Happy to report that I was refunded the full amount of my purchase after contesting the charge with my bank. And it was a big chunk of change because I had sprung for a VPI tonearm upgrade. kudos to this thread and others like it - it can only help to let people share their experiences and make them public and accessible to investigators too. So I hope that affected customers keep posting here. Hopefully at some point we'll get an idea of what exactly is going on with this once reliable company.