I don't see anything stupid at all. Just because I went on tour didn't have anything to do with my distributor. It is my distributors fault and my processors fault the orders are on hold. It is not my fault, and I will not claim responsibility for it. I am doing everything possible to get the orders sent out. Thats all I can say, the company is just me and because of this I have a feeling all the business partners involved just want me out of business so they are doing quite a good job at putting road blocks in my way.

It's mainly financial but it's also quite bureaucratic in nature. Of course resolving any of this is none of the business partners priorities and they don't care about your orders. "It's always under review and we will let you know" type of deals.

Sorry really but thats all i can say.

as far as we are concerned it is just you. If you are having distribution issues, there's a fix ... stop taking new orders.

I agree, doesn't seem like you are taking responsibility ... in one sentence you say the orders are just about to ship and that's why cards have been charged ... in the next you say your having distribution problems ... Either the merchandise is about to ship to your customers or it is not. Your problems with your suppliers is exactly that... your problem. The bottom line is you have taken payment for something and not delivered so far.

In any case, I'll bet you have lost more customers than you have gained with your responses.

Coming from someone who admits that he ignored customer service questions for an entire week because "I was gone for a week on tour with my rock band.", I find this comment humorous.

While I appreciate you coming here to respond to comments and promote your company, please understand that I would NEVER place an order at your company. Passing the blame around when you have charged customers for items that have not shipped is unacceptable (and likely in violation of your agreements with the credit card companies).

Nothing personal, but I would think that you'd be a little more concerned being a one-man operation with $50k in unshipped product. The fact that you are still taking orders when you clearly aren't ready or able to run a company this size is troubling.

Ok then I'll start ignoring customers and not respond to anyone. I guess that is what you want. I try to do the right thing and now I am attacked for it. So from now on I will start acting like a ******* corporation and will ingore everyone. Thats sarcasm.

Dude!!! You still don't get it do you? Amazing!!!

Whoa!

Pretty hot in here wouldn't you say?

Mike BigCD, I just placed an order before reading this thread. What is a realistic timeframe to wait before my order is filled? Two weeks; a month?

Please let me know. Your response is appreciated.....

You have already done that, I have emailed you and asked for a refund. That request WAS and still has been ignored by you. Plain and simple you need to refund my money you did not send out the items. I do not care what your problems are, you should not have charged my card unless you shipped the items. I will be contacting my credit card company on Monday if you do not refund my card. Like I said before it would not be that big of a deal BUT you charged my card and it now sounds like you have no idea when the items will ship.

I bought Manchurian Candidate from BigCD off half.com, and waited a month for it to ship and it never arrived. I filed a complaint with Half.com, and they forwarded it to BigCD, and Big CD replied that it was likely a processing error, and someone would manually enter in the order. I waited another 2 weeks and received nothing, and filed a complaint with half.com to get my money refunded (which hasn't happened yet).

So, I'm 0 for 1 with them, and out $9.00 and no DVD...

Yikes what an unhappy thread. On one hand I can be sympathetic with the plight of the 'little guy' and the problems a small business can have when dealing with big corporations but on the other hand this thread is a great example of how the road to hell can be paved with good intentions and customers have real needs and concerns which need to be met.

Unfortunately I've had to give advice to several stores as they pulled through rought times and so here's what I've said in the past (which I think would help both BigCD and the customers here who are really getting burned).

#1 Do not charge credit cards before product has shipped. This is a pretty big no no and can get you in some hot water, as well as give customers a real reason to file complaints and risk your merchant stauts.
#2 Make it easy for unhappy customers to cancel their order. You can't hold orders hostage, it's very important that customers who don't want to 'wait it out' can cancel their order and get an immediate refund. I think you'll find that some customers are WILLING to sweat it out if they have faith they can 'get out' at any time.
#3 Make it clear on your site that you are experiencing shipping delays and that people will not be getting their product ASAP.
#4 Find an interm distributor to get the pending orders out. There's nothing better to show a distributor that they can't mess with your business by taking your business elsewhere.
#5 Separate your frustration with your distributor from the needs of your customers. The people in this thread have every reason to be concerned, their money/order has been effected by your distributor problem as much as yours has. It's better to give updates than get bitter

Hopefully this will help. I hate to see things like this happen, it's bad for customers, bad for stores, and in the end no one wins.

