I’ve been eying the Think Tank Photo line of Urban Disguise bags for quite some time now.

A while back, I bought a new camera bag to accommodate my new SLR, but the fit still isn’t quite right. It works, but it’s not ideal. It’s so bulky, and a little awkward. I could never find a way to justify laying out that much money for a camera bag, as the Think Tanks are not cheap, but with my lovely gift card I received from my employer I decided to take the leap (after doing a ton of reading and research on them of course) and buy one of the bags.

I got on the Think Tank website and tried to order it on Monday, using my American Express gift card. It denied my card, stating the billing address was incorrect. The message it gave me stated that my order WOULD NOT BE PROCESSED, and therefore, I assumed, my card not be charged.

I happened to know the card was actually mailed to my boss’s house, so I tried to run it with his address for billing, and it denied again, this time without a valid reason given but still stating no order was actually placed.

So I went to Amazon, and ordered the bag, AND a remote (YAY!) through a camera store selling through them. Amazon rejects the card. I update the billing address to be the address the card was sent to. It rejects again. I emailed customer service, who said the order still had my billing address on it, and customer service changed the address to my boss’s address. They said it should work, but to get back to them if it did not.

It did not. And I got back to them! And what I got for a response is basically that I was out of luck, because it denied for an unknown reason that time and there was nothing else they could do.

Bastiches.

I decided to use money out of my checking account to pay for the purchase and then use the card for expenses like gas and such to replace the money. I had already put a tank on there and a lunch one day (forgot my wallet at home that day, but had the gift card, ha!) so I hopped on American Express’s website to check my balance.

And there I see a charge from Think Tank.

Excuse me?

I called their customer service line, but they did not open until 9am Pacific Standard which would be 11am my time. I’m impatient, so I decided to email them instead and see; my email had no response come 2pm so I decided to call again.

The sweet chicky on the phone tells me that basically it places a temporary hold on the money that should release within a few days, and that they’ve experienced this before.

I said thanks, and let her off the hook, since I doubt there was anything she could do to make me happy in this situation, but my immediate thought was that, “Well, damn, if you can place a hold on my money so I can’t spend it anywhere else, why didn’t you just run the fucking charge fully and let me have my bag?”

>.<

Needless to say, I’m not a happy customer. At least that explains to me why it was probably denied at Amazon; the purchase I was trying to make there, plus the hold, is more than the balance of the card.

Okay. I’m done bitching. Thanks for reading.