::A Geek in Korea::

Truth be told, one of the reasons I’ve been interested in seeing movies at the theater again is because of Rifftrax. What’s the danger of seeing a complete bomb of a movie if there is almost a near certainty that it’ll end up being mocked by the old MST3k cast? When I went to see 300, I was kind of bored. I sat through it, but walking out of the movie I thought “Well, I’ll buy THAT when it hits Rifftrax“.

I was an early adopter when it came to Rifftrax. The first time I bought a movie commentary from them, they were still using Paypal to handle all their transactions. These days, you can pay with a credit card directly, or muddle around with Paypal services. This time, I decided to try to pay with my wife’s credit card. I had been using my own for a while, but I wanted to try something different so I could get a quicker confirmation of payment.

When I first went to try to buy the 300 rifftrax, the drop down menu for addresses listed “North Korea”, but not “South Korea”. I sent a note over to the tech support forum and they had the issue fixed in literally a few minutes. Now that I could actually tell them where I lived, I went on to the second step of the process.

I hadn’t used a Korean credit card to shop online before, so when I went to process the order for the Rifftrax, I hit a snag. My order didn’t process completely. I went to the forums for support again, and they told me it might have been a problem with my address. Since I had written the address in Korean, I decided to try again in English. Also, there were a few security measures I might have done incorrectly. After the fourth attempt, I was finally able to get to the download screen. Perhaps I should have kept up with using Paypal. At least I ended up with the mp3 file on the last try.

Anyway, my wife’s phone receives and update whenever we use her card. An hour later, we got an update. The processing was complete. We got one update. Then another. Then another. Then ANOTHER. Yes, we got billed for each time I had tried to purchase something, even though the item was made available until the very last attempt. My wife was unbelievably cool about it. She said since Rifftrax is so cheap per track ($2.99? For that much entertainment? Forget-about-it!) that she’s not worried. I dodged a bullet there. She did give me a good ribbing about it just the same.

Yet ANOTHER post in their tech support forum, and now they’re willing to either credit my account for some more downloads, or do a charge back for the amount I paid. Their responses are minutes after my postings, so even if I had a few problems for this download, as long as the refund/credit process goes well, I’ll be using it again when another riffable movie comes along that I have to see with the Rifftrax treatment.

Verdict: The 300 rifftrax was alright. They pointed out some of the absurdities of the movie, and there were a few good jokes, but there were a bit too many fart jokes, even for a Rifftrax commentary.