DVD Box Office: reliable?

[Concept]

I know DVD Box Office generally have a bad reputation, but for large orders, do they honestly take an eternity to ship items out as many suggest?

After VG+'s Gretzky revelation, I'm on the verge of ordering a US PSP Value Pack along with Pure and Lumines from DVD Box Office.

I'd like opinions first though.

[charlesr]

Preorder games from them. Do not buy items that have been out for a while - they refuse to give you an indication of stock levels. No idea what they are like for hardware.

[Concept]

I cracked and ordered a PSP and Pure from Play Asia instead.

[iapetus]

You made the right choice. DVDBO are a force of evil in this world.

[Pavey]

TBH i have never had a problem with them. Every order of mine has showed up within 5/6 days.

[sj33]

Used them one for one admittedly huge order, nothing but hassle. First, they only accepted my order if I faxed them proof that the card was mine (probably because the order supasses $1000 CND). When all that crap was out of the way, the invididual DVD's I ordered trickled their way through to my house over the next 4 months or so... *and* had to pay customs.

[Kubrick]

In my experience, unless you preorder something months in advance, it's a lottery how long they take to fulfill your order. Took them 5 months to deliver a DC game I ordered once.

[iapetus]

Used them one for one admittedly huge order, nothing but hassle. First, they only accepted my order if I faxed them proof that the card was mine (probably because the order supasses $1000 CND). When all that crap was out of the way, the invididual DVD's I ordered trickled their way through to my house over the next 4 months or so... *and* had to pay customs.

Hah. You got off lightly.

When I had the same problem (they require proof even for smaller orders) they insisted that the only proof they'd accept was a document that doesn't actually exist for my card. Since they refused point blank to bill my card without a copy of this non-existent document, I ended up paying by IMO at additional cost to myself.

On receipt of the IMO they then promptly billed my card for the order (you know, the card that they absolutely couldn't bill without a copy of a non-existent document) and proceeded to lie to me about having refunded the full amount: they hadn't refunded it at all, and when they finally did I ended up paying currency conversion costs on both the original money taken from my account and the repayment. I've spoken to them about this a couple of times, but they've refused to accept the full costs involved in refunding the money their incompetence cost me, and I finally gave up. Even managed to get them to stop spamming me eventually, after several threats to contact their ISP about it.

DVD Box Office are thieves and incompetents in my book, and I'm just happy that the money they've lost through losing my custom and the custom of anyone I can warn away from them vastly outweighs the money I lost as a result of their ridiculous policies and abysmal customer service. Just goes to show that treating your customers like **** really is bad for business. Who'd have thought it?

[Ginza]

They are reliable as MD.