Time to call the cc company and reverse the charges, what a scam artist! How can he justify starting a business and than leaving it unattended for a gig with his band and than start charging people without shipping any product?

I run a small DVD company as well, and I have had none of the problems Mike has had. I only list product I have sitting in front of me. I do roughly $100,000 in retail sales a year, but most of my business is wholesale. My customers would not put up with this. My website is down and I am not spamming, so I will not divulge the name of my company, but customer service is a must. These wholesalers do not always ask for contracts, a lot of them dont actually. Find a new distributor would be my suggestion.
Philip

Last month I ordered a dreamcast game off of half.com from bigcd, and it showed up and made me very happy. No complaints here.

I would have responded to this thread earlier, but I was on a world tour with MY radio rock band and by "world tour" my band just went door to door in an apartment complex taking requests (There's a major-label bidding war going on right now). Seriously though I wanted to weigh in on the topic and say that I was so confused by the layout of the site and then becoming more confused with the media mail/priority thing that I just said "Forget this! The online retailer I normally use works just fine for me! Why screw up a good thing" By the way, rock and roll is a full time job and demands all your attention, as does running a business.

Yes there is shortly going to be several majors interested in us. I have a band and were going to be successfull. I can own and run bigcd.com from the road easily with a laptop this does not matter at this point.

This has no bearing on the fact that my credit card processor is holding thousands of dollars from me. Or the fact that half.com takes 3 weeks to pay for the orders they submit and tell customers they are shipped that day. It's just not going to happen nobody is going to send out 50,000 in orders without recieving money for them.

As soon as half.com sends me the 45,000 they owe me the orders will be released. I am instructing my distributor to send out all the store orders first then the half.com orders second. I'm sure a bunch of the later half.com orders will not be released until more money is recieved most likely from my card processor. It's all going to work out but it's not really up to me it's up to the companies who like to hold small business's hostage by holding money and revoking credit lines and threatening me with collection agencies when it's thier fault the business is in trouble in the first place. It's not mine and the only thing i could personally do at this point is get a loan to deposit it down for a line of credit.

Then there is absolutely the issue with my fullfillment contract is almost up so a new one needs to be worked on very shortly. Distributor just will not care unless money is recieved and until the money is recieved I'm on hold now. As soon as half.com sends the wire I'll be sending it in and all the store orders and more than half of the half.com orders will be paid for and sent out. So thats that and I am not looking responses or people threatening me personally. SO please don't and stop calling here threatening me as well. I am doing everything I can. It comes down to big business does not care about small business and frankly my business is not that small I do 50,000 in orders a monnth now. I am an individual however so they like to browbeat little people like myself.

Mike BigCD

It looks like a ray of sunshine has permeated the overcast sky.

My card processor is now sending me some of the money they are holding. They are also raising my limit again but yet again they took another security deposit.

So please if you have contacted your banks cancel the claims they take a serious amount of time and they cost me and the card processor money. The orders will be sent out shortly, and everything will come to as close as normal as possible. Thanks for your patience.

Mike

Mike,

You should provide a link on your e-tail site to this thread, or reproduce your attributions of blame on your customer service page. I'm sure your present and prospective customers would be interested to have the useful information you're providing here. I know I learned everything I needed to know about you and your company here.

Mike- you don't seem to realize that by you charging our CC without shipping any product you are costing your customers money in interest charges. It may not seem like much- but I'm not keen on paying interest if I don't have anything to show for it!
Also, my piddley forty dollar order I placed with you a few weeks ago may not have accured all THAT much interest, but when you think about it on a more global scale it adds up. Think of all the money the credit card companies have made in interest on that fifty thousand dollars worth or unshipped product.

I've been very patient, I sent only one very nice email asking for status. I haven't even griped too much in this thread- but I'm very unhappy with BigCD and will never order from you again. And if I don't receive shipping confirmation by this friday I plan on canceling my order as well as reversing the charges with my credit card.
I don't mean this to sound like a *threat* or anything, just a matter of fact.


