ago (we shipped January 2, 2025). Given this and the fact that the item was shipped by us to California (where we sent it) and then privately sent to India, I don't see any reasonable way to have it returned to us even a return exception was made. According to Fedex.com, the shipping cost with our discounts will still rival the value of the item self! I should also point out that the fact that it has travelled thousands of miles, from California to India, might have caused it to be damaged in transit which we can not be responsible for.
I followed up with Miko.ai today and asked them for assistance in amicably resolving the issue. 
I just want you to know that I am doing my best to resolve this issue, but the circumstances (it was delivered 3 months before we received the first report of an issue, the fact it was transported thousands of miles from CA to India outside of our control) does limit what we can do. For example, If the item was shoved in a suitcase when it went from CA to India could have damaged the internals of the board. And that would hardly be our responsibility.

@aphalio. I do understand your points (the time lapsed, and the transportation which was privately arranged by me). However, from my perspective the time lapsed was really not my fault; I approached the helpdesk (hello@squareoffnow.com, which turned out to be Miko) indicated in the card that came with the product) as early as February 17, 2025. They took more than 3 weeks to respond substantively (though they kept sending me the type of "form letter" acknowledgements promptly), and the same thing happened with House of Staunton, who did not respond to my emails for another 3 weeks. I have the emails to prove when I sent them, though you seem to have found, inexplicably, that my first 4 emails - sent to the correct address at customerservice@houseofstaunton.com - never reached the company!

As regards the transportation, I hope that you would not use it as an excuse of technicality to deny me the refund; the product is a rollable chess board meant to be rolled and taken from place to place, and should not get damaged by being on a flight (in the hand luggage - not in the checked in suit-case).

Also, during my conversation with the tech support with Miko, I had suggested that it might be better if the board could directly connect to chess.com or lichess.org using internet, instead of connecting by bluetooth to the SquareOff app on my mobile, which then has to connect to the chess-playing platform, as this two-layered connectivity might be behind some of the problems that I experienced (by definition it makes the process a bit slower, making me lose time on the clock even when it works perfectly). I was clearly told by the tech support person of Miko, that the board itself is really a "dumb" device not a "smart" one, i.e., did not have complex circuitry or AI built into the board (the app downloaded on to the mobile does the main work, including any AI that might be involved, though perhaps no AI is involved). It was also explained to me that the app was having difficulty in handling the transient connectivity drops that happen with any internet connection (which get handled easily by chess.com or lichess.org or other such platforms, when one uses them directly). Miko told me quite clearly that they were working to fix this problem, as well as liaising with chess.com and lichess.org to resolve the issue posed by them prioritizing members who play directly on their platform, as opposed to those who use devices like SquareOff Pro. So, I think it is highly unlikely that the device got damaged in transit. In other words, I was told that the problems are not with the device itself; it's the downloaded app and its interface with chess.com or lichess.org that cause the problem - as I understand it.

Anyway, it is up to your company and Miko to decide whether to solve the issues faced by a dissatisfied customer or use "company policy" or technicalities to deny a refund.

That said, I do greatly appreciate your efforts to resolve the issue amicably. The fact that the top management at House of Staunton is taking this seriously has indeed improved my view of your company compared with where I was in that regard just a few days ago. So, I do hope that your efforts will be successful.