You know, customer service from online places generally has been really good for me, but in the last couple of months I've been dealing with one that really, really sucks.

It's an online comic store that I saw mentioned by Warren Ellis on one of his Bad Signal posts, and I thought "Great, they take paypal, I'll give them a shot".

At the time I didn't have a credit card and was told by my bank (Westpac) that they wouldn't do a Visa Debit card.

Actually I was told this many times, a few times on their help line - when I was in the bank the other day sorting out some of my finances the woman said to me "Well, no we don't do that... we do Mastercard Debit cards and they're the same thing?".

So anyway, I thought paypal would be the way to go.

Well I started off on the wrong foot - I thought I had some funds in my paypal and I didn't, it took a week to clear (bad customer! bad! bad!).

Once they cleared I paid straight away, didn't seem a problem.

I'd ordered several trades as well as some of the Buffy Season 8 comics and some WE comics... not a small order for me, since I'm not a huge comic buyer.

Well, a month later I had heard nothing - no mention of shipping, no notification of anything - so I emailed them.

No response.

I emailed them again.

No response.

I chased them up a total of 10 times, cc'ing the email to 3 different addresses and finally they sent me back an impatient response that it was because my trades had not come in yet, they should have, but they haven't yet, and they'd get back to me to tell me why.

Another month goes by.

I email them to ask them what's going on.

No response.

A week later I email again.

No response.

A week later and here I am writing this.

Has anyone else gone through something like this? I mean I feel like I should almost contact paypal and ask if there is some way to get the payment back.  I now have my debit card on the way and will have no problems ordering from anyone else I choose to.

It's just fairly disheartening that a company that seems to be online based, that has paid column reviews, interviews with big comics names and a huge stock list - well, that they could be so crappy with their communication.

Is it that much to be notified on a weekly, or even monthly basis the status of your order if you haven't received it yet?