The joy of P*yp*l
I've been using P*yp*l while buying things online, because it nicely collapses the whole business of credit cards down to what I though was one easy to audit and manage lump. Recently, I bought a teenytiny SBC through eb*y, used p*yp*l, and ended up getting about half of what I ordered (with one of the missing components hidden because the scoundrel who sold it to me clipped a cheapo cpu fan over the socket. Imagine my joy when I discovered that bit of indirection.) After several exchanges between me and the seller (more exchanges on my part, because this seller didn't bother to reply to easily 75% of my mail) and several promises of "oh, I'll send it out tomorrow", I cut to the chase and complained to eb*y.
They suggested a whole bunch of pretty useless things (including "get in touch with the seller", which, thanks, I already did), including taking it up with p*yp*l. So, I took it up with p*yp*l; I wrote a nice little note to them via their stupid web form, sent it off, then foregrounded my mutt window, only to see a form letter from p*yp*l saying we've investigated your complaint and you're shit out of luck.
Investigated.
This would be the sort of investigated where they have an autoresponder that bounces all incoming mail with some generic boilerplate? On the assumption, I guess, that all mail is coming in via uucp, so when you get it a day will have passed and you'll think that some human has replied?
This letter had a nice little postscript saying oh, don't bother replying to this email; we'll just ignore it (translation: drop dead)
It's a bummer that p*yp*l is going to have to submit this charge to my credit card company, which actually is somewhat responsive when I complain about ripoffs. It's a bummer for p*yp*l, but perhaps not for me, until the day when I want to buy something that only takes p*yp*l.
Oh well, I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.