Rikkitic:

 

People keep suggesting that PB Tech’s approach is the new normal, and every company does it. That has not been my experience to date. Every other purchase I have made on-line has just gone through without any BS. For me this experience has just added another reason to go back to shopping overseas. Somehow those companies manage to cope with this. NZ retailers keep complaining about unfair competition, but if I were still in business, I would bend over backwards to keep the customers I had and hopefully attract new ones. I have done business with some brilliant NZ companies and I know they are not all like this, but those that are really could use lessons in customer service. I know I am not the only one to complain about that.

 

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P.S.: After cancelling my order I placed it with Ascent (thanks @MikeB4). That was three days ago. It just now arrived at my RD address. No BS with the credit card, no added surcharges, no other crap, just incredible speedy delivery of exactly what I ordered. I think it was even a little cheaper. Now that is what I call service! What a relief to do business with a normal company.

 

The reason why you've received such hostile responses is because you created a whole thread unreasonably attacking a company and have maintained a posture that suggests you are unable to see the issues from beyond your own very narrow and fixed perspective. And even in a post where you are purporting to explain your position and generally trying to come off as reasonable, you're still hurling pejoratives at a company for exercising a choice that most would regard as entirely commercially reasonable, customer-regarding (because fraud has a cost and customers who are not fraudsters could very well have to bear some of those costs if fraud isn't controlled), and imposing very little inconvenience upon an overwhelming majority of customers. That is unreasonable.

Even in your post above, you've described PB Tech's conduct as "crap" and implied that they are not normal. What exactly do you think you're coming across as? Some kind of level-headed person who's capable of seeing past the tip of her own nose? Fraud prevention requires a degree of community effort where in exchange for some minor inconveniences like being occasionally asked to show IDs or pass through certain controls, everyone contributes to an environment where fraud is harder to perpetuate, thus minimising direct losses and the indirect costs of fraud (e.g. retail markups). The last thing any responsible and other-regarding individual with some morals should want is for certain companies to "socialise the costs [of fraud] and personalise the gains" on the premise that the bank will cover any affected cardholder etc. This creates a race to the bottom where companies compete to, for example, make buyers' (legitimate or otherwise) lives easier through foregoing reasonable controls but imposing costs upon others who aren't participants in the transaction. This kind of thinking is exactly why civilised societies have, for example, minimum wage laws. Because reasonable people don't want a race to the bottom.

And you keep going on about your own online buying experience like it's some kind of barometer for what is "normal". You've already admitted to having a fairly fixed lifestyle and have mentioned on here that you're a person of limited means. Thus, it's unlikely that you are well-exposed to a large quantity and range of online merchants. Even if that's not true, I for one (along with others on here) have experienced many instances of such security checks. So why's your judgment so much more important?

If you had confined your posts to just expressing your own feelings without all the slagging, people might have been more sympathetic.