Psst... Hey buddy wanna buy a song?

Well, another gripe about one of my favorite companies... Apple. I hate to post yet another gripe, but as a fan, and as someone who spends their hard earned cash on apple products, I figure that gives me the right.
I've been a big fan of itunes. I buy all my music via itunes now rather than steal. Apple made it easy and cheap and convenient for me to do this, so I can't justify downloading via the peer to peer sites. But something recently happened that changed my view of itunes. I bought a comedy album that had 22 tracks on it. (Kevin Meaney - That's not right). I was watching the songs download, and noticed that they were taking a long time, and they were downloading out of order. Then all of a sudden it jumped from "downloading 6 of 22" to "downloading 7 of 20". huh? what happened to the other two? Sure enough after it downloaded the 20th song, it came up with an error 502. and told me that there was a problem and that I should go to the advanced menu and select "check for purchased musci..." I did this and again got a strange error. I restarted itunes, and did this again, and was told that all songs have been downloaded. Now what do I do? There was obviously a glitch, but how do i straighten this out? I went to the apple website hoping to find a phone number. NO! All itunes support is done through email. And takes 72 hours for them to respond. ok - what choice do I have? I sent a detailed email explaining the problem, and asked how do I go about getting the other 2 songs. two days later, I got a response... it was obviously automated response and clear that no one had read my email. In a nutshell they told me to install itunes. (huh!?) So I had to resubmit another email telling them that they did not read nor respond to my original email. Then yesterday I decided to try and talk to a human at apple. I can go on describing this fiasco, but I'll give you the short version... 1 hour on the phone (about 40 minutes spent on hold). Spoke to one tech support person who had no idea what error 502 was, and finally talked to a customer service person who basically resubmitted an email for me to the itunes support website. Argh. So I'm still waiting for a response, I've spent hours trying to figure out how to get my two songs, and all to no avail. I then realized that buying music via itunes is no different than buying something from a guy in an alley. If something goes wrong you are screwed. I have one final option of course, to go through my credit card company and dispute the purchase, but I hate to go through all that over $1.98 - but I hate it more when someone rips me off.
I'll post back if/when apple responds to me again "hopefully" crediting me for the two missing songs.
In addition to all this, I now have lost all trust in my itunes purchase. What happens if this happens again!?
I may go back to buying physical disks now.
Apple - tsk tsk. Shame on you for not offering proper support.
Cyen