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Overall I order a lot of stuff from Amazon.com, and my experiences have almost all been good. I haven't had anyone deliberately try to rip me off or anything like that. I usually don't buy from vendors who don't have a track record, and if I can buy from someone I'm familiar with (such as caiman.com) I'll always do that since I know they have great service.
Lately I've been running into a string of problems. Going back nearly two months ago, I ordered an English version of Heavy Songs by Shonen Knife, only to recieve a Japanese import version. The seller was nice about it and refunded me even before I sent the cd back.
(Aside: Sadly, when I finally did get a copy of Heavy Songs in English, the song I was most interested in turned out to not be that interesting. The song "AAA" in Japanese starts out with some silly lyrics like "Inu wa dog, ginko wa bug, neko wa cat," basically telling us what the English equivelant of a Japanese animal word is. I was really interested in finding out what the rest of the song said. Well, in English the song is all about shopping too much and not having enough money. It's not about animals at all, and the Japanese to English animal name translation part of the song is completely missing in the English version. When I did some research, it turns out that this is what the Japanese version of the song was really about all along -- why the Japanese-English animal name lessons were there in the begining of the song, who knows? This is Shonen Knife after all. They don't need a reason.)
Anyway... in the middle of September I ordered a few Church cds. The Church is one of those bands I've always liked but haven't followed in a long time. It turns out that they're also one of those bands that never fully broke up or went away... and they're still making good music. So I ordered a few of their more recent cds used, mostly the ones that were available for the cheapest prices, and one seller immediately refunded me, saying that they'd sold the cd from their store just hours before I placed my order.
Okay, no problem, I haven't even bothered to reorder it yet. It wasn't something I desperately needed soon, I just want to eventually fill in my collection of Church cds and do so on the cheap.
A week later I ordered the new cd from Veruca Salt, another band that I like that has refused to go away. I also finally ordered the new White Stripes cd. That one came, and I've been enjoying it quite a bit. The Veruca Salt cd order was refunded to me because they aparently didn't have it to ship, or something. Whatever.
Two weeks ago or so my comic shop gave me a big catalogue of Viz comics. I didn't really discover anything new that I was interested in, but I noticed that Please Save My Earth was on volume 17 or 20 or something like that. I only had the first three volumes, and was under the impression that there weren't any more than that. So I decided to work on filling in that collection as well -- because if you wait too long on some of these manga series, they go out of print and are hard to find. For example, I think I'm missing a volume of Sailor Moon that is impossible to buy at this point.
So I ordered several more of that manga, mostly for very cheap used prices. One of the manga I ordered was munched in the mail and returned to the seller. They refunded me. I ordered it again -- along with a couple of other things. (In this whole series of events, one of the unfortunate truths is that every time I had to reorder an item it gave me an excuse to order something else -- so, add Wintersmith to the list, I'd forgotten that was coming out. Add The Darkness's 2nd cd to the list, Sky reccomends it highly and it's available for cheap. Etc. etc.)
So anyway... the latest was volume 6 of Please Save My Earth, which I'd ordered through good old Powell's Books. When it arrived it was a Spanish language version. They were also good about it and refunded me, and even said to keep the book or sell it to Goodwill rather than return it. Not that I know what to do with a Spanish language version of volume 6 of a multi-volume manga.
Oy.
Lately I've been running into a string of problems. Going back nearly two months ago, I ordered an English version of Heavy Songs by Shonen Knife, only to recieve a Japanese import version. The seller was nice about it and refunded me even before I sent the cd back.
(Aside: Sadly, when I finally did get a copy of Heavy Songs in English, the song I was most interested in turned out to not be that interesting. The song "AAA" in Japanese starts out with some silly lyrics like "Inu wa dog, ginko wa bug, neko wa cat," basically telling us what the English equivelant of a Japanese animal word is. I was really interested in finding out what the rest of the song said. Well, in English the song is all about shopping too much and not having enough money. It's not about animals at all, and the Japanese to English animal name translation part of the song is completely missing in the English version. When I did some research, it turns out that this is what the Japanese version of the song was really about all along -- why the Japanese-English animal name lessons were there in the begining of the song, who knows? This is Shonen Knife after all. They don't need a reason.)
Anyway... in the middle of September I ordered a few Church cds. The Church is one of those bands I've always liked but haven't followed in a long time. It turns out that they're also one of those bands that never fully broke up or went away... and they're still making good music. So I ordered a few of their more recent cds used, mostly the ones that were available for the cheapest prices, and one seller immediately refunded me, saying that they'd sold the cd from their store just hours before I placed my order.
Okay, no problem, I haven't even bothered to reorder it yet. It wasn't something I desperately needed soon, I just want to eventually fill in my collection of Church cds and do so on the cheap.
A week later I ordered the new cd from Veruca Salt, another band that I like that has refused to go away. I also finally ordered the new White Stripes cd. That one came, and I've been enjoying it quite a bit. The Veruca Salt cd order was refunded to me because they aparently didn't have it to ship, or something. Whatever.
Two weeks ago or so my comic shop gave me a big catalogue of Viz comics. I didn't really discover anything new that I was interested in, but I noticed that Please Save My Earth was on volume 17 or 20 or something like that. I only had the first three volumes, and was under the impression that there weren't any more than that. So I decided to work on filling in that collection as well -- because if you wait too long on some of these manga series, they go out of print and are hard to find. For example, I think I'm missing a volume of Sailor Moon that is impossible to buy at this point.
So I ordered several more of that manga, mostly for very cheap used prices. One of the manga I ordered was munched in the mail and returned to the seller. They refunded me. I ordered it again -- along with a couple of other things. (In this whole series of events, one of the unfortunate truths is that every time I had to reorder an item it gave me an excuse to order something else -- so, add Wintersmith to the list, I'd forgotten that was coming out. Add The Darkness's 2nd cd to the list, Sky reccomends it highly and it's available for cheap. Etc. etc.)
So anyway... the latest was volume 6 of Please Save My Earth, which I'd ordered through good old Powell's Books. When it arrived it was a Spanish language version. They were also good about it and refunded me, and even said to keep the book or sell it to Goodwill rather than return it. Not that I know what to do with a Spanish language version of volume 6 of a multi-volume manga.
Oy.
