ITunes Charged me 9 times for 1 purchase and Support has not resolved it

Question

iTunes charged me 9 times for a single transaction and I'm getting no where in getting it resolved.
Nov 21, 2005: Purchased Season 2 of Lost (videos) for $13.93
Nov 21-22 2005: Was charged over and over again, totaling 9 times for the single purchase
Nov 23: 2005: Initial contact to iTunes support; they tell me this is normal that small charges may be applied to your account as 'authorization requests' Of course, these weren't normal or small charges it was billing error that charged me 9 times for a single purchase.
After contacting them again to reiterate the fact that I was charged 9 times for the purchase, my mail is finally read and an acknowledgments is made that something went wrong. They tell me "We have investigated and resolved the issue you reported. Within 72 hours, you will receive a refund for the duplicate charges through your Paypal account, coming from the iTunes Music Store."
Nov 29 2005: I wait patiently beyond 72 hours for all the refunds to be put in place; some are completed but 2 charges still show. One at the time is valid, its the purchase I made. ** (Not valid today because the music shows as not payed for anymore) **
I contact Support on the 29th stating all of the refunds have not come in, they tell me there is nothing they can do and that I need to contact Paypal. "The best way to resolve this issue is to contact PayPal and advise them of the situation."
I talk to a senior person at Paypal and they tell me there is nothing they can do, that iTunes must issue the refund. Nice. Circles!
I write back again to iTunes Support stating that I had contact Paypal and they stated that there is nothing they can do regarding the refund, that Paypal needs to resolve the matter. iTunes writes back:
"We're sorry that you have experienced this problem with your PayPal account. Unfortunately, we will not be able to notify you when the matter is resolved. Our engineers are trying to correct the errors, and we hope to enable PayPal payment processing as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience."
OK, they at least acknowledge there is a problem (even if they are blaming it on Paypal) and that they are working on it.
Dec 05 2005: Follow up today to get a status as to when I will be refunded for their error, I get no update, only the following response:
"We apologize in the delays in processing this refund, and we thank you for your patience."
I follow up stating I would like the full amount refunded; it seems the original purchase is listed as not payed for so I can't even watch what I purchased! At this point I just
want to be refunded so I can cancel and delete my iTunes account.
Whats bad:
- Can't reject the charge on my cc since it will get rejected back to paypal, not iTunes/Apple (paypal will then likely just close my account and come after me for the money)
- Can't reject charges in paypal, they don't seem to do that
- iTunes/Apple support mails are incredibly canned responses and impersonal
- I'm at the mercy of iTunes/Apple in resolving this; there is no ETA for them to resolve this issue that they created.
- I've asked to be called regarding this matter and the requests have been ignored
Any advice to get this resolved would be appreciated. It is has been an incredibly frustrating experience; I don't much like the idea being forced to pay off a credit card charge for services that I have not actually received and which were charged to me in error.
Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Answer 1

This is EXACTLY what happened to me and many others. Tech support returned most of my money but not all of it. Figure that one out! It is clear no music is downloaded (or in queue), it is clear an unknown error message is produced, and it is clear we, the consumer, are still being charged anyway. Will Apple require a credit card from its customers and alienate those that do not wish to use a credit card? Will Apple insult its customers and make silly suggestions such as 'Use an iTunes gift card' in much the same way a forum moderator has already recommended?
I have an idea: Acknowledge the problem publicly (via email, for example) and fix it in a future update. Customers will be more understanding if they know there is a temporary problem and Apple is working hard to fix it. Oh, and return our money, please!
Windows XP Pro
  Windows XP Pro