Wednesday, March 26, 2008

In Which I Rant like a Cranky Old Person

See latest update here! You know what's our favorite place to buy classical CDs online? Berkshire Record Outlet Dot Com! All told, we have probably bought more CDs there in the past decade or so than we have anyplace other than the record store I actually work at. Just the other day I was telling total strangers to shop there, on my friend's blog. So imagine our surprise! When instead of being charged the price of our latest CD purchase, maybe $40, we were charged the order number of our latest CD purchase, more like $2400. Huh! Unfortunately, JoJo did not have $2.5K sitting in his bank account at that moment, and so he found himself four digits in the red. Like I said, I work retail, so I can totally see this kind of mistake being made. You fix it, everybody has a good laugh, you move on. But the best part is, this has still not been fixed, a day later. Today JoJo called to inquire again what the deal was and the answer was something like, "call our credit card processing company and get them to threeway-call your bank with you." Huh? You charged me 6,000% on this order, I'm now in the hole to the tune of a thousand dollars, my bank is now charging me overdraft fees on your mistake, and you want me to call your credit card processing company to get it fixed? Except, of course, their credit card processing company's offices were already closed by this time. Now out of cash, JoJo has less than no money, I'm basically broke until my paycheck clears, and here we're about to move to a new place this weekend. What's going on? I better get some serious free shit out of this.

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5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ouch! That hurts. I've never had a problem with them in the past. This is uncalled for. How can they not correct the mistake. It's easy enough for them to do.

March 27, 2008 at 12:23 PM  
Blogger Dan Johnson said...

We've never had a problem either, and probably most of the CDs in our obnoxiously unwieldy collection are from there. As for the question of how come all the hassle, maybe it's because they're such a small operation, they don't have the authorization to such a huge amount back in somebody's checking account?

At any rate, this is a pretty freakin' huge inconvenience. I'm not sure why they need JoJo's authorization to give him $2500. It seems like that's something that anybody would say yes to.

He made the call this morning. I'll update when the refund is confirmed.

March 27, 2008 at 12:39 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Holy shit, wow.

I love the BRO like I love beer, but I've been good and avoided buying things from them for the past few years. Must resist temptation to open up catalog online...

March 27, 2008 at 1:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm not convinced that they're a small operation. It's a world famous company. Of course customer service isn't they're strong point. At lest in some areas but it's sort of obvious that something went amiss. Still a great company though. Hope it works out.

March 27, 2008 at 3:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I live in New Haven, too! Work at St. Raphael's on the SLA floor. Small world!

I have a similar horror story, from the Playwright of all places. We went and had dinner and drinks, I paid the bill with my credit card, left cash on the table for the tip. NOW I KNOW that you're supposed to write "0" or "X" through the tip spot on your credit card slips- because the server saw a golden opportunity and wrote in $45. The manager told us that we had to call the merchant account that handles their credit card processing and take it up with them; they couldn't just credit my card the $45 because they weren't sure that the server had actually done it, even though I had the carbon original showing that I hadn't written anything in. Long story short(er), I ended up having to get a formal chargeback through American Express to get my $45 back. I'll still go to the Playwright, but I'll probably pay cash.

April 15, 2008 at 12:36 PM  

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