Be careful . . . bad experience (but it ended up okay, I guess)

[The Burgomaster]

I recently discovered a website called "Stumpy Disks," which appears to be a great source of obscure, hard-to-find (at least in the U.S.) movies on DVD-R.  I placed an order and paid $50 around the beginning of April.  After 3 weeks, I sent an e-mail asking about the status of my order.  I got a reply that the guy had run out of DVD cases and just received a supply and he would ship my order the next day.  I waited and waited and didn't receive anything, sent another e-mail, got no response, then I checked the website and saw a note that the guy would be on vacation until May 25.  Luckily, I paid via PayPal and I used PayPal's dispute resolution center to ask for either my movies or a refund.  I got a response from someone who shares the guy's PayPal account saying the guy was in Europe, but the guy who shared the account would try to find my DVDs and ship them.  After another week week (still no movies and no correspondence), I sent another note through PayPal's dispute resolution center saying I expected this to be resolved by June 2 or I would escalate this to a PayPal claim (when you do this, PayPal gets directly involved and helps to settle the matter).  Finally, I received a $50 refund . . . but no communication from the seller explaining or apologizing for this 2-month ordeal.  My guess is he forgot about my order and took off on vacation.  This is probably an unusual circumstance and maybe his service is normally excellent.  If I had received a courteous explanation I probably would have ordered more stuff.  But he never responded to the e-mails I sent him directly or through PayPal.  I'll stick with Cinema de Bizarre, which I consider to be the "Gold Standard" for ordering off-the-wall movies online.

In any event, you might want to check out the Stumpy Disks website.  There is definitely some cool stuff there.  Just be careful if you place an order.

[Jack]

One time I had a guy (from a totally different online store) tell me that he had been waiting for my check to clear the bank.  Never mind that I paid him with a money order.  But my check had just gone through, and he'd send my order out immediately.  Two weeks later I called him again and he told me he had been waiting for my check to clear the bank, but it had just gone through etc.  Two weeks later I called again and he said a relative of his had just died.  Two weeks later...

Wouldn't it be less work for these people to just send the damned stuff?

[Trevor]

www.stumpydisks.com

You have to love their review of Turkish First Blood:

Turkish First Blood - you know the drill, Turkish rip off of First Blood. Looks like sh*t, sounds like sh*t. It's a piece of sh*t in general, but you still love it.