A rant: Buy.com won't let me ... buy

So, I'm trying to buy some CyberPower UPSs for my work. I price out various online vendors, and Buy.com happens to have the best pricing when including shipping. So, I try to purchase the UPSs from Buy.com.

Problem: I'm using a personal Discover card which has my home address as a billing address, but I don't want these shipped to my home - I want them shipped to my employer's office.

Now I make similar purchases. All. The. Time. Places like Dell and Amazon and NewEgg let me purchase things with my personal Discover card and ship them to my office just fine, thankyouverymuch. But, when I try to check out, Buy.com refuses to let me do so because my shipping address doesn't match my billing address. I remember back like 9 years ago when a lot of vendors forced you to ship to your billing address, but then they started just asking for that three digit code on the back of your card and the world returned to normal.

So, what to do?

Well, I call up Discover. They let me register my office address with them and say that vendors shouldn't have a problem, so I should talk to Buy.com again.

Well, instead of calling Buy.com since their website flat out won't let me continue (and they don't actually list a phone number on their website, although it's 1-800-800-0800, fyi), I I notice Buy.com does offer to let you use PayPal. So - plan B. I check out with PayPal, which is set up to use my Discover card, and in PayPal I tell them to ship to my office address. Order accepted. Yay.



But - not so fast. I then get an e-mail stating that my order has been rejected, because the shipping address isn't a confirmed address with PayPal. Super.



So, now, although for a little while I thought I was sailing smoothly, I'm now actually back to square one. I want to buy these, with my personal Discover card, and ship to my office address.

So I call up Buy.com. I'm on hold about 15 minutes wondering again again why I'm putting myself through this for give them my money and being told over and over that I'm a "valued customer" - which isn't even true on two accounts. They won't let me be a customer (they won't take my money!), and a 15 minute wait means I'm really not valued.

I finally get to talk to someone. Or "talk" to them, because the woman's grasp on English... "naght szo grud." After a first failed attempt she pulls up my (now rejected) order. Then I explain what I'm trying to do.

She basically says their system is utterly unable to accept an order where the billing address is different from the shipping address if you're using Discover. It's ambiguous if I could use a different credit card brand and get better results, but she does try to steer me to some Buy.com "no payments for X days" plan. No, sorry, not interested. I tell her if they're unwilling to make this easy for me, I'm going to their competitors. I try to be semi-polite, but I basically hang up on her.

Now I'm in the process of ordering from Amazon. It's going to cost a little more, but I like Amazon - they let me ship things I'm buying for my company ... to my company. Scratch that - they let me buy things. Unlike Buy.com, which should seriously consider a name change.