Here is the letter I received today from
http://www.gokiting.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, along with a refund of my money...
"We are sorry for the miscommunication on our part. We take full responsibility and your money is being refunded. Your item is backordered through Mystic and we will continue to ship the item free of charge when it does arrive to hopefully make good on this.
We were under the impression that our employee had taken care of all this for us while we are away and we are disappointed to find out otherwise. Please accept our apologies. We would appreciate it if you could post an update o the situation on kiteforum and possibly remove the thread.
We are unreachable by phone but if you would like us to call you, please send us your phone number and an exact time to do so, if necessary.
Again, please accept our apologies.
Best Regards,
Jason Clack
gokiting.com"
I do appreciate the final resolution to this. But it is unfortunate that it took a thread like this in order to get a response. 10 days of phone calls and e-mails with no response. 1 day on KiteForum, and everything is taken care of. It really shouldn't be like that, and that's not my fault. While I appreciate the offer of free gloves, I will not be taking them up on that. The refund of my money is fine. Apology accepted. Thanks for making good in the end. Let's go kiting.
(I would remove the thread, but I think it's better to show the happy ending, no? Some people may be curious. And I see it has been moved to Flamer's Paradise anyway.)