wrong order

Don't you hate when someone gets your order wrong?

I guess it happens most often in restaurants and places like that, but what I'm referring to specifically is on-line ordering. This is one of the big advantages of shopping in the real world - you know exactly what it is you're buying and you hand over your cash in exchange for that.

Also, if something goes wrong when you get home or whatever you've talked a real human who probably remembers you and, if you're sensible you've kept the receipt and you can just take it back.

One of the problems with being an anime fan is that you can't buy that much of it in the shops. Especially if you're an English fan like me. I like anime and I tend to buy a lot of it (too much, really) but that means I have to buy a lot of American (DVD region 1) stuff.

I have imported directly, but the problem there is you tend to get hit for customs occasionally and that's not cheap (see my posts about figurines I've bought that customs nabbed and made me pay VAT on - the VAT's not to bad, the fact that the Post Office charge 3 times as much again to "process" it for you is the real killer). So what I do instead is use certain sites that import the DVDs themselves and then sell them on.

I won't actually name names as obviously this post is about them making a mistake because really I still like them. See, the main problem is that I kinda understand the error they've made it's quite an easy one to have made.

Basically, I'm a huge fan of Code Geass and I've been desperately looking forward to the release of Geass on DVD by Bandai who hold the licence in American. The problem is that Bandai have make a huge mess of releasing it on DVD.

It was delayed for some reason and has taken a good while to come out (Gurren Lagann was out in Japan at a similar time and that's already been released). When it did come out there was some huge technical cock up that meant the first lot of disks were buggered.

They also released it in a confusing array of sets - there was supposed to be a single DVD box-set, but that was apparently cancelled (although it seemed to turn up later, but I'd already got the individual one by then). They were also releasing them as individual DVDs - so we're talking 6 individual DVD boxes. But then on top of that they're releasing them as three 2-DVD sets. So DVDs 1 & 2 in one box, 3 & 4 in one box and 5 & 6 in one box.

Okay, fine I thought - I bought the individual DVDs as that just seemed simpler to me. However, now the time has rolled around for disks 5 & 6 to be released, but there's no sign of them. However, the 3rd of the 2-DVD boxes has come out.

(Confused yet? You'll understand why the company made the error then!)

So I ordered that (as I say, I'm too desperate to watch the show to wait).

And recently this company sent it to me... only they didn't. What they've actually done is send me the third individual DVD, not the 3rd box set!

I wouldn't mind too much if they were the same price - I'd just forget about it and do another order. However, they aren't - the box set is more expensive than the individual one.

Trouble is I'd already ripped the cellophane off before I'd realised :(.

See this is why I hate it when people get your order wrong - because things get horribly complicated.