Gypo66

Not sure if this should be posted here or in the store forum, but just curious if anyone has any insight/suggestions on this: I had 10 DVDs on order at amazon.co.uk and decided to cancel 2 of them. When I checked my account, I found that they had taken upon themselves to split my order into two shipments (even though I explicitly requested the "ship only when entire order is complete" option), and that I no longer had the option of canceling the 2 items I didn't want, since they were now in a "to be dispatched" soon category.
I emailed amazon.co.uk three times insisting that they not ship the items and switch the order back to a single order. I also insisted that at the very least they cancel the two unwanted items. Each time I received a polite but entirely unhelpful response. Bottom line is that I just received an auto-email informing me that the DVDs have now shipped .... so now my only option is to send back the unwanted titles once they arrive.
Amazon.co.uk claims they'll refund the unwanted DVDs and my out-of-pocket return shipping cost when the package is received on their end, but in the meantime I'm out a healthy chunk of change for their screw-up. I know they were only trying to be helpful and efficient by shipping my items early, but this is now nothing but a huge hassle.
I'm thinking of contacting my credit card company on Monday and at least disputing the charges for the unwanted items. Any suggestions?

mdm67

once I had a situation like this, they refunded the money and told me to keep the items since the return cost would have been too high.

Tom Campbell

The splitting of shipments is actually a not entirely uncommon occurance for any of the Amazon sites. Generally it happens when some parts of the order have no estimated release date (or, at least, Amazon have no idea when they will get them in) and, rather than hold up your entire order indefinitely, they will go ahead and ship the parts that are available, usually at no extra cost to you.

You just got a little unlucky in terms of timing. Once they are in the process of dispatching part of the shipment, the option of cancelling no longer exists. While it may be an inconvenience for you, Amazon is not entirely at fault here. As far as they were concerned, they were doing you a favor by shipping the available part of your order at no extra cost. How were they to know you were going to change your mind and try to cancel a couple of items?

Ultimately, I do not view this as an Amazon screw-up. I don't want to sound like I don't sympathize with your plight, but you did order the items and they tried to fulfill your order as quickly as they could and to the best of their abilities. You're actually lucky that they're willing to take the discs back and refund you both the price and your shipping cost.

Giles

I agree with Tom here, Amazon doesn't incure extra cost when an order has to be split. Amazon is very gratitious on this.

Secondly what are the titles, I might be interested in buying the discs from you.

Gypo66

Thanks for everybody's feedback. Tom and Giles, I agree with what you're saying about Amazon acting in what they thought were my best interests, and this mostly being a case of bad timing. My problem here, however, is that A) they didn't give me any say in the matter since they didn't tell me in advance what they were going to do, and B) once the order was split, they were (politely) adamant about refusing to cancel my unwanted items, even though they were aware that it was going to create problems for me, and that the mistake (however good intentioned) was theirs.

Anyway, Giles, the two titles I have coming that I've decided I don't want are The Early Films of Peter Greenaway Vol. 1 and Trainpotting Definitive Edition. Any interest?

lostatmidnight

If Giles is not interested, I would very willing to take Trainspotting DE off your hands. LMK.

jonathan.e

They do say that orders may be split at no extra cost to you, when you place the order, to get your stuff to you as quickly as possible and anyone who’s ordered from Amazon knows full well that once it hits the shipping process not even God himself can do anything about it.

Giles

yes, yes, yes, yes.... please email me!!!!1

moviezzz

Amazon really didn't do anything wrong, it was all done automatically. Sometimes they have to ship from different areas or different warehouses so they can't combine them all into one shipment even if you ask them.

And once they enter the shipping soon status, they can't be changed.

I'd just send them a polite email, explaining the situation and saying that you want a refund or something and see what happens.