Honest Purchasing
Trav was recently talking about how he tried to fix a problem where he was undercharged at the pet store. No one at the pet store wanted to take his money when he called them up on the phone to correct the problem.
I’ve run into a dilemma that is similar in some respects. I bought a DVD on Amazon.com and found that the DVD was a Chinese bootleg. It’s a perfectly usable DVD. it’s just that Sony Classics never made a region one DVD with Chinese subtitles and Chinese characters on the front cover.
I emailed Amazon and they said that that’s not their issue, that I should speak with the party that sold me the goods. I contacted the seller and he was quite amenable to be returning the DVD for refund.
Now the dilemma: who am I supposed to talk to (if anyone) about these illegal goods? if this was counterfeit money, I would know to contact the Secret Service. Of course then, I would have to turn over the counterfeit money and I’d be out of luck. I ran into an issue like that a few months ago when I returned bootleg Norton antivirus CDs to Symantec. I got a congratulatory letter and was out 20 bucks.
Is this situation the same here with DVDs? It’s just not worth it for me to pester Sony Classics about this breach. What a terrific haven for bootlegging Amazon.com can be!
Here’s what I’m going to do: I’ll return the DVD (spending two more dollars on postage), get my money back and then give them a poor (and descriptive) feedback. I’ll let “the market” take care of the rest.
update 8-16-05 When I wrote to the owner of the DVD, he said that he was sorry and it hadn’t registered with him that it was a bootleg disc. He refunded my money and didn’t want the DVD back. So I got my money back AND kept the DVD. From the tone of the conversation we had, I’m guessing that it was just some guy trying to dump his DVD collection while moving.