I placed my first ever order with AHS last week. My card was processed on 2/9 (which falls outside the dates given by Forrest). I stumbled upon this thread the next day, became very paranoid, and decided to carefully watch my account.
Absolutely nothing has been out of the ordinary.
I received the order today. Everything was perfectly packaged, the prices definitely beat-out a lot of others, and the grains look to have a great milling (the reason I'm trying a new vendor is that I'd been having problems with efficiency which I was thinking was due to how the grains were milled. Seeing AHS's milling, I feel confident that I will have better efficiency).
Anyway, I just wanted to a) confirm that a transaction after the given date was NOT compromised, which would corroborate Forrest's assertion that the issue was related to the C.C. processing, and b) give them a shout-out for being a good vendor.
Regardless of how much finger pointing people may want to do because, let's be honest, the situation really sucks; I don't think anyone can claim that AHS isn't good at doing what their business is: namely, selling brewing supplies. Maybe it's the fact that I'm an uber-geek and recognize my own kind, or maybe it's that I'm too trusting of a person, but something tells me that someone who opens a Homebrew Supply Store (that has been open for a damn long time), wouldn't be the type to be in cahoots with an international online identity theft and money laundering ring. If info was compromised, I refuse to believe it was intentional, negligent, or with malice. And since he took pro-active action to change his C.C. processing agent, and it seems to have fixed the problem, isn't that the action we should be looking at rather than "damn, he hasn't posted updates on some internet web-forum." Something tells me he has better things to do with his time (like helping law enforcement track down who is ACTUALLY responsible for all of this).
Anyway, thanks for the order, Forrest; I'll definitely shop with you guys again.