I beg to differ. Obviously you could not handle it this time. Granted you at least attempted to find help while you were away and he turned out to be a slacker or something- but if you were so able to run the whole show with your laptop then I don't see why you could not have at least checked in while you were away.
Do you have any concept of the amount of money in potential sales this is going to cost you?



uhhhh- ok dood. revetahw
I was a sound engineer years ago (I quit long ago) and have seen how the buisness works. I could not help laughing out loud when I read this! Good luck with the band and all, but until you find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow spare us the stories about the leprechaun.

I'm responding here because you don't obviously know how this works. ALL STORES charge cards immediately... the way it differs is either Authorization only or Authorization then Capture. I authorize it then manually capture it within a few days it's not usually immediately. It's definitely long enough in most cases to insure its after the product has shipped. The only difference is this time the product has not shipped as usual because of the monies being witheld, even though it was collected in theory I still have not recieved it because of the interim card processor. So because of the bulk or orders sitting there for them to go out promptly all the cards needed to be charged and captured otherwise there would be no money to ship them out when the account was taken off hold. So basically by doing this the customers will get the orders fast in the long run than if I waited longer to collect the money.

Also I don't have a laptop yet, and this is irrellevant anyways because they wouldnt of released orders because of not getting payments. Once the band gets signed I either will sell the company or set up a space with a few employees and have them run it for me. I'll be on tour no doubt for months at a time, it's going to be a fun ride. As soon as our mp3.com page is up I will let you check out some songs of our CD but i can tell you already that already there are about 5 majors looking at us right now. Commercial airplay is scheduled in rotation for the next few weeks sometime. Full page article review/cd feature in Alternative Press magazine. Also pending interview space and write up in Rolling Stone or Spin magazine respectively. She has to write the piece then either one of them will bid on it. It's really crazy because everything is happening so fast right now, just comes down to the fact that everyone loves our band and the CD I put out. People in high places have taken notice they are calling us the next Nirvana and a true new sound in rock music. I didn't make this **** up, it's totally like a dream.

I have this record label I have been running for over ten years, then I started bigcd.com about 2 years ago, now I'm doing the band as well that is on my label and I'm in it. I'm just a person who does a lot on his own and has a lot of kick ass ideas and makes things happen.

When I get my signing bonus that will be no less than 1/4th of a million most likely more I'll be buying out DVDtalk so be nice to me. right G.

In the meantime I'm running bigcd the best I can for being an individual and if these business's would give a **** about the little man I would not be having ANY of these problems.

Mike BigCD, care to respond please?

When your card is "charged", it usually means it's "authorized" only by the merchant, even if it shows up as a charge when viewing your CC statement online. An authorization is basically a hold on your card to be officially charged by the merchant when a product is ready to ship. I run a small online business too and get this type of questions quite often like "why has my card been charged but my product hasn't shipped". If the merchant does not capture the authorization, it will expire usually in 5 days or so depending on your CC company.
I also know about how merchant banks can screw the little guy. If you get too successful (that's supposed to be a good thing) the merchant account providers usually get worried and place a hold on funds. I've known merchants who've have had this happen. The merchant provider then asks for detailed records and takes forever to release the funds, meanwhile you lose sales with no recourse. ( BigMike, you dealing with CardService because they seem to do that often)
However, I would agree with others in saying credit card should temporarily be not accepted while you work out the troubles with your merchant bank. Paypal could be an option.

I am waiting for payment from card processor and half.com as soon as this money is recieved my distirbutor will ship the orders.

Could be tomorrow I have no idea until the money shows up in my account. I can't say for sure but soon.

Mike-Out of curiosity what distributor are you using?

Finally someone who understands the plight of the little guy. you are 250% correct my friend, I am glad that someone understands and furthermore posted here in somewhat of support. Cardservice International is in indeed the culprit here. I have nothing to hide here at all it's quite basic really and I've been getting screwed for months.

