Austin Research Institute, Inc. I got on the Hampstead Maryland

First of all, it was very reckless and completely unfair of this person (Fallenangel0071 in Hope Mills, North Carolina) to post anything negative about our company. Why? Because we did nothing wrong. You see, her credit card order attempt was declined. In other words, her order never even went through because she entered an incorrect billing address. As such, it's no wonder she never received her order... she never paid for it!

Given her username and city/state, I was able to find out the identity of this person. She did attempt to place an order but as I mentioned above, her order was declined because she provided an incorrect billing address. Apparently, she was under the impression that her order went through even though it clearly had not. There is no conceivable way that any sensible person could have misinterpreted this but she did for some reason. During her order attempt, she would have received an error message clearly stating that her order attempt was declined due to an incorrect billing address. She did not receive an online confirmation, online receipt or an email receipt. And even through her own admission in her complaint, we had not charged her credit card. According to her, there was a hold on her card. The hold was placed on her card by her credit card company - not us. This is common in the credit card industry when a cardholder provides an incorrect address but a correct card number.

Here's an explanation direct from our credit card processing company:

"Each transaction process is two parts: the authorization and the settlement. While a Voided transaction will not be "settled", the requested dollar amount has been temporarily "set-aside" from their credit limit. If a cardholder speaks to their issurer or views their credit card statement on-line, they may see the authorized amount and believe that they have been charged for the purchase. Since the transaction is never "settled", the transaction will never show up on their statement. However, the authorization request will remain open on the cardholder's credit limit for a period of time establised by the card issuer themselves. In some cases this is only 48 hours, at which point the authorization will expire and the amount of the VOIDED transaction will be reapplied to the cardholder's available amount of credit. Some issuers may hold authorizations for as long as 7 days."

If the customer was unsure whether or not her order went through, all she had to do was contact us via email or phone and ask us. It's that simple. But apparently, she has as much difficulty using the phone or her email as she does placing online orders because she claims she could not find our number and did not even attempt to contact us via email even though we offer a convenient contact form directly on our site.

In any case, given the horrendous grammar, spelling and punctuation in her poorly-written tyrade, it's obvious that this person is not the brightest bulb in the world. This entire misunderstanding was entirely her fault - starting with her inability to enter her billing address correctly to her inability to understand if an order attempt was approved or declined; from her inability to simply contact us and inquire about her order to her thoughtless and hasty decision to go to this website and post a bunch of half-truths and misconceptions about her experience.

While we do regret that this customer experienced difficulties placing an order, we do not apologize for anything because we've done nothing wrong. Instead, we await an apology and retraction from Fallenangel0071 in Hope Mills, North Carolina.