"The product has never arrived. I have contacted them a couple of times but they never contacted me back. Such a scam."

"The first and last time I'll deal with this subsidiary of Fox Anime, or FoxAnime.com directly... unless I mistakenly buy from yet another store front.

Before I made the purchase here, I had already done research on Fox Anime; somewhere online, a single person was complaining about possible fraud. That was buried on some unknown business feedback website, and almost negligible, but it seemed earnest enough that I avoided FA. (I would have been happier if I'd found a review or three on Resellerratings.)

Nevertheless, I was in search of a very hard-to-find, then "recently" discontinued volume that only seemed to be available at shady seller sites. When I located it at BestNHobby, it was difficult to say no given that the shipping and handling fees combined with the unit price were incredibly good. Better than at FoxAnime.com, and a couple other places; it was like finding lost treasure.

I paid via paypal, and all looked fine until I received my paypal receipt a minute later: "You have authorized a payment to FoxAnime, LLC."

Well, wtf...

I set out to cancel this payment immediately, but Paypal wouldn't seem to let me do it. It was locked in the "Processing" phase at paypal, and that status didn't change after tweleve hours of monitoring (on and off). I thought perhaps I could give it a chance, and see it would just go through, and then open a dispute afterwards.

I gave it three extra days to do something before I contacted Paypal support with my issue. Despite my explanations of the subsidiary discovery, and possible case of fraud, the tech support chalked up the "processing" status as a technical glitch. Subsequently, it wasn't clear to me what they later tweaked when I saw that the payment had been "Canceled" (about a week later).

Eventually, I received the money spent on the purchase, and I thought all was over until I received an email (that was used specifically for BestNHobby) show up in a Fox Anime mailing list. Very shameless; read the meat of it for yourself:

__________________

"FOXANIME.COM NEWS
GOMENNASAI SPECIAL DISCOUNTS Sayonara Samantha !!

Buy 70% off Anime DVDs with 10% of Extra Discount Coupon.
It is The Limited Time Offer : 6, April ~ 12, April, 2009. Only 7 Days!!


Dear Fox anime folks, how have you been?

BAD, because foxanime.com customer service won't reply to your e-mail and your order ships out really late? Maybe even still not received your order? What a terrible customer services we have offered!

Now, we owe you anime folks a really big apology. We are really sorry for our terrible customer service. You and us, as an anime lovers, we bet most of you understand on delaying anime shipment, but even for us, terrible customer service is unacceptable!!!

And guess who were behind all this... Yes... Everyone who had sent an e-mail to us you should know her name… ... ... Yes... it was... Samantha...

Basically she was the only customer representative at Foxanime.com. And all she did during business hour were ignoring customer e-mail questions, and change her make up every one hour! It's kind of a shame to say this but we hired her because she was cute. There was a reason why she looked cute. No one can recognize her if she doesn't wear her make up on.

Great thing is now she;s gone! Sayonra Samantha! Well, we found out about Samantha not to long ago. And of course we decided to let her go since she doesn't want to work =)

Because of all this, we are offering you "GOMENNASAI Special Discounts!" Please check out the items and expect better customer service from Foxanime.com!"

__________________

If you've successfully made purchases from Fox Anime and/or BestNHobby, my experience with them might as well be considered a fluke."