Complaint Review: Costume Disguises Costume Hut

I placed an order with Costume Disguises on Sunday, 9-25-05 and immediately received an email informing me that my order had been received. I chose this website because no one else had the size that I needed. I was leary when the receipt at the end of the order did not include the shipping & handling cost.

I called the next day, 9-26-05, and also emailed to get a confirmation of the S&H charges, but I was only able to leave a message at the 800 number and it took three days to get a vague response email response.

I called on 9-27-05, and they had already changed the message to "due to large volume of orders we are unable to take phone calls". I left a message stating that if I did not get a response from them by the end of their work day that I wanted to cancel the order. I did not receive a call, but I did receive an email saying that my order had been received an that my credit card would be charged by another company name, Costume Hut. I also got an email letting me know that the S&H charges came to $12.99. The costume was $39.99 bringing the total to $52.97. I was upset, but assumed that because it was coming from Canada that the cost was legit.

The next day I got a receipt showing my card had been approved.

10-1-05 I got an email from Kayla explaining that she had just gotten my original two voice messages and apologized for the delay and that my order was undergoing verification and shipped very shortly.

I emailed again on 10-4-05 about where exactly was my order and did not get a reply until 10-6-05 saying that the costume I ordered was on back order.

10-7-05 I emailed costumehut.com to cancel the order and received and email on 10-8-05 that the it had been cancelled and would receive a refund in 2-3 days.

And, since then I have emailed constantly double checking on the status of my refund and getting the generic response back every couple days "sorry for the delay, your refund will be processed in 2-3 business day".

Throughout I knew something was wrong, but was in denial and embarrassed that I was duped. I'm extremely cautious and am still hitting my head over my stupidity.

Jo
Portland, Oregon
U.S.A.