I guarantee you, if you use a credit card to do mail order, VISA MC etc., the companies won't mess with you. You are like 99.9% safe. If there is any troubles with your order just tell the credit card co. They handle it, and credit your account. The companies know this and don't want to mess with the credit card comapies. I have had to do this, but it works.
I'm not saying you will never get shipped faulty components, but just that the companies wont jerk you around on RMAing and stuff if you order via credit card. The worst that canb happen is you may have to pay to ship it back to RMA.
Like my XP333, they just told me to send it all back (RAM,CPU, M/B). They guarantee they will ship me working components, the question just is: will I have to pay return shipping and diagnostic fees. If it turns out that indeed they had originally sent me faulty component/s, then they cover all those charges.
It's usually pretty fair like that, but you kind of need to look into it before you order. I mean asuming I did have a faulty M/B or something I'm still getting gipped the RMA shipping (~$12.50).
I guess my point is that to me mail order is too good to pass up.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by knewton on 02/02/02 01:02 AM.</EM></FONT></P>