Topic: Beware of Puretracks (Canadian online music retailer).

[Touti]

I bought from them 3 times in the last 2 years, so far only 1 transactdion was smooth.

The first time I was unable to download my music, it kept aborting and then my download counter reached its limit.  I had to deal with their customer service for a few days before I was able to download my songs.

The 2nd time everything went smooth.

The 3rd time, which was 9 days ago I bought an album in MP3 format and was unable to download.  I contacted their customer service and they sent me intructions on how to download my orders, I replied that I already knew how but that it didn't work because I was always getting server errors.  After 2 days I had to send another reply to remind them of my existence and my problem, the next day they told me that they had verified the tracks, that they were damanged and that they sent a request on my behalf for a refund.  This is complete crap, if the files were really damaged they would have asked me if I want a refund or if I prefer to wait until they fix it.  My guess is that they screwed up and put that on their server before actually getting the tracks themselves or the licenses to sell them in MP3.

This morning I checked my credit card account, I haven't been refunded yet and my case on their support system was closed, I reopened it and told them that I haven't been refunded yet.

Puretracks is NOT an efficient way of buying music online and their service is not very good.  The staff was polite and responded in a correct french but their credit department is crap.  They told me about the refund on May 27th, we're june 3rd and I still don't have it.  It didn't take them that long to charge my CC, why is it so long to credit it now ?

[RossRoy]

I bought 1 album from Puretracks. 1 shot deal, because it went so bad, I never wanted to do business with them. At first I couldn't download the songs. Then, once they were downloaded, the licence was not being downloaded so I couldn't even listen to it. Took about 2-3 weeks, just so I could listen to it once. At that time, I don't know if it's still like that or not, you allowed to burn 3 times. Well, it wouldn't even let me burn it once! So I gave up, went on KaZaa (I think it was still going strong at that time, don't remember) and managed to nag the whole album, in unrestricted, lossless FLAC format. I never looked back and I totally feel within my rights to have done that, as I had bought them and Puretracks couldn't be bothered to actually make it work.

Since then, I've never bought a single DRM crippled song. I did buy some MP3 files though, but from a possibly not so legal site, but they're in a grey area, as the RIAA still hasn't been able to shut them down, not that they didn't try. Well, the important thing, to me, is that at least I never had any problems with them, and I could even choose the format of my songs (MP3, Ogg, WMA, FLAC, even uncompressed WAV!)

Anyway, I'm still buying good old CD, and staying far, far away from Sony/BMG releases. And should I buy a "enhanced" CD, at least I have my trusty AnyDVD that prevents most of the copy protection scheme to actually kick in.