It started in December when I start advertising here, and doing the barginflix, pricegrabber and what not type of deal. Monthly processing went from $9,000 upwards to 25,000 . First thing they did is take over 15,000 and hold it. They then required me to transmit ALL the cardholder information. They are so stupid they have no information but date, card number and price. They are not even passed along cardholders names or anything the system is retarded. So this fight goes on for like 3 weeks until I convince them that they would have to do all the work themselves between a batch file and my order status reports. They wanted me to look up manually hundreds of transactions verify exactly what was sent and provide a tracking number for everything. They even threatened to just reverse the card charges if I did not do this. The situation was elevated through 3 people at that time and everytime I had to fully explain the situation again. In the meantime my distributor is not being paid but is still shipping orders so my account balance is getting quite high somewhere around 50,000 of revolving credit in jeopardy. So these guys are getting really pissed and think I'm just running some kind of scam or something by not paying them. Finally some monies are released but not until I agreed that they would hold $7,500 from me as a security deposit not I would have a 25,000 monthly limit. This took about a month of resolution to get here. Finally I paid my distributor almost 30,000 but not they say well it's too bad because you have been delinquent were revoking your credit and not going to ship any orders until this is paid in full.

So I go from having a 50,000 line of revolving credit to no credit at all and this card service holding $7,500 flat out of customers money. This also screws me double because I had been investing money pricegrabber, or other programs and investments so I didn't have the money to cover it entirely and I still don't. So now I've been fighting with IE the distributor about this for weeks. Finally getting the balance down somewhat because of the money coming in from the pending orders but still they are not releasing it. Meantime half.com sales have soared from 15,000 max bi weekly to now 45,000 bi weekly. I really have no idea why but i was thrilled, however all these orders are waiting as well pending money. No distributor is going to send out that many orders on any companys good faith of they money is coming soon. So all the half.com customers are waiting. Finally coming to some resolution here I collect more monies on the batch to pay the distributor for the pending orders. So here I am collecting more money and now I got over my new $25,000 limit so now they are telling me again they are holding my $13,000 or something because I went over again. This has been going on for like a week now at least and only today have I recieved any progression on the matter. Only when i threatened them with a bankruptcy lawsuit did they tell me ok man we will work with you we understand what your going through. Of course they said they will send money but they are now taking another security deposit as well. So now supposedly I have a 30,000 monthly limit which STILL IS NOT ENOUGH and they are keeping 10,000 of the money and I will never see this money for as long as I remain open plus another 6 months. They hold money as long as they want to there is nothing I can do about it.

So this is where I am today, they SAID money will be wired tomorrow minus the other deposit they took. On the other side half.com owes me from last term 45,000 + , and another $13,000 from this term already. They only pay every 3 weeks so unless I can get credit again from the corporate distributor these orders will always be delayed. I am able to work out a payment plan for the remainder of the orders I believe to make up for the investments and losses however they will not extend credit at this time. Things are looking up but still not anything to be happy about. Working on getting a loan from a bigger startup friend to get ALL the orders out on time and somewhat of a base of capitol to put down for credit. It was not looking very good at all for your orders they were basically telling me we don't care if these get sent out we don't care if we take a 15,000 loss it's better than taking a 30,000 loss or what have you because of the inability for these people to pay me. I have been fighting it for days upon days working all the way up to even the vice president of credit at the distributor and the senior manager of loss prevention at card service. They have only showed interest to help because a threat of a bankruptcy lawsuit. So anyways thats the deal and I'm gonna goto bed now and maybe tomorrow this will work itself out somehow.

Mike BigCD/CTW/RH

I knew it wouldn't be long until the B word entered this picture.

Hello talkers I figure I would update the situation a bit. Things are going to start moving. I am expecting to recieve 55.000 shortly tomorrow most likely.

Orders will get sent out and everything will get keyed in and then I will get word on payment plan or what have to get them all sent out.

Half.com is working with me with get me paid ever week since I am now doing about 22,500 a week in sales on half.com. Hence thats why all the half.com orders were delayed.

Band news... we are going into rotation on commercial alternative giant 88.7 89X Detroit/Windsor next week.

Things are going to be crazy.