I went shopping for my new USB Thumb Drive on the net. I started with the Lockergnome version of a price grabber search and then tried yahoo shopping. At Yahoo I found a good deal on a 128MEG Apacer drive with a neato docking station/extension cord thingie for $49 from here. I placed my order using the info in my Yahoo Wallet and within moments received a confirmation email. So far, so good.
Later that night I got an email informing me that for security reasons they won’t ship to a different address than my billing address. I am informed, in a way that lead me to believe that English was not the author’s original language, that I need to fill out the attached form and fax it back to them. The them in question is a outfit called SuperMediaStore.com not the dvd-rw media .com I thought I bought from. The return email address is supermediastore_annie@linkyo.com, so I type in www.linkyo.com into the address bar of IE and I get a generic “we haven’t been built yet” page from yahoo/Geocities hosting. Now things are not so good, the warm and fuzzy I felt on originally ordering is all but gone, but being a red-blooded American consumer, the low price offered kept me in the game. It was too late to call the phone number in the email, even with the West Coast time difference, so I figured I’d wait until I get to work in the morning and fax the authorization in.
This morning I checked my email before heading off to work and I discovered an email from DVD-RWMedia.Com AKA Selvi@linkyo.com promising me a free pen drive if I bought a 25 pack of DVD-RW discs. Jeez, spammed already, I don’t remember any place to opt in or out of email offers during the checkout process from these folks.
Still intent to go through with the purchase, I went down to the fax machine and loaded up my form. After several rings, I could here the announcement in the background, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and try again.” I check the number on the paper against the number I dialed and they match. Well, that was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, I’ve got to find another place to get my drive from.
When I tried to call the number that was listed on the web page for canceling, I got the same “no longer in service” message that I got when faxing. Then I went to Annie’s email and below her name was an 888 number and a different fax number (it probably works.) After listening to the 8 branches of voice mail tree I selected Customer Service and was connected to probably the same person who would have answered any of the selections. Judging by the voice, it was probably Annie Ang, author of the email. After seeing that the order was on hold in her system, she told me, “No problem, I’ll cancel it.”
There was a place that was close to getting my business yesterday, so I hunted them up in the history file and went back. Ordered a 128 MEG drive from a place called Wolverine Data. No fancy docking station, but it does come with a couple of different color covers so I can match it to my wardrobe or mood. 🙂 Like yesterday, I got an almost instant confirmation email. So far, so good.
Today I got an email telling me the drive had shipped.