A couple weeks ago my wife ordered a 60gb Playstation 3 as a surprise for my birthday. Good thing she can't keep a secret, or we would have been in trouble! A friend of ours used his credit card number to buy the PS3 at bluebeartoys.com, who charged his card the very next day. Supposedly the PS3 was in stock, and would be shipped within a day, and delivered within 7 business days.
As I said, my wife spilled the beans early, so I was looking at the website fairly often, and for about a week it just said "Will Ship." I fired off a couple e-mails to see if the PS3 really was in stock, and got no response. Their phone service yielded a similar dead end. Then, exactly a week after they charged my friend's credit card, the Blue Bear Toys website vanished from the internet, leaving behind a rather harrassed sounding explanation from the company's web designer.
Thank goodness my friend chose not to use Paypal or some other kind of instant money transfer. When I told him what was happening, he simply contacted his credit card company and they removed the charge. Unfortunately, too many other people haven't been as lucky.
As someone who hopes for the best from other people, I am guessing Blue Bear Toys undersold themselves (look at their glowing customer reviews prior to February) and died. However, whatever reason they actually had for shutting down, continuing to charge people when you have no physical stock is inexcusable. I'm glad a site like complaint exists to let customers know who to stay away from, and to let businesses know we customers aren't sheep ripe for the shearing.
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