Pinzoo / Rip off

On Christmas eve 2008, a good friend was out of town & out of phone minutes on his 'Net 10'. I found Pinzoo online & in what I believed from reading their site, should have been a very simple straighforward transaction, gave them my VISA card info in exchange for a certain number of pre-paid wireless minutes so we could talk.

Only AFTER they had pre-authorized my card, tying my money up with them, did a page come up saying that the first time a customer makes an order, it must be confirmed by a personal phone conversation and that could only take place during their business hours of 9:00am - 6:00pm PST. I had placed my order sometime around 9:00pm CST. I tried & tried to reach them to either cancel the order so I could go out and purchase a card & email him the PIN, or to get them to have whatever conversation ASAP & give me the PIN.

No response, no way to recover my money. They finally called me (I could not get an answer even when attempting to call them as soon as their business hours supposedly began.) late Christmas afternoon, finally put the PIN up. I stupidly used their feature to 'email this PIN to someone as a gift', and it never went through. It still has not gone through & he's back in town now.

I am also about as mad at myself for even considering using them again about 6 hours ago now, when my own phone - a Virgin Mobile was about out of minutes. I could & should have done it through Virgin Mobile's own site, as I would have had the minutes on my phone hours ago. But it is a fairly tedious process they have, and having believed the woman from Pinzoo who had FINALLY called me back, promising that next time I placed an order from them, the PIN would appear 'INSTANTLY' on 'My Account' page, day or night. Well, that was an outright lie. Over 6 hours have passed and it still says that my order is being 'processed'. I even received an email from them informing me that my order was being processed and would be up 'soon', and some lame appology.

Being 3:30am where I am now, it obviously is too late to make the call that was quite urgent. I doubt that I will be starting a new job Monday now, as my cell is the only phone I have - having recently moved to a new apartment. The only thing I believe they are honest about are their 'hours of operation' which are hours that most people are either not home or not awake. Which should not be a problem, if they followed through with what they promise. I have no proof, but am of the inclination that they do this to all or most of their customers, and probably are collecting interest on all the numerous people's small payments all combined - holding onto money they received for a service that is not delivered until many, many hours - possibly days after it was promised.

I to try to be reasonable and understanding, but it is hard when I have been blatantly lied to, and have no access to the money I gave them in good faith, and no access to what I believed I was purchasing. It is hard to be understanding under those circumstances.

The main reason I am writing this is not that I think anything will happen to them, but that maybe someone else.. or a lot of other people have had similar experiences with them, and if so, maybe if enough people avoid doing further business with them if this is their standard method, they will not stand to profit from our money, and we can get our wireless minutes elsewhere and be on with our business. Maybe a prospective new customer will see this and think twice before handing over their credit card info to Pinzoo.