Customer service or bad luck?...

Something just occurred to me. Since march, I've bought three things by credit card, either over the phone or on the internet, which I've had to get refunds for. These were:

• A headlamp for the car (scrapyard job - they sent me a bumper instead and I had to invoke a chargeback to get my money refunded)
• Mario Kart Wii from Amazon (waited an entire month for it to be shipped, they did their usual crap with the website, stringing me along while they kept my money)
• Some gear to turn one of the basses into a synth bass (this one really hacked me off. I did a bit of research, realised the bundles usually only come with the guitar pickup, not the bass one, so I went out of my way to confirm at every stage of the ordering they knew what I needed. They shipped the *&^# guitar one anyway).

It just struck me that I've never had such a lousy run of luck before. I'm going to stop shopping at Amazon because their JIT oriented user interface lies through its' teeth about the status of your order so they can get the cash out of you and give you the impression you can't get a refund when you can (what sort of strange state for an order puts it "pre shipping" for god's sake?). The scrapyard was a joke, but then again every time I rang them (5 times) apart from once I got someone who sounded like their skull was shaped like a frisbee. The time I got an intelligent guy he just didn't bother ringing back.

But somehow synth gear bums me out the most. I tried my best. I did all the hard work. All they had to do was check their stock, and send me the right thing. I found out since they don't even have the bass pickup, so it's refund time again.

I'm starting to think shopping in shops is actually a better idea. Online retailers are starting to take the piss and the pinch starts to bite (to mix my metaphors).