Erik tries to do right by the world by paying actual money to download songs rather than getting them the usual way. For his troubles he was rewarded with hours of frustration with Amazon’s MP3 downloading application, followed by pass-the-buck customer service.

A movie critic by trade, Erik has given Amazon a less than stellar review:

Had a $5 MP3 credit from another purchase.

Found an album. Bought it and then had to download their little MP3 downloader to get it.

Hit download. First it is telling me the album has already been downloaded. So had to call customer service to have that fix.

Then tried to download again and the MP3 downloader won’t connect. Call again to get some tech support. They HAVE NO TECH SUPPORT and basically give me two options (1) Call my internet service provider to see what the problem is (which is stupid considering it is working on everything else BUT their downloader or (2) Give me a refund.

That’s it. So I take the refund and make sure I get the $5 promo credit back and the other $4.49 put back onto my gift certificate balance.

Everything gets reset — I’m told — though I can’t see what has been taken out of and put back into my gift certificate credit.

So I refresh everything, buy the album again (and my promo credit was back) and tried to download again. Nothing. No connecting. Retry. Retry. Retry.

I call back again and say I want the refund again and to just take my $5 credit and put it into my gift certificate balance. The guy tells me he can’t do that because the $5 promo credit has been used and there are no refunds for that. Three outsourced m*th*rf*ck*rs in a row.

This morning, bought an album off of iTunes. Download. Boom. Bam. In my iPod!

Hours after Erik had given up on Amazon, a customer service rep got back to him, admitted there was a problem with the album he tried to download and refunded the money.

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