🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4idq3j$rkb@bigboote.WPI.EDU>,
Kevin Patrick Thibedeau <thibedek@wpi.edu> wrote:
>I've been looking around for a while to get a SCSI CD-ROM for my system. 
>I've decided on the 4plex+ and an AHA1542C?.  After poring over the last 
>few computer shoppers the best price on the drive and card have been from 
>Dirt Cheap Drives.  I've never dealt with these people but they seem to 
>be pretty consistent advertisers in the shopper and seem respetable.
>
>Does anyone have any terrible horror stories in dealing with DCD or any 
>cheaper alternative?

I have a horror story about DCD.  I ordered a custom SCSI cable from them
about a year ago.  They said it would take about six hours to build and would
ship the next day.  I called the next day, and was told that it had shipped.
I was even given a FedEx tracking number.  When it didn't arrive the day after
that, I found out from FedEx that the airbill with that tracking number
hadn't ever been used!

So I called DCD back and raised hell.  At some point I called the person I
was dealing with "unethical" and indicated that I was going to let everyone I
knew, including the credit card company in question and FedEx, know what had
happened.  He said, "Oh, the credit card company?  You're going to have fun
with the credit card company." and hung up.

The next day I found that my credit card was at its limit; $1700 had been
"reserved" -- not charged, but "reserved" -- on it through an older
authorization system which the Citibank VISA people insisted did not preserve
the identity of the charging party until the charge actually went through,
instead of just being a reservation against my credit limit.  I was amazed to
hear that anyone would design an authorization system in this fashion, but...

I asked how long it would take this "reservation" to time out, and was told,
"until the end of the current billing period".  Effectively, the only thing I
could do was to cancel the card and get a new one.  Luckily, Citibank were
quite sympathetic and it only took a day to do that.

I contemplated going after DCD for mail and wire fraud, but after an
exasperating three-hour session trying to extricate the necessary records from
Citibank just gave up.

Don't do business with them.

-- 
 Thor Lancelot Simon	                                      tls@rek.tjls.com
                        love is an angel disguised as lust