The Mail Order Rule within the FTC allows a customer to cancel their order anytime up until it ships... if a retailer subsequently ships product to the customer, the customer is not obligated to pay for the goods and said company is responsible for arranging pick up.
Any charge on your credit card after a cancellation has been initiated can be disputed, with high rates of success, with your CC company. Furthermore, your State's Attorney General's office should also be notified.
Finally, any mail order that is not shipped within the time frame acknowledged on a) the company's web site or b) the company's order confirmation subjects the company to obtaining permission to extend the time to ship.
At this point, it would appear DLC has violated this rule on ThinBlueLine's order and most certainly on McBryde's order last year.
DLC's shipping information on their web site: "Orders ship within 1-3 days from receipt. Orders within the US normally arrive in 5 to 7 days and international orders normally arrive in 10-14 days. Unlike our competitors, we process orders EVERY SINGLE DAY and ship them 6 days a week."
FTC Rule: "If, after taking the customer's order, you learn that you cannot ship within the time you stated or within 30 days, you must seek the customer's consent to the delayed shipment. If you cannot obtain the customer's consent to the delay -- either because it is not a situation in which you are permitted to treat the customer's silence as consent and the customer has not expressly consented to the delay, or because the customer has expressly refused to consent -- you must, without being asked, promptly refund all the money the customer paid you for the unshipped merchandise."
