Review - TVDVDMania.com

I wanted to spread the word about this website.

Christmas is fast approaching, boys and girls. I know most of you aren't quite finished with your shopping, and what makes things even more difficult and stressful is when you aren't able to find that special movie or television series. If you use a search engine to quickly locate one, this website will show up in the search results.

At first glance, the site http://www.tvdvdmania.com/ looks legitimate, with sales and specials, easy navigating, and a large inventory. To the unaware and sometimes unfortunate buyer, this website promises an inexpensive Christmas gift to your loved one. The entire "Murder, She Wrote" series for $60? What a steal.

My mother, a highly intelligent, good-hearted woman, nearly fell victim to this website about a week ago. She ordered my father "The Smothers Brothers" DVD collection, a rare find that even amazon.com does not carry. Within 3 days, she received an email stating her order had been cancelled - the credit card was declined. She tried again, same response. I suggested she use her debit card, and it was also declined, the site stating that her account had been cancelled. Finally, she called her credit card company and discovered TVDVDMania.com had charged her account and included a confirmation code. She called the store. They claimed there was no charge.

After going back and forth and even having the credit card company say to the store that there was in fact a charge (more denial), my mom called me, frustrated. I looked up this store review and after lots of digging, found several reviews that coincided with what happened with my mom.

Check out some of the reviews from this site: http://www.complaintsboard.com/?search=tvdvdmania

"I am one of the hundreds of people ripped off by www.tvboxset.com, AKA Garcia Media Group, AKA SXR.CA. On August 3rd, 2007, I placed an order with said company for a Wonder Years DVD box set (Order #24534). They immediately charged my credit card $71.98. I of course NEVER received the item... "

"Wish I'd come across your posting before making my boxed set purchase. Not only did I receive bogus DVDs (blank) but the my credit card number was used by a syndicate in Nigeria that began to make all sorts of charges. Luckily my bank picked up strange charges immediately and invalidated..."

And some more from the Pissed Consumer website:

"Company sells DVD's of TV shows; not sure if legit as I am having trouble canceling an order and getting my money back; company is ignoring my request for a refund so having to get my credit card company involved ... buyer bewareThere appears to be a lot of companies online selling similar items. I found this company after doing a search on Yahoo so I thought it would have been legit. I hope to prevent others from running into the kinds of problems I am having right now. Always research a company before buying on online! You can never be too safe!"

Once I found these reviews, along with a few more from amazon.com, I forwarded the links to my mom. She immediately called her bank and the CC company and explained what she found. They immediately cancelled the charges for her. She also emailed TVDVDMania to cancel her order, if one was still in process. As discouraged as she was to not be able to give my dad the dvd sets, she is very relieved to have her money back in her account.

I dug around a little more on the site. Check out some of the replies to the FAQs TVDVDMania offers:

Do you offer Express shipping?
Unfortunately, we do not offer Overnight or Express Shipping as our DVD sets are custom ordered.

Um, custom ordered? If amazon.com offers express shipping, along with several stores on ebay - both are considered 'custom' sites. Unless you are talking about taping over previously pirated dvds...then I could see the problem.

I have not received a response to my email and it has been 48 hours. Why?
99% of the time, our email's got trapped in your SPAM/BULK mail folder.
Please note that many e-mail accounts do not recognize our e-mail address and mark us as "Spam". Because of this our e-mails may be sent into your "Spam" or "Junk" box. We ask that you please check your "Spam"/"Junk" box to see if our reply has been placed there.
Also, please check to ensure that we are in your address book so that our e-mails are not blocked. Some known email accounts where this problem has occurred are: Yahoo, AOL, Gmail and Hotmail.

If you were a legitimate business, this problem would also be averted. I have yet to see amazon.com and ebay emails in my spam folder. Oh, and at least there is some form of honesty on their "Terms & Conditions" page, which nobody ever reads...unless you're MsJudgemental!

My comments in bold:

It is understood by the customer that some of the DVDs sold by DVD Mania have been individually compiled from original film stock and public domain wholesaler sources. (Meaning that these are pirated copies.) These sources have an inconsistent level of preservation associated with them. In accordance the playback experienced may vary from movie to movie on any DVD collection purchased. (Meaning that 'it isn't our fault they don't play properly) Every effort has been given to maintain true DVD quality, but the customer understands and accepts that some level of imperfection is present in each film and that level of imperfection can vary significantly between films. This means the customer accepts that their may be "pauses" or "skips" present in the playback of any given film. We have made every effort to keep errors to a minimum, but they may still exist. The customer accepts this as part of their set, and as part of owning films directly converted from original film stock.

Look, Mania gurus, this shouldn't even be a PART of your disclaimer. You should be standing behind a 100% high quality product with a satisfaction guarantee. Specialized stores shouldn't be half-ass efforts.

And finally, a forum discussion thanks to Amazon.com.

DO NOT purchase anything from this company. I can only hope this review shows in the Search Results section of yahoo and google. Review the store before you buy!