Nick,
I apologize for this, Europe has very strict credit card laws, which require that we do things in a way that is fairly complex. We found a way to simplify it but it won't be implemented until next year.
Basically, the site is hosted on a server at the factory, it is maintained by our staff. It is illegal in the EU for us to ever see or store your cc info, you are instead routed directly to the credit card processor and they handle the credit card and it is not charged but the funds are on hold until we respond to them that the item shipped. By EU law we cannot modify a charge in anyway, only say, yes it shipped, or no it is cancelled.
Ever quarter we settle up, they send a wire transfer for the amount of orders in the last quarter, so essentially if you ordered something in January, I get paid around June and that is when I see a statement and within a week or two I reconcile it and report any discrepancies. In this case, when I reported the discrepancies my email was not received and nothing was done, so another quarterly report went by and I think yet another before we finally got it resolved.
We plan to route US orders to a US cc processor directly starting next year. What you describe is not common, generally things happen without a hitch, but we had several issues in late 2009, first my isp (att.yahoo) was blocking any international email isp, the IT guy at the factory had to submit a formal written request to allow emails to flow back and forth again and we routed around to my personal .mac email for a short time but this was difficult to implement, my return emails often went in the spam filter and it was just a mess. Secondly, the lady who handles the charges had a very sick child and had to spend some weeks away from the office and we run a tight ship, one down person pushes people who are already at 110% to 150% and they start burning out and just failing to get it all done. I cant apologize enough, I am sorry.
