You know, I’ve sung the praises of Warp Records’ Bleep.com several times on this site, because they always seemed to do the right thing. They let you preview entire tracks before downloading and when you *did* download you got non-DRMed MP3 files. However today they have pissed me off enough that I don’t ever want to deal with them again. When you check out, you have 2 options for payment, Credit Card or Paypal. I’ve always chosen Credit Card in the past, and things have gone smoothly. Today I tried Paypal because I didn’t feel like looking around for my credit card number. After I completed my transaction I never got forwarded to the “Download” page to transfer my music. I took a look at the BLEEP FAQ, and I found this bull-shit:
If you choose to pay PayPal directly from your bank account (they call this a PayPal eCheck), then this takes PayPal from 4 to 6 days to collect the money from your bank account. Once they have succesfully collected the money they then notify us. Only then will you have access to download your order.Some people new to PayPal choose the eCheck payment method without understanding the delay it would cause and unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to speed up this process.
I am *not* new to Paypal! I have dealt with dozens of merchants on the internet who ship product upon completion of the Paypal transaction. This whole “waiting for the bank transfer” thing is prime, Grade A, 100% Bull-fucking-shit and if that *is* the way they’re going to do things, then that should be communicated to the user BEFORE they click the Paypal link! So *bleep* you Bleep, and the *bleep* you rode in on. I am through with the likes of you.
[UPDATE] Ok… slightly less angry now, b/c I found the album I purchased on Soulseek (yes, I am still paying for it) but it shouldn’t have had to come to that. Bad online retailers drive people to illegal downloads. Sounds like a business model to me!
Tags: music, mp3, ecommerce, customer-service
OK, maybe that came off a little harsh, but the thing that really irks me about the situation is this one bit in the FAQ: “unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to speed up this process.” Fine, that’s understandable… But it would be SO easy for them to prevent it from happening in the first place. Inexcusable!