Wednesday December 12 - DR Discount refunded my money yesterday afternoon. He was out of town over the weekend it would seem. Still I thought we were clear about our agreement. Whatever. It's, mercifully, over with now after a mere 40 days!

Monday December 10 - DR Discount backed out of his agreement to refund my money on the 8th. Email from him on Thursday the 6th indicated that he would give me an answer about a refund or replacement on Friday. No email was received. I sent a email early Saturday morning reminding him of our agreement. There was still no response from DR Discount late Sunday evening, so I filed fraud complaints with ebay and PayPal. Unfortunately DR seems to respond better to threats than anything else. :( Still no word from DR Discount this morning.

Thursday December 6 - <Sigh> Here we go again. I emailed DR Discount on Tuesday asking for news about the drive. He hasn't taking the time to respond yet. This time I gave hime plenty of time to respond. Also, looks like DR's lacidasical approach to customer service has earned him another complaint. Guess I'll fire off another email this afternoon. :(

Wednesday November 28 1:15PM - Good news! DR Discount agreed to refund the $99.95 if he doesn't get a drive from IBM to send out by the 8th of next month. I still have to get a drive, but as far as I'm concerned this is basically wrapped up. It would seem that this mess was probably a combination of a lack of patience/trust on my end, slow communication on the other, and bad luck for both.

Wednesday November 28 - I emailed DR Discount yesterday threatening to hand the whole business over to eBay and PayPal. This is frustrating, and it might be easier if I let them handle it. However, DR Discount replied in a mere 6 hours!

The drive has been sent to IBM, once I have your replacement I will ship it out to you.

Thank you

I don't know how long this will take, and wasn't given any indication. So, I proposed that if the replacement hasn't arrived by the 8th of next month, that he refund the $99.95. I haven't received a response yet. Since the tech apparently found the drive to be defective, I should probably just get my refund and move on...

Monday November 26 - Still no news from DR Discount. He's had the drive back for 9 days and still hasn't determined whether it's bad or good. I'm reaching my wit's end here. Perhaps I should let eBay's fraud investigators take over from here!?

Tuesday November 20 - DR Discount replied to my email from yesterday morning. I asked about the status of the drive and explained in more detail why I wasn't having fun, ie gave him a negative feedback. Here's the reply:

Two business days instead of one..WOW Negative for that..you are a rookie

Er, if this were the only complaint, I could see his point. Actually I would never have noticed that was part of the "5 Star Plan" if not for the other problems. Perhaps he didn't read my comments from the afternoon of the 12th too closely. Here's the current score. 17 days, $113.30, 6 emails sent, 3 received, 0 working hard drives.

Thursday November 15 morning - Package arrives back in Ansonia, CT this morning. BTW, I negleted to mention that Mr. Discount offered to replace the drive or refund my money minus the restocking fee. So we'll see how everything works out. I ran out of hard disk room again yesterday. :P

Tuesday November 13 8:45AM - DR Discount replied last night to my email:

Hi Casey,
I will take the drive back no problem, but there will be a 15% fee if the drive is found to be good.


I'm not too keen about the 15% fee. I'll just have to take his word if he gets it to work reliably, I suppose. So I could conceivably be out about $35 on a $100 item. At the very least, this will cost $15-$20 in shipping charges. :( I guess I should stick to ClubMac.

Monday November 12, 4:45PM - It's been over 24 hours. Still no word from DR Discount, so I'm leaving my feedback and taking this page live. I should make it clear that I'm not terribly upset that the drive doesn't work or that it took longer than expected to arrive. My biggest problem is the lack of communication from this guy. Hopefully this is all a big mixup.

Monday November 12, Afternoon - I was looking over DR Discount's "5 star guarantee" -

*The 5 Star Plan* 1.) 100% Guarantee DOA "if it don't work, just ship it back and I will replace it". 2.) All Items comes packaged in an anti-static bag. 3.) Items will be shipped out USPS on the next business day. 4.) Multiple Qty's are available. 5.) Upgrades are available on all of your hardware, just ask

Star 2 is incorrect. Although I wouldn't complain about the packaging, it was packaged in a organizer case with some foam. Don't know if the foam is anti-static.
Star 3 - Nope. It was shipped ordered Friday, and shipped Tuesday.

The other stars don't apply or the jury is still out.

Monday November 12, 9:27AM - Still haven't heard from DR Discount. My only communication from him is the 22 words he bothered to write a week ago. This time I sent the text of the yesterday's email via eBay's contact page. I cc'd myself.

Sunday November 11 - All backup up, and ready to tear apart my Powerbook, I begin the installation process. The drive has a rattle when it's inverted, but the information I have seems to suggest that's normal. With little difficulty, the old drive is out and the new one is in. I reboot with Mac OS 9 CD in the CD drive. The computer doesn't find the new drive. I shutdown, and double check everything, reboot. This time the drive is found. I format and install the OS. All seems fine. I reboot, and the drive isn't found. Triple check everything, reboot, same thing. I spend a couple of hours trying to get the drive to work again, but it did not, so I replaced it with my old 4 GB drive. So I begin to think about returning the drive. The information I have indicates that this is a new drive and that IBM will warrant it. I go to IBM's warranty page to find out. The serial number that I've entered, I am told, is an OEM serial number, contact the OEM for warranty support. So I write an email explaining all of this in even more excruciating detail than I've covered here. This was around mid day Sunday.

Saturday November 10 - Hard drive arrives. Good packaging, drive looks good visually. I wait until tomorrow to install.

Friday November 9 - No hard drive. Ah well. With all this terrorist business, a delay is understandable.

Monday November 5 - I still hadn't heard from Mr. Savino by mid day Monday, so I emailed him requesting an acknowledgment that he got my money, that the drive was coming, that he was there, whatever :) Monday evening (around 11:00) I wrote another email from the email account I use on eBay (@mindspring) in case there was a mix up and then realized that he replied that evening. (Note: his reply was to my @mindspring account, so it wasn't a reply to the first email from my @mac account) This was the entire text of that message:

Hi Casey:

Just want to let you know that your order will be shipped 11/6/01 via USPS Priority Mail.

Thanks again,
DR Discount


So now, I was at ease and waiting for my package. Priority mail is 2-3 days, so that should've been Friday at the latest I figured.

Friday November 2 - I'd been looking around for a new hard for my laptop for a couple months. I had settled on a 20 GB IBM Travelstar and noticed them selling on eBay and elsewhere for $125 - $150. This day I noticed 4 20 gig Travelstar's on eBay with a $99.95 "buy it now" option. I skimmed drcomp101's feedback and decided to go ahead and buy this one. I hadn't emailed or otherwise communicated with this guy, but he looked like a high seller with few negative comments, so I went ahead. This was my first mistake. This was only the 3rd thing I'd won on eBay, and the only thing over $25. Both experiences were pleasant an easy, and I expected the same with this one. Anyway, I got my confirmation email and an automated email from drcomp101 via Paypal. I sent my money ($109.90 after shipping) via Paypal about 5 minutes later. And waited for a response from an actual human.