So, now that I've not nearly as frustrated, I think I identified 3 areas you could improve to prevent this from happening:
The first, is your web site is overly complicated in areas it doesn't need to be, and not nearly as detailed in areas where it should be. I wasn't expecting to become so frustrated with your service, but if I did I thought it would be at the "integrating your service API into my web code" stage... not at the "select a free reader to try it out" stage.
The second thing is your site is broken. I can see that ordering a new mag reader lets me select headphone or Lightning at a cost, and I can only assume that selecting that option as a part of the new account creation allows the user to select the correct one as well. I don't actually know because I chose the other path during registration. I selected the $49 chip reader with free mag reader, and then later realized it was headphone only. At this point I chose "no thanks I'll take the free reader" option (I'm paraphrasing here because I don't want to create another account just to screw it up again) and it just chose the headphone version for me without asking. To be fair, once upon a time there wasn't a choice and headphone was the only option, so perhaps this part of your site just hasn't been updated yet since the Lightning version was released. Please have someone look into it.
The third thing that just annoyed the hell out of me was that when I was confronted with an "order received" notice I saw and immediately selected the "cancel this order" link, only to find an email 15 minutes later saying that the oder is already too far along to cancel. Mind you, It was probably less than a minute between "order accepted" and "order canceled" so to be unable to halt the shipping of a useless device to me was quite frustrating. I wanted the free reader that works with my phone, and I have no intention of paying anything to mail this wrong one back to you. This result was not my fault, and not my responsibility.
So, At this point I'm just about done. I really wanted to try out integrating your services into a few web sites, as I have clients that have square readers on site and still use PayPal carts on their web sites. But I'm just absolutely soured by this experience.
What do I have to do to get a reader without dropping $10 just to test your service?
