Never Ever Buy From Buy.com
 

Just ordered a 500gb exernal drive yesterday for 159.99 free shipping which I thought was a great deal, they charged my epass but sent me an email saying my order was cancelled. The charge is still there and I have been on the phone for nearly 1 hour waiting for a representative. I should have done my homework before trusting this company.

save yourself the trouble stay away

any idea how I can get this money back? buy.com seems to want me to forget about it it's pissing me off!

You are soon to discover the issue is with the other end.

Then epass is going to give you run around and tell you you need X and Y and Z from buy.com and then they can release funds sometime before November is over.

Suggestion - Find michael now.

who is michael?

If the money was refunded on your card then you have to wait at least 3 days for the money to show up in most cases.

It sucks, but has happened to me many times and now I expect it.

Snail mail them with your statement saying that the order was canceled and ask for a refund or for the product. Certify your mail so if it does go to small claims court you have proof showing they had received your payment and that you were asking for your product...

Later,

double post

you should never use epass for buying things online using the visa functionality of the card. that card is only good for taking cash out of atm's

Hopefully this is the case, once I get my funds back I'm done with this company I searched them on resellerratings and they have the worst ratings out of any company. I wish I would have done that before.

Why? I have used it before without any problems.

the fun has only just begun :thumbsup

epassporte takes 30 days to release funds. had you done this with a normal credit card, the funds would have been released within 3-5 days.

also, epassporte's card is based off in some odd country, so it triggers fraud triggers when you're ordering things online, while some places just completely reject them

Oh, I love customers like you. I really, really do.

I would NEVER waste time calling (worse yet, some banks now demand FAXES) card issuing banks to release holds put on customer's accounts by charges they made. If I "refunded" the order, closed the batch then the issue was done. Its an issue between the customer and THEIR FUCKING BANK, in this case, ePassporte.

Which is not surprising that you'd have this kind of problem with ePassporte, because they are well known for pulling this scam among others, you will NOT see that money for a month now... because ePassporte plays a game I like to call "hide the settlement". You see, there are TWO parts to EVERY card transaction, the authorization and the charge. NO RESPECTABLE COMPANY OF ANY SIZE charges your card before they SHIP THE PRODUCT because they would LOSE THEIR MERCHANT ACCOUNT if they did. Smaller companies do it because they are under the radar for this kinda shit. The authorization checks your account for sufficient credit or funds and if available, gets an authorization number from your bank. Its basically a serially numbered IOU. Your bank then puts the hold on your funds, NOT the merchant, to make sure it can cover the IOU if/when it gets called. Now the merchant, when they ship the order, they close the batch which is the equivalent of sending in the IOU for payment. No money has moved until this is done.

Now, THIS IS ALL DONE ONLINE, IN CLOSE TO REAL TIME.

If they told you they "refunded", they simply processed a void against that auth (basically, said they dont want thier IOU anymore) and closed the batch, thus transmitting it to the issuing bank and for a large company like buy.com, they probably close batches every hour or maybe even every 15 minutes. In that case, its ePassporte that is playing keepaway with the funds and you should bitch to them, because they know damn good and well the auth has been voided and that it can be released.

Its not Buy.com's problem that you deal with a dipshit company like ePassporte. I one of my credit card companies is a bitch about this as well, they tend to hold auths out for a long time. Though, like most banks, they are also very dumb. If the merchant printed the auth number on the reciept, I call the call center, ask to speak to merchant services to void an auth (which will be the rep you are talking to, but it makes it sound much better) and with a simple exchange of pleasantries I can get them knocked off.

I'll bet a regular Visa or MC goes right thru.

Bump ...

Ive never had any problems with buy dot com.

thats all I needed to read. good luck:Oh crap

buy.com was the only time I had a company call the debt on a credit card. I had a buy.com visa and then the company went back to the original owner so they called the cards. It wasnt a big amount but it surprised me,never had that happen.

Exactly. I wouldn't even think of using this for anything else, other than maybe sending payments directly to other people with epassporte accounts.

Using epassporte without knowing who Michael is like driving a junker car without knowing any good mechanics. (Someone come up with a better analogy.)

his email is michael DOT olsen AT epassporte.com

epassporte customer service is useless but michael makes things happen

Buy.Com's great. I order from them all the time. Hell, just looking around on my desk, I can pick out 4 items that came from them.

Seems your problem is more with Epass than them. Should probably realize that kinda thing before you go shouting your mouth off about such things. :2 cents:

Withdrawal cash at ATM.
Go to Best Buy.
Purchase the HD from someone you can easily return it to.
Everything = perfect.