For those that have folled my saga, on the morning of 12/23 I placed an order for 1x10gig, 1x60gig, 2 tuners, 2 faceplate kits, 2 remotes, and 3 AC adaptors and 1x sled (idea to build a docking station by my stereo).

On 12/27 I recieved shipping confirmation for everything and a fedex tracking number.
On 12/30 my credit card was billed/charged the whole $1,300+ amount.

Of course, the order never really happeneded, and I made repeated calls and emails to the customer service number.

On tuesday of last week, I called and was returned a call 2 hours later saying my order was in the warehouse and would ship out that night.

On Friday I called again, and they had no idea.

This morning I recieved this email from sonic blue:

In reply to:

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We are terribly sorry for the difficulties that you experienced with your Digital River order. To try and compensate for this, we have placed a new order and upgraded your 10gb to a 20gb at no additional cost. I also need to let you know that we do not have any more of the car screen kits or the tuners. The shipping has been set to 2-day shipping, also at no additional charge. Your new order number is xxxxxx.If you have any questions, please feel free to contact myself or Mark.

Sincerely,

Donna Randall
Customer Service Lead
SONICblue
1-800-468-5846

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My response now is to (1) tell them to cancel the order and (2) dispute the charge with my credit card. Of course the customer service center is closed for the weekend.


*sigh*

I'm in a pissy mood now....

In fact we have a large number of screen kits, just awaiting packaging. They'll get into stock when that is complete.

Rob

In reply to:

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In fact we have a large number of screen kits, just awaiting packaging. They'll get into stock when that is complete.

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Yea, but I won't be getting any if this order goes through. And i won't be getting tuners (which I considered a must have when I ordered) either, and I've already PAID for them and there was no mention of a refund for the unavailable components. ("here take my money and waste hours of my time on the phone - I don't mind")

I assume the refund for unavailable parts would have gone without saying.

Sorry they messed you around.

Rob

In reply to:

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I assume the refund for unavailable parts would have gone without saying.

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I would have thought that if nothing was said at all, but insead they specified that they would compensate me with a storage upgrade (which doesn't begin to approach the value of the tuners & faceplate kits in my opinion...and the price sheet).

I suspect the storage upgrade is purely because they are out of 10Gb units...

I sent an email back to thim this morning requesting that they just cancel the order because of the missing items (tuners), and I just recieved an email reply saying that they would do that- cancel the order that is.

I can't help but feel like that was their goal all along - string me along until I gave up.

Well, I gave up and I'm in funk now.

In reply to:

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I can't help but feel like that was their goal all along - string me along until I gave up.

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Ok, I was a bit mellow-dramatic there. As I calm down I relaize it was just the system screwing up. No attributing to conspiracy what is more easily accomplished by a good old-fashioned screw-up.

As I theorized earlier, I expect you're not the only person in this situtation, but one of many. This would explain why they were out-of-stock and then, suddenly, had many more in stock. Because they failed to process orders correctly. But that may just be my pessimism speaking.