Oscar J.

I do not question the negative experiences that many other consumers have reported, but my own recent experience was very different from theirs. I ordered very hard to find Boulder Canyon potato chips with only sea salt added and I received them promptly. The bags were intact and the chips were fresh (with a "Best if used by date" more than three months from the date I received the package. World Market provided a valid tracking number so that I could track the shipment. All in all, I found the company to be reliable and trustworthy.

Yummy Bazaar offered a wide range of kosher Mozart marzipan chocolates by Reber.

Good selection; easy to locate what I want; reasonable prices.

I regret advertising in The Kosher Yellow Pages (KYP). In mid-November of 2009, I pointed out to the people who manage their online referral service that their search mechanism feature was dysfunctional. To be sure, my ad did show up, if you managed, through sheer persistence, to find amongst numerous drop-down menu prompts the very few that were not dead-ends. But you could not use your own intuitively obvious words to conduct your search, and the distinction between prompts that worked and those that didn't was totally arbitrary and even meaningless.

The responses of key KYP technical and managerial personnel to my complaints took place in the following sequence: first, they claimed that they were working on the search function problems, even though no progress was evident; then they told me that they had partially solved these problems, when in fact they had not solved any of them; and finally, when it must have been obvious even to them that these problems had not been remedied at all, they refused to take my phone calls and simply ignored my emails.

On March 5,2010, I received a general mailing from the KYP, informing all advertisers like myself that they updated their website. I checked out their new website and it is definitely an improvement over their old one. But it could still use additional work and I continue to be dismayed that their personnel treated me shabbily and lacked the courtesy to update me personally.

On August 9,2009, I responded to a promotional offer from Platinum Giveaways – a company that, I found out later, has 51 alternate registered names – including Consumers Reward Solutions. Platinum Giveaways offered a free Best Buy gift card worth $1,000.00 if you sign up to receive products from certain companies listed on their website. As prompted, I signed up with 2 companies, giving out my credit card information. The companies turned out to be legitimate – I spoke with them the following day, which was a Monday and the first business day I could reach them – but the legitimacy of Platinum Giveaways is highly doubtful. After I signed up with the 2 companies, Platinum prompted me to sign up with additional companies before I could receive my free gift card, and this made me suspicious (to be more fair to Platinum than it deserves, its offer does post a link to its "Official Gift Offer Rules," which state that a total of 13 companies must be subscribed to in order to quality for the gift card, but I did not read their Rules in advance). Instead of signing up with more companies, I contacted Best Buy, and one of their representatives told me that Platinum's offer of a Best Buy gift card was unauthorized and illegal (again, being more fair to Platinum Giveaways than it deserves, for the sake of accuracy I must state that this same representative, fifteen days after this day that I first spoke with her, withdrew her assertion that Platinum's offer was necessarily illegal). Later that day I contacted the bank that issued the credit card to me and was told by their representative that, in addition to certain charges I could verify as authorized, numerous other transactions had been charged to my account throughout the day, at ½ hour intervals, all unauthorized. I had to cancel my credit card. My efforts to communicate with Elise Petri, the Internet registrant for Platinum Giveaways under all its various guises, proved useless, as all I ever received by way of a reply was an unsigned email unresponsive to most of my clearly stated concerns.

On August 9,2009, I responded to a promotional offer from Platinum Giveaways – a company that, I found out later, has 51 alternate registered names – including Consumers Reward Solutions. Platinum Giveaways offered a free Best Buy gift card worth $1,000.00 if you sign up to receive products from certain companies listed on their website. As prompted, I signed up with 2 companies, giving out my credit card information. The companies turned out to be legitimate – I spoke with them the following day, which was a Monday and the first business day I could reach them – but the legitimacy of Platinum Giveaways is highly doubtful. After I signed up with the 2 companies, Platinum prompted me to sign up with additional companies before I could receive my free gift card, and this made me suspicious (to be more fair to Platinum than it deserves, its offer does post a link to its "Official Gift Offer Rules," which state that a total of 13 companies must be subscribed to in order to quality for the gift card, but I did not read their Rules in advance). Instead of signing up with more companies, I contacted Best Buy, and one of their representatives told me that Platinum's offer of a Best Buy gift card was unauthorized and illegal (again, being more fair to Platinum Giveaways than it deserves, for the sake of accuracy I must state that this same representative, fifteen days after this day that I first spoke with her, withdrew her assertion that Platinum's offer was necessarily illegal). Later that day I contacted the bank that issued the credit card to me and was told by their representative that, in addition to certain charges I could verify as authorized, numerous other transactions had been charged to my account throughout the day, at ½ hour intervals, all unauthorized. I had to cancel my credit card. My efforts to communicate with Elise Petri, the Internet registrant for Platinum Giveaways under all its various guises, proved useless, as all I ever received by way of a reply was an unsigned email unresponsive to most of my clearly stated concerns.

On August 9,2009, I responded to a promotional offer from Platinum Giveaways – a company that, I found out later, has 51 alternate registered names – including Consumers Reward Solutions. Platinum Giveaways offered a free Best Buy gift card worth $1,000.00 if you sign up to receive products from certain companies listed on their website. As prompted, I signed up with 2 companies, giving out my credit card information. The companies turned out to be legitimate – I spoke with them the following day, which was a Monday and the first business day I could reach them – but the legitimacy of Platinum Giveaways is highly doubtful. After I signed up with the 2 companies, Platinum prompted me to sign up with additional companies before I could receive my free gift card, and this made me suspicious (to be more fair to Platinum than it deserves, its offer does post a link to its "Official Gift Offer Rules," which state that a total of 13 companies must be subscribed to in order to quality for the gift card, but I did not read their Rules in advance). Instead of signing up with more companies, I contacted Best Buy, and one of their representatives told me that Platinum's offer of a Best Buy gift card was unauthorized and illegal (again, being more fair to Platinum Giveaways than it deserves, for the sake of accuracy I must state that this same representative, fifteen days after this day that I first spoke with her, withdrew her assertion that Platinum's offer was necessarily illegal). Later that day I contacted the bank that issued the credit card to me and was told by their representative that, in addition to certain charges I could verify as authorized, numerous other transactions had been charged to my account throughout the day, at ½ hour intervals, all unauthorized. I had to cancel my credit card. My efforts to communicate with Elise Petri, the Internet registrant for Platinum Giveaways under all its various guises, proved useless, as all I ever received by way of a reply was an unsigned email unresponsive to most of my clearly stated concerns.