Attempting to do business with this company based on the expectation of truthful information and notification of problems with the order was a mistake.

I attempted to order a Nikon CS 5000 film scanner that their website had stated for at least several days was 'in stock'. I decided to try the company because they claimed to have the item, which is rather hard to get and few other retailers had in stock (a deficit item; I compare trying to get a Nikon film scanner to trying to buy an automobile in the Soviet Union!). They charged me $1,228.99, including $80 for '2-3 day' shipping. This was the only item on the order. There was no indication of anything other than the item being in stock and ready to ship - there was no 'delayed' or 'backorder' indications of any kind on the website, in the order process, or after the fact (and I have checked again -- I always save the web pages with the item and order information for these sorts of problems, so that I can refer to the original information).

Things started getting weird when they emailed me a few days after the order, stating I needed to phone in to confirm the order -- well OK, $1230 is a big amount, so it's fine to confirm to be sure when doing CC web business. It took me several lengthy attempts to get through on their very long-hold phone system (average 10-15 minutes hold while being forced to listen to continuous advertisements for their store and the occasional announcements of the hyperbolic 'we are experiencing unusually high call volumes...') When I finally got through to a person they didn't seem to know about the email or why it was sent, and claimed the item was already 'in process of being shipped' at the moment and would go out that day. Seemed confused, but i was hopeful it was just a minor delay or redundancy.

So, after a week had passed I began to get a little worried - no shipping or tracking confirmation had been provided, no item came in the mail, no communication came from the company, but the $1230 was certainly taken from my bank the week before by beach. An attempt to call them (last Friday) got a recording that they were apparently on an extended holiday until today (the following Thursday). I also sent a precisely worded email about the problem which was not answered.

Today, 13 days after the order was placed, I was finally able to get ahold of someone there on the phone (again after several long delays and repeated 'holds' while listening to their advertisements). I finally got them to admit that the item actually was NOT on hand at time of order or now, and had NOT been shipped. I was unable to get any explanation of why they had stated that the item was available and why they had then placed the burden on *me* to follow up with them to make sure they were telling the truth. They claim that they are refunding my full amount; though this will take 'several days' (the billing was incurred within a day of me placing the order).

This seems to me a lot like the classic 'sell what you don't have, don't say anything, make it difficult to communicate, and in the meantime hope to get the item to ship at some point before the customer cancels the sale' routine so typical of the bad electronics and camera dealers. I can only hope that they are actually going to refund the full amount as they indicate. Assume that *did* happen if I *don't follow up* to this commentary!

In summary, this company:

1) claimed inaccurately (or untruthfully) to have an item in stock and ready to ship on their website and again claimed on the phone that it was being prepared to ship (thus again indicating that it was on hand) several days after I had placed the order;
2) charged my CC at the time of the order for the full amount of the item which was actually NOT in stock and NOT available for shipping;
3) made no attempt to contact me regarding the actual unavailability of the item for the two weeks after the sale; and
4) because of company policy or failure to handle actual customer correspondence, made it extremely difficult and time-consuming for me to contact them myself to find out why the item had not arrived as specified in the sales transaction (including failure to answer email inquiry, having 3+ holidays in a row, and lengthy, multiple 'holds' per phone call).

It is possible that any one of these four items could be an honest mistake, the result of a busy web enterprise, or even a very long holiday closure; but all four together seem a lot more like an attempt to sell an item first and stall until the item may be actually available to ship. To me this is fraud. Deal carefully with this (and other) mail order companies, and be sure to document and follow up if things don't seem as they appear or are stated!