Damn Colombia House

[blas]

My bf has started ordering movies off of Colombia House. He pre-ordered Transformers and Planet Terror several weeks ago. He doesn't have a computer at home but when he comes to stay on the weekends, he uses my laptop and checks his bank account online. He saw that Colombia House had deducted the funds for both movies 2 weeks ago. Supposedly, after payment processes, they will ship and it will arrive in 5-7 business days. Now, since Planet Terror didn't come out until last Tuesday, we expected it wouldn't show up until Friday or Saturday.

By this Tuesday, the movies hadn't arrived. He called the customer service number and the phone rep told him in broken English "Payment no process. No ship until payment process!" Now, my bf can't exactly give out his info to direct them to his bank account to prove that the money HAD been processed, but he did point out that he had already had the money taken out of his account just a few days after placing the order. So the payment HAD processed. But they still were not going to ship it.

He got irate and called again yesterday and was told his order has just been shipped. Payment just processed (to them anyway) on Wednesday.

I've never ordered movies off the Internet before, but any time I've purchased anything online, my payment is processed that day or the next day, and it ships immediately after that.

Anyone else think it's fishy? I'm half tempted to just go to Wal-Mart and get the damn movie myself since it'd be a lot faster.

[auntiem]

Not to defend Columbia House, but it could have been processed the way we do here.
The minute you buy a ticket the system contacts the credit card company to get an authorization code and that amount is counted as "spent" by the credit card company. The credit card isn't actually processed until the next Tues when we do the report.

[PaRaGaS]

My recent order @ Amazon.com:

Order Date: October 6, 2007
Items shipped on October 9, 2007:
Delivery estimate: October 24, 2007 - December 3, 2007
1 package via International Shipping

Item(s) Subtotal: $81.93
Shipping & Handling: $13.95
-----
Total Before Tax: $95.88
Sales tax: $0.00
-----
Total for this Shipment: $95.88
-----

So, let me get this straight. They charge a shitload for their cheapest shipping, which takes up to two months, while fairly recently I've paid 10$ ppd for a Gein and The Graverobbers CD, which arrived in A WEEK via USPS GLOBAL AIR MAIL. Fascinating, innit?

I'll be lucky if my CDs arrive by February.
And then I'll be even more lucky if I get to pay duties (dunno how much) and 22% VAT... so far I had been very lucky with my international orders.

[powerboy]

whenever I order something off the Internet, the money is taken out right then. Unless it is Amazon, then they will take it out, as soon as they ship it.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

Whenever you order something online or over the phone, (what's known as a CNP transaction, for Card Not Present) when the payment is put through, the bank immediately gets a ping. If there's money or credit available, the ping is accepted.

Your bank account immediately gets what's called an Authorization Hold. Means the bank has taken the funds for the transaction and put them on hold. It shows in your online statement as a pending transaction; if you notice, it takes a couple of days to become permanent. Once the payment processes through the merchant's computer system and the merchant receives the payment from the bank, then it becomes permanent. It takes a couple of days because there has to be some kind of paper or other literal trail for the money exchange.

I deal with this all the time. When someone tries to process an order with us, they get a pending transaction on their account. If we need to do a security verification, and they are unable to pass or refuse to cooperate, we cancel the order. It then takes a couple of days for the Authorization Hold to drop off of their account.

Some people try to use this to take advantage of companies like Columbia House. If the shipment is mailed immediately, they will wait a day or two and then instruct their bank to not accept the payment, and then claim they never received the package. So now companies like that will wait until the actual physical paperwork or whatever has gone through and they have actually received the money from the bank before shipping the order. Yes it sucks, but the merchants are trying to protect themselves.

[Andara Bledin]

I don't do business with Columbia House. I've had accounts with them twice, and both times, they screwed things up on their end so bad I was able to get rid of the service without paying the cancellation fees for not buying the required number of items. Technically, I shouldn't even have been able to have an account the second time because I was still at the same address.

BMG was much less hassle, had their stuff together, and had a better library. But after that whole rootkit fiasco, I'm not sure I trust their decision-makers.

As for the Amazon order, are you ordering from Amazon directly, or through some other entity that uses Amazon as their marketplace? I'm in the US, myself, so all of my Amazon orders get free shipping (it's so easy to order at least $25 in books).

