I subscribed to chesscafe when it went paid-only last October. $50 for a year of articles plus a $55 voucher towards their shop seemed like a good deal. Delivery to Europe is expensive, so I waited until I was travelling to the US for work to use it. On March 11 I spent the voucher and $42 more to buy 4 books.

The first book was shipped 3 weeks later in early April. On May 8 I emailed them to ask about the other books. I also tried contacting them through their website and their two phone numbers listed on the website, but they seemed to be out of service. On Jun 2 I found the direct address of one of the guys there who had originally emailed me the coupon. I emailed him and got a prompt answer, apologizing and offering store credit towards their in-stock items.

I replied asking if they could fulfil my original order, or send a refund. I got no reply to that. Today, I got a form email with a coupon for the value of the undelivered books, all of which are no longer in stock. There's a substantial selection of books still in their store according to the website, including some good books, but all the ones I was looking for are gone.

So, I'm guessing chesscafe are going out of business and trying to sell off the rest of their stock. If they are not going out of business it's much much shadier to take my money, not tell me anything for three months and then not offer a refund.

The dollar amount isn't a big deal to me and I expect I won't get it back, or maybe I will get some overpriced ebooks for my trouble. I might try and charge it back through Paypal. But the store is still open and I'd like to warn anyone else thinking of shopping there - they may take your money and not send you your merchandise.

I've emailed the chesscafe representative a link to this thread and invited him to comment.

If they are going out of business, I hope they reopen the archives to the public, at least while they can still afford hosting.

I hope you manage to get some resolution on this, it definitely sounds like a bad situation based on the information at hand. I'd love to see their representative show up and offer a reasonable explanation, but I guess we'll see...

Today I received a refund through PayPal.

Incompetence ftw! Seems perhaps they may stay in business after all, limping along it appears.