Ask Kris Slevens what he thinks of PayPal, and you won't hear too many friendly words. Slevens, who used PayPal to accept payments for his Web hosting firm, was one of thousands of merchants caught when the online payment company's site was sporadically unavailable for nearly a week last October.
When you buy a new PC, chances are it'll come with preinstalled software--typically, some flavor of Windows, a Web browser (guess which one), and a productivity suite such as Microsoft Works. Instead of providing backup discs for each application, though, many PC vendors
After you buy a new PC, you hope that it--and its components--will work without a hitch. But sometimes a part goes south before you've even tossed away the shipping box. You're entitled to a replacement part from the vendor, but you may have to pay to send the defective unit back to the company you bought it from even if the warranty is still in effect.
When Roberto Doumet of Miami saw Sprint PCS's TV ad featuring a black-robed prophet promising wireless Web access, he was hooked. He canceled his regular cell phone service and bought a Web-enabled Motorola Inc. phone and an insurance plan to go with it.
PC World readers send me hundreds of letters each month about a dizzying array of raw deals. But one complaint is easily the most common: unfulfilled rebates. In just the past few months, I've heard from nearly 150 readers whose rebates are months overdue. Worse, some of them won't ever receive their checks. The problem persists despite recent U.S. Federal Trade Commission actions. Earlier this year, the FTC reached a settlement with Memorex Corp. and Umax Technologies Inc. mandating that they pay their rebates in the stated time.
Ron Holman of North Attleboro, Massachusetts, was startled recently when he was charged sales tax for a shrink-wrapped copy of Norton SystemWorks 2000 he ordered from Symantec Corp.'s Web site. Says Holman, "I was under the impression that Internet sales are not taxable."
There's no shortage of software for kids, and the latest trend seems to be games geared to the gurgling set. DK, publisher of popular children's educational books, has joined the fray with its My First CD-ROM Toddler and Preschool titles.
When David Nappi, of West Berlin, New Jersey, ordered a new 650-MHz Pentium III PC from CyberMax, the company's Web site indicated seven to ten business days for production. Adding time for delivery, Nappi says, he expected to receive the system in three weeks, at the most.
Jon Simon of Carmel, California, recently opened his phone bill and got an unpleasant surprise--nearly $200 in AT&T Corp. long-distance charges for calls he'd made to access RedShift, his Internet service provider. Simon had been connecting via the same number for several years without paying any long-distance charges. So he contacted AT&T and was told that he should only have been charged long-distance rates if the number his PC dialed included an area code--which it didn't. So it must have been a local call, right?
What's the size of a Pokemon trading card, downloads Net music, and can flush grown-ups from any room in seconds flat?
Shortly after Jamie Engel bid on a Sony VAIO notebook at Onsale.com, she received an e-mail saying she'd won. She was thrilled. Onsale.com is a merchant auction site--a site that acquires unsold merchandise (everything from computers to cruises) from outside vendors and auctions it to the public. Unlike EBay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., merchant auction sites don't auction items from individuals. "It was my first experience bidding in an online auction," Engel says, "and when I won the bid, I thought I'd struck gold."
When Bob Bieber of Bradenton, Florida, upgraded to Norton Anti-Virus version 5.0, he saved himself a trip to the store by purchasing and downloading the software from Symantec Corp.'s Web site. His only concern was that he couldn't save the upgrade to a floppy disk for safekeeping.
Kyle Davis, a minister in Compton, California, had never heard of PC vendor Crossline. But when he saw one of the company's ads, he thought its offer of a 350MHz K6 computer for US$850 would be a good deal for his church. Davis arranged to pick up the PC in person to avoid shipping charges and paid for it in cash -- which Crossline said would expedite his order. Told that his system would be ready in ten days, Davis got worried when that time passed without a word from Crossline. Despite countless attempts, he's been unable to contact the company since.