Thanks, I know I can dispute the charge pretty easily. My complaint is that their company is so screwed up that they can't figure out whether they shipped me a disk drive or not, and now I have to wait around. I mean, if you wanted to do an online business, would you choose to have a manual-entry system like that? Sheesh.

I've had other bad experiences with internet companies before. For example, when placing an online order (even if it's a Secure Sockets Layer page), make sure it's the company's real .com address, and that it's not a "storefront" page from a third-party service provider. I have seen "storefront" pages (ones which look totally secure) which forward the orders via e-mail to the real company's e-mail address... in clear text with the credit card information and everything. My friend once placed an order that way, and the original company's e-mail system was down so the message bounced. The hilarious part is that the order had his return address on it, so it bounced the clear-text order back to him instead of the storefront page host. He was, um, rather unhappy about seeing his credit card number echoed back to him in a bounced mail.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144