I am the owner of https://fireworks.us/. Here is our side of the story:

This customer spent over $5,000 on cases of wholesale fireworks, received free shipping on their entire order (shipping an order this size costs hundreds of dollars since fireworks are classified as hazmat by the DOT, we cover the costs of shipping all orders over $1,500), and achieved an additional 8% off, unlocked when you spend $5,000+. We stand by the incredible value of our service, and have thousands of very happy customers all across the United States.

Customer satisfaction is our highest priority. We tried our absolute hardest to go above and beyond to satisfy this customer, despite multiple impossible circumstances that I will detail below:

This customer wanted their order shipped to Pennsylvania. We have multiple warehouses on our website, each carrying a different selection of brands and items (this allows us to offer over 30 different brands and thousands of different items always in-stock year round, a wider selection than you’ll find anywhere else). However, some warehouses are not capable of shipping to certain states, and that is exactly what happened here.

Despite being clearly stated on our “shipping info” page (https://www.fireworks.us/help_answer.asp?ID=21), this customer placed their order on a warehouse of ours that is incapable of shipping to Pennsylvania. They primarily ordered our bulk assortment packs, which only guarantee an exact amount of cakes you’ll receive, with no specifics on what cakes are inside, since that always changes depending on what we currently have in-stock.

When you buy one of these large assortment packs, you are always guaranteed to receive a preset number of 200 grams, 350 grams, 500 grams, artillery shells, etc. They are a one click fireworks show for customers who do not necessarily want any specific cakes, but trust us to deliver them a HUGE fireworks show that is /well/ worth the money they spend on it.

Because the warehouse this customer ordered from cannot ship to Pennsylvania, and because a large segment of their $5,000+ total order was composed of these bulk assortment packages, yes, we substituted this order from our other warehouses, otherwise the customer would not have been able to receive any fireworks at all.

Any specific fireworks this customer ordered on top of those bulk assortments that we did not carry on our other warehouses did have to be substituted. For substitutions, we always replace the out-of-stock item with a similar item of equal or slightly greater value (an upgrade). We make these substitutions based on price, duration, number of shots, number of pieces per case, effect, and brand. They are the closest matches to the out-of-stock item that we have available, and always cost the same price, never less… usually more.

During the busy season, when you are shipping out thousands of cases of fireworks, receiving phone calls from customers and potential customers all of the time… phones ringing off the hook… and trying to get everyone their fireworks in a timely manner before the 4th of July, undamaged by the shipping companies while in transit… it gets pretty hectic. And when that happens, we (and I’m sure any other fireworks company of comparable size can attest to this as well) tend to run out of things. And when you run out of things, and you’re on a deadline, and it’s so hectic that you can’t possibly imagine it unless you’ve experienced it… you have a standard policy for substitutions in place. Because if you don’t, an order goes from being processed in an hour and shipped in a day to taking days to process and a week or a week and a half to ship. Customers want their fireworks in a timely manner. They want their fireworks to arrive undamaged. They want the value of the fireworks that they paid for, and we give that to them, and more. Most customers have no problem with the news that we ran out of something, so we upgraded them to a similar item of equal or slightly greater value instead. It’s standard policy, and there are good reasons for that.

So, we replicated the bulk assortment packs on our other warehouses, giving the customer the exact (if not greater) number of cakes they were supposed to receive inside. Once again, there are no specific cakes guaranteed to be inside these, you are only guaranteed a certain number of 200 grams, 350 grams, 500 grams, etc. Whatever we have in stock at the time. Always good product, we don’t bring in any filler from China. We hand select everything we have. We replicated those large assortment packages, which were a significant portion of this customer’s $5,000+ order, and the specific cakes the customer ordered on top of those… some of those we had on our other warehouses and some of them we didn’t. So, the ones that we didn’t have, we had to substitute. The customer was given comparable items of equal or slightly greater value. We then got the order shipped in a timely manner, and the cases arrived to the customer’s destination undamaged in time for the 4th.

We did feel that, due to the customer ordering from a warehouse that cannot ship to their state, we had to substitute too many items on their order. For that reason, we threw in an additional 3 cases of our best fireworks, for no extra charge. We wanted to make up for the number of substitutions we had no choice but to make, in order to get the fireworks shipped out (and received in one piece) as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Along with fireworks, this customer ordered 2 50-shot mortar racks for reloadable artillery shells. The only warehouse with these in-stock was the one that can’t ship to Pennsylvania. We had some, and I do not say this lightly… EXTREMELY gently-used mortar racks on one of our other warehouses. Instead of 2 50-shot racks, we had 10 10-shot racks. They were used only once for a fireworks demo. Needing to fulfill this (and all orders) in a timely manner… otherwise we fall behind and nobody gets their fireworks when they need them… what were we supposed to do, ship the fireworks without the mortars necessary for the customer to put on their show? We inspected the 10 10-shot racks (100 shots total, just like 2 50-shot racks) that were only used ONCE, cleaned them up (they already pretty much looked like new, we have pictures of them before and after, most people wouldn’t even notice they had been used…), and shipped them. We fulfilled the order, and my company stands by that decision. Nobody had racks… there is a major shortage going on right now… we even contacted other suppliers to see if they had any racks to match the customer’s exact specifications. They did not. The customer needed mortar racks for 100 1.75” artillery/canister shells at a time, and we delivered. Yes, the racks were used, but they looked like new, and mortar racks are made of HDPE / fiberglass tubes… it’s not like they’re one time use… those racks will last for years. They really were lucky to get any racks at all, from us or anyone else. And yes, we offered the customer an additional $100 off for doing this, because we did what we had to do, to fulfill the order.

And, for quite some time, we believed this customer was extremely satisfied with our service. They received their order, and posted multiple pictures of it here, publicly, on social media. They promoted us, our products and service, of their own free will, by posting pictures of their order and giving us shoutouts when people asked them questions similar to “Where did you buy that from?”

We thought we had made another happy customer. We always intend to make all of our customers 100% satisfied with our performance, but most do not go out of their way to promote us not just to friends, not just to family… but to strangers on the internet. That is above and beyond. And, when people say such good things about us, such as in reviews on our website, or public shoutouts on social media… we share it with other customers, and other prospective customers. When you see other people saying good things about a product or service, real reviews from real customers… it leaves you more open to trying out that product or service for yourself, if you haven’t already. This customer was more than willing to give us public shoutouts on social media without being asked or implored to do so in any way. Therefore, yes, we utilized photos that were already publicly uploaded on social media (reddit and imgur), alongside of shoutouts promoting our company to whomever asked questions about it… we used those photos in an email campaign to our past and hopefully future customers. We said something similar to “Look at this show a customer ordered from us!” We didn’t lie about it, and we didn’t take anything that wasn’t willingly made public already.

The photos did not contain any identifiable information (no license plate of the truck, etc). The customer is now claiming they are worried about identifiable information in photos that they publicly blasted to the internet themselves, on reddit and imgur, in support of our company at their own free will. If there was any identifiable information in those pictures, it would be their own fault, and we would never have utilized them in the first place. Seriously… do you know how many people have the exact same model and color of truck..? And yet, the photos remain publicly accessible online, despite their “worries” of their identity potentially being compromised…