The reader complaints here on The Consumerist can be a bit murky at times, but if everything in Michael G’s story is as he reports then there’s no reason not to blacklist this company from your shopping selections. We’ll put his whole complaint about Omni Technologies after the jump, but we’d like to excerpt one bit from it here just to highlight the absolute insanity of their responses.

After two weeks of waiting for the RAM to arrive, I called them back and spoke to a Mr. Grant. He gave me some BS about that memory still being manufactured…

RAM for computers (a Mac in this case) is manufactured by a very small set of companies, all of whom buy the actual memory chips from companies like Samsung and Hynix Semiconductor—not podunk companies who can’t figure out how to put text on a website without using Photoshop. In fact, in a shocking bit of journalistic fervor, we called them and asked. They don’t make the chips nor sticks of memory themselves, they told us. So what they were trying to say, when they said the chips were being manufactured, were that they were out of stock.

Read Michael’s whole story after the jump, then take the time to peruse Omni Technologies’ (generally negative) Reseller Ratings and (generally positive) eBay feedback.

On November 11, 2005, I spoke with a representative of Omni Technologies in Florida, wanting to order some RAM for my new Mac. He advised me which kind would be best, and after that, I placed an order for it via their website. I printed out the order confirmation, which said, among other things, “pending shipment.” I also noticed that they had billed my card for the $229.99 the next day.

It got ugly from here.

After two weeks of waiting for the RAM to arrive, I called them back and spoke to a Mr. Grant. He gave me some BS about that memory still being manufactured, and, oh yeah, they couldn’t sell it to me at the price they had already billed me for! Now he wanted $360! I told him they’d already billed my card and accepted my order, and I expected them to fulfill it as originally stated. He replied he’d do that in the interest of “customer satisfaction,” and told me to call back in two weeks, when he thought he’d have the RAM in stock.

Right.

Fast-forward to January 3, 2006. After waiting an eternity on hold, “Ron” said the best that they could do for this order was $269. I told him just to cancel the order and refund my card, since they obviously had no intention of honouring the order. “Ron” seemed surprised when I told him Omni had already billed my card, and said he needed to “check with accounting.” He said he’d call me back. Of course, there was no call. I called Omni back on the 4th and again spoke to “Ron.” This time, he promised a refund and an email confirmation within 24-48 hours. I asked him to tell me my email address for confirmation, and he did.

Of course, still no email or credit.

Today, the 10th, I spoke with “Chris.” I explained the situation to him, and he seemed surprised when he pulled up the order and said, “it looks like you cancelled the order?” I reiterated to him that Omni refused to honour their own price, even after they billed my card, and that “Ron” had promised a refund at the end of last week. “Chris” told me — wait for it– that he’d take care of it right after he checked it with accounting! Upon asking for a manager or supervisor, of course neither happened to be around now either.

I told him I’d been around this circle before, and if I didn’t see this resolved by Wednesday, I’d file a claim here in Virginia– and explained to him that it would cost Omni a lot more to answer the charges up here than to just do what they were supposed to do.

So, to sum up:

Omni quoted me a price on RAM, billed my card, then tried to change the price. After almost two months, I’ve yet to receive the RAM or a refund. Two terms come to mind: bait-and-switch and stealing.

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