[The following is in English I as I don't know German well enough. Online translators give mediocre results. I apologize for this.]

On August 15, 2010, I ordered 542.73€ worth of computer hardware on Hardware Geier (hardwaregeier.de/shoptonet.de/Wilson Pagador). At the time, the stock status ETA for the 2 items was reasonnable (the following week). So I wired the money to their bank account the same day.

(Every e-mail mentioned below was responded to by Deborah M., apparently the business partner at Hardware Geier.)

A few days following the order, seeing as I hadn't been notified of any activity, I ask them whether they received the money and whether the items were to arrive in stock on time. They replied that they didn't know, that it all depends on the manufacturer. The status also switched to "unknown" on the website. So I asked to cancel the order, which they did on August 18, 2010.

Naturely I expected a full refund within days. But they didn't ask me for an IBAN or anything. Just silence as if everything was fine. So I went forward and provided all the information. Mrs M. confirmed I would be refunded fully (but didn't specify an ETA).

A few days later, still no refund. I e-mail them about the apparent delay and Mrs M. said "it takes one week to process".

... A week later, still nothing, and this time she said "international money wires takes one week to complete".

... A week later, she told me that I should be patient, it's accounting department's job, she has no influence over them but she forwarded the information.

... A week later, I reminded them that I am still waiting for that refund, it was becoming urgent: she told me she would talk to her business partner about it.

... A few more weeks passed with absolutely no sign of life from them.

... I e-mailed them one more time. She said the person who was supposed to take care of the money transfer was sick so she would process it the next day.

... The next day, no news. I asked again: this time, she said she contacter the accounting department directly. Next day, no news. I asked again: they can't make the transfer with the IBAN I gave them. I double checked it twice, sent her the exact PDF given by my bank. Called my bank to confirm that it contains all the required information to wire the money from Germany to France. Still, Mrs M. told me without details that they couldn't wire the money even with the PDF.

... So last week, on October 14, 2010 I even went as far as to offer that they send refund via PayPal to avoid any bank information issue. Mrs M. said she would ask the accounting department. Still no reply to date.

... I asked again what was the status last Friday. Still no reply either.

So I have been waiting for my refund for more than nine weeks now (more than two months). They waited more than 1.5 month to even attempt to transfer the money. Only to realize they couldn't use my IBAN. Now, they're taking more and more time to reply to my e-mails. They may even be ignoring me for all I know.

As we can see: they are *very* slow. Only reply around 11am and 15am. Never on Fridays. Sometimes, they don't even reply to e-mails at all. And when they reply, they conveniently skip major questions (only reply to a single question at most) and erase the original message (usually quoted below the response). But what's really worrisome is that they seem to keep on finding excuses to delay, or worse, avoid refunding me altogether.

What's more, they don't understand English since they translate it via some poor online translator (obvious in the early e-mail responses). I had to translate *my* messages to German with a better tanslator, providing the original English version as an alternative. That's unprofessional for a store that ships to the whole European Union. And they are unreachable by phone.

You can find the whole transcript of our "conversation" in the following PDF: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qO7JERMcNy296jPrENsMUri3kyQ5fn_2nLn3vt2j_c8/edit?hl=en&authkey=CMn6mNkN

I sincerely hope that I will see my money back in my bank account soon. This case has been eating me for so long. I would be really grateful if anybody could me help me out on this.

(By the way: many thanks to ReclaBox for having created a place where customers have a say in those kind of sticky situations!)