It all started with a harmless bit of Spam. An Internet mail-order company named PetoFile.com sent me a coupon for $10 off on my next purchase of a puppy, kitten, or other exotic animal.

Until that moment, I hadn’t thought much about getting a new pet. But my faithful dog Machiavelli was getting long in the tooth, and now preferred for the paper to come to him. And my not-quite-so-faithful cat Gates was at that stage in life where there is nothing so comfortable as sleeping on a human face. Maybe it was time to add to my menagerie.

In order to get my $10 off, I would have to spend more money and buy two pets. First, I picked a six-week-old orange kitten named Tabby ("63 of them ready to ship!"). The trick to saving money, of course, was to make my next selection from PetoFile’s Bargain Bin. After rejecting a cockroach and a salamander, I settled on a white mouse for $4.98.

Now it was time to actually purchase my selections. After ten minutes of carefully sifting through the PetoFile.com site, I found and clicked the Checkout icon. Up came the following message: "We note that you are not currently signed on as a member of PetoFile.com. We also note that you are male, in your mid-forties, divorced, and are too lazy to wash your own car. To sign up for PetoFile.com, please fill out the following form."

And what a form. The company wanted my name, credit card number, mailing address (why do they need these things just to send me their product?), voting habits, and pants size. After I answered the questions and clicked Next, another message told me that I hadn’t filled out the form completely and would I please click Back and finish the job? After fifteen trips back to the form, I finally figured out my error —I hadn’t checked the box "I agree to let PetoFile.com sell my personal information to GetIntoDebt.com, Dial-a-Slut, the Shining Path Home Shopping Club, and any other organization that will cross our palms with silver."

Once checked, PetoFile.com asked me about preferred shipping methods. For an extra fee, I could have my new pets shipped overnight, in special "breath-through" containers, or in separate boxes. I opted for standard shipping, figuring that the cat and mouse could keep each other company on the long trip.

Finally, PetoFile.com gave me a total purchase price of $8.92 (13.94+4.98-10.00). That seemed fair and I clicked for the next page.

And that’s where I saw the complete total price of $23.49. Apparently, the total purchase price didn’t include the $14.57 in shipping and handling fees.

After 38 minutes of searching the site, I found the posted shipping policy and figured out how that fee was broken down. I was being charged a $8.54 order processing fee, plus $3.47 shipping and handling for the first pet and $1.31 for each additional pet. (The remaining $1.25 was the actual shipping cost.)

Armed with this information, I immediately saw the way to get around these high fees: Buy, in one order, as many animals as I might ever need. In addition to the original kitten and mouse, my shopping cart soon contained a frog, rattle snake, Guernsey cow, and a Great Dane named Irving with a weakness for quail eggs. And a quail.

My order complete, I clicked the Process Order button and was told that my new family was on the way.

Four weeks later the box arrived. I opened it to find that all of my new animals shrink-wrapped and in good shape—although the mouse looked a bit traumatized.

But then I noticed something horribly wrong. Instead of a kitten, I’d been sent a baby skunk. I called PetoFile.com’ s 800 number, waited 30 minutes on hold, and was told to call another 800 number.

When I finally got through to a human being, she was polite and sympathetic. "Yes," she agreed, "that mistake was entirely our fault and we will take the skunk back. One of our Customer Service Technicians will contact you about the details in six to eight months. We will, of course, expect the skunk returned in exactly the same condition he was sent in."

© Copyright 1999 by Lincoln Spector

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