^-.-^

[PaRaGaS]

There's an Amazon for Canada, UK, Germany, Japan, France, and China. Would it be possible to order from one of their international sites and it'll be less expensive? This, of course, is only speculation, and I have no idea how international deliveries are done as I live in the US.

Actually, one of the items I had ordered is available in US/Canada exclusively, European Amazons have it as import.
The other three are more expensive. A roundup of prices:

Amazon.com
Item(s) Subtotal: $81.93 = 207.13PLN
Shipping & Handling: $13.95 = 35.27PLN

Amazon.co.uk (one item imported, one available only used)
Item(s) Subtotal: £122.41 = $251.22 = 635.11PLN FFS!!!
Shipping & Handling: £6.56 = $13.46 = 34.04PLN

Amazon.de (three items imported)
Item(s) Subtotal: 117.82€ = $169,11 = 427,55PLN
Shipping & Handling: 6.00€ = $8.60 = 21.77PLN

Too lazy to check Amazon.fr too, and the Austrian page usually doesn't have anything.

$1 = 2.53PLN, I work part-time.
1/4 full time = 40-46h/month + 40h of voluntary overtime, and I make some 11PLN/h (around 8PLN after getting taxed).
Needless to say, I don't have to support myself as of yet.

For those interested, I ordered:
- Black Sabbath "The Black Box" 8CDs of remastered heavy metal goodness that comes in a nice package plus a book and a DVD.
Also, it's 40$ off on Amazon.com, a total steal! I wanted to buy this ever since it came out, around 2004.
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Yeah Yeah Yeahs", "Machine", "Is Is".

Bottomline: You guys in the USA REALLY have it easy. Everything is cheap, you have lots of rebates and sales that basically scream of giving things away.
And our gas is almost 7$ per gallon

[JustADude]

Bottomline: You guys in the USA REALLY have it easy. Everything is cheap, you have lots of rebates and sales that basically scream of giving things away.
And our gas is almost 7$ per gallon

Yeah, there are SOME up sides to living in a corrupt, hypocritical, hollow, conservative-Christian controlled, corporation owned, decadent, materialistic society.

And before anyone gets on me, remember, I'm IN the USA. Members of a group can rag on that group all they want.

[PaRaGaS]

Yeah, there are SOME up sides to living in a corrupt, hypocritical, hollow, conservative-Christian controlled, corporation owned, decadent, materialistic society.

Hey, half of the world is the same.

[Geek King]

Hey, half of the world is the same.

Yeah, and the other half are living in a corrupt, hypocritical, hollow, Islamofacist controlled, female distaining, intolerant society, or in a corrupt, hypocritical, hollow, Communist controlled, flunky owned, information censoring, barely surviving society.


I'll stick to this half of the world, thanks. At least I can buy decadent here, instead of having to be born into it. And no one gets all itchy with the trigger if I voice my complaints.

[Rapscallion]

There's a place called Fratching for politics - this one's for SCs

Rapscallion

[Geek King]

There's a place called Fratching for politics - this one's for SCs

Rapscallion

Quite right. My apologies to the board.

[JustADude]

Quite right. My apologies to the board.

Ditto as well. I'm the one that oppened the can of worms on this one. Mia maxima culpa.

[Andara Bledin]

All this "half the world" stuff keeps making me think of a song by Rush...

Half the world lives
Half the world makes
Half the world gives
While the other half takes

Half the world is
Half the world was
Half the world thinks
While the other half does

Half the world lies
Half the world learns
Half the world flies
As half the world turns

Half the world cries
Half the world laughs
Half the world tries
To be the other half

^-.-^

[Kogarashi]

BMG was much less hassle, had their stuff together, and had a better library. But after that whole rootkit fiasco, I'm not sure I trust their decision-makers.

I had some trouble with BMG that put me off of their company completely. I'd actually been a pretty good member of the club, not just signing up for the 12-free deal and then quitting, and had been earning some of their "free CD" dollars. You know, where you buy X dollars' worth of merchandise, and earn points towards free CDs? Well, I'd just earned enough for a free CD, when my account was randomly canceled. I called customer service to find out what was up, to discover that they thought I'd canceled my account when I'd done nothing of the sort and had no warning. They gladly reinstated my account for me, but refused to reinstate my free CD dollars. The very next month, they accidently canceled my account again. I didn't get it reinstated this time.

Columbiahouse I quit because, as a poor college student, I couldn't afford it. I haven't joined up with a CD club since. I get all my CDs from Wal-Mart or Amazon.