Ready AIM Fire...!

Back on the 24th of November I bought something called the AIM guide on cd-rom from a company called MCR Music who also do the unsigned guide. I'm not even going to do them the honour of providing links to their websites here as if you want to know more you can do the hard work on a search engine. However if you are thinking of making the same purchase you should know this much at least. The AIM guide has not been updated since 2002 and because of some ridiculous copy protection system without warning the cd-rom goes through some strange process of installing an old out of date version of acrobat reader before you are even given the chance to have a look at the guide (most irritating) if you cancel the install then you cannot get to see it at all.

The purchase was made online and the supplier despatched the cd-rom immediately with delivery the next day (great well done, this was the only good part of the purchase). When I contacted them about the problems I was having they denied ever knowing about such problems and said their copy worked fine. Only when I kicked up a fuss and demonstrated that I knew what I was talking about did they refer me back to the originators of the cd-rom who DID know about the problems and had to send me an additional 'tweaked' version of the guide so that I could view it without re-configuring my acrobat reader software back to a 2002 version.

Then the supplier failed to send me a vat invoice for the purchase. I politely requested by email twice and then telephoned them after both emails were completely ignored (each reminder roughly one week apart). Even though I was promised a copy by telephone that request was also subsequently ignored and no invoice arrived. In the end I had to revert to a rather aggressive email which was replied to within the hour and the missing invoice attached to the reply over a month after the original purchase. Caveat Emptor springs to mind...