I don't know how many people here have been following the Namco Bandai game Ni No Kuni's "Ninostarter" campaign where the more people who pre-order the Club Namco shop exclusive special edition the more things they add to it, but it sounded like a great thing for a game I was already planing to buy anyway. Well the first thing I noticed right away was that the store is handled by Digital River so I knew right away I could be in for a major headache, but I had good luck with the Voltron subscription at Matty so I thought I'd be fine.

Nope. First problem is the store refuses to accept my address. I live in Sidney, ME, but the store keeps changing it to Augusta because we share the same zip code. Matty doesn't do that, I don't know why this store does. I figure I'll just contact them and have it changed to the right address later. So I then see that this store, unlike Matty, accepts PayPal. I thought this was great because now I won't have to worry about calling them up and changing credit card numbers if something happens like I've had to do twice this year so I go with that. I finish the order and then email them about the address and they say they'll take care of it. They change the shipping address, but not the billing address, but that doesn't matter much with PayPal.

So a couple days go by and I see I a withdrawal from PayPal for $110.92 which never should have been there. I know from using Matty that they like to do these stupid "pre-approvals" that for me have never lasted on my account long enough to actually show up as a withdrawal on my statement so I'm surprised to see this there. Any other store I've ever used that does pre-approvals only does it for a few cents, just to show that the account is active, I have no idea why Digital River does it for the full order amount. It also clearly states on the site that pre-orders will not be charged until the item ships and doesn't say anything anywhere about pre-approvals. So I send them another email asking what's going on, why was I charged? they reply saying it's only a pre-approval and it'll only last for a day or two, just wait it out. I send them an angry email back telling them they're inconsiderate of their customers money situations, how there's no mention of pre-approvals on the website, and that it's ultimately pointless to pre-approve an order in July that wan't be released until January, it doesn't prove there'll be money in the account then. They don't reply.

So a week goes by since I was charged, it's now this past Monday and the money still hasn't been returned to my account so I send them another angry email asking why the pre-approval hasn't been reversed, I want my money NOW! They reply saying a refund is being processed, give it four more days and it'll show up in my bank account. I send them another email right away asking why I'm getting a refund, I just wanted the pre-approval reversed, did they cancel my order? To which they reply I got the refund because I canceled my order. In the meantime It's been four days I haven't seen my money yet. I check my PayPal account and sure enough, $110.92 sitting there and not in my checking account like they said it would be. Now I have to wait another 4 days for it to get transferred from there, all so I could have the money that never should have left my bank in the first place.

I've sent them another email asking them why they would cancel the order, I never asked for that, can't wait to see how they respond to that. I'm pretty sure I know how their response will go and I'll likely end this by telling them where they can stick their game. At this point I think I'm just going to buy a used copy so they won't get any money out of me and I'm going to be sure to tell them that!

Emerje