Yeah, let's drive all the etailors out of business so we can pay MSRP at the B&M's.

i don't think you should send them an email. i called them up and explained to them that this was a gift like nate_grey did and csr didn't budge. so i took nate's info in quotes and read it to csr and she took 30 seconds to verify with someone and proceeded to give me the 10.00 gift certificate. supposedly a promotional one. thanks for info.

thanks felcher

I have access to consumer lawyers and have posed this situation to them. In a nutshell -- consumer fraud protection laws protect the consumer from INTENTIONAL and DELIBERATE tactics meant to defraud the consumer. It does NOT cover mistakes at all. Any retailer that makes an honest mistake does NOT have to honor it.

Some people mistakingly think that a misprice must be honored because some stores actually DO honor them. But this is not true. Some stores honor mistakes because they do not want to lose their customers, not because they have to.

If you were to force the issue and take Amazon to court over this misprice, you would have the burden to prove that Amazon's motive was to intentionally and deliberately defraud you. Their defense would be that it was just a pricing mistake. Good luck. Maybe somebody has some inside documents and recorded conversations to prove a motive to defraud. I doubt it!

People get so confused over this "they legally must honor it" issue that it gets absolutely ridiculous. For example, a friend of mine advertised his new Corvette for sale in some classified ads. Because of a formatting error, the price that was supposed to be $38,500 was printing as $38,50. A couple of buyers called him to buy the car and my friend told them that a zero was mistakingly left off. These buyers told him that he MUST sell it to him for $3850 because that is what was printed in the advertisement and he LEGALLY had to do it. One guy even threatened to sue him in order to force him to sell it for that amount. Can people really be that laughably stupid? A mistake is a mistake. An intentional tactic to defraud is another issue and that is what our consumer protection laws address.

I Called them.

In a nutshell -- consumer fraud protection laws protect the consumer from INTENTIONAL and DELIBERATE tactics meant to defraud the consumer. It does NOT cover mistakes at all. Any retailer that makes an honest mistake does NOT have to honor it.

I can buy that. The email I recieved from Amazon said:

"Until recently we expected this item to ship it to the same price, but unfortunately when we contacted our supplier, it was reported to us that the price has gone up. "

This would be difficult to prove there was intention to defraud especially now that Amazon is passing the buck and not assuming responsibility. So I have several options open among them being fight, negotiate, or capitulate. For $70 bucks or so I'm not going to worry too much about it.

Cheers,

What is the Amazon phone number?

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=125554

I'm not a lawyer, but I have an understanding of the law. The internet and the laws governing it are an ever-changing thing. There is little case law to go on. If you want guidence you should read something called UCITA (Uniform Computer Transactions Information Act). Still, common contract law would likely state that Amazon does not accept your offer to purchase until it ships the items. An automatically generated "order confirmation" e-mail likely does not qualify

Well it's not that ridiculous. There have been situations where someone has been forced to adhere to a misprint like that. There was a case wher a dog track was giving away $25,000 and the newspaper printed $825,000 and they were held liable. Still advertisements are basically invitations to bargain. And with a single person, he almost certainly won't be held liable. There's no offer to be accepted, hence no contract.

I've been thinking this thing through a bit more and here is what I've come up with. Even though we (the consumers) have received a verification of our order there really isn't a contract. And here is why, after we place an order we reserve the right to cancel the order at any time prior to shipping for any reason. That being the case it only seems fair the vendor reserve the right to change the price, availability, etc., and then offer us the new deal until the time product has shipped to the consumer. This being the case it really is up to the vendor to be "nice" if they want to honor the original price, availability etc. And if they do this for one person they then have just set a precedent and are obligated to do the same for all customers.

I'm pretty sure this is the rationale Amazon (and other vendors) use and frankly it makes good business sense.

How long does it take one of the people over the phone to send you a promo?

#1
Mover 24,400% today ~ Amazon.com Sales Rank: 1 (was 245)

The Robert De Niro Collection
DVD ~ Robert De Niro
Not Yet Released -- On Order
Avg. Customer Review: List Price: $104.92
Our Price: $78.69
You Save: $26.23 (25%)

Thats all that pisses me off , if Amazon can dump the orders as they always do , why not remove this from the "Movers and Shakers " ? One reason , they do mis-prices on purpose all the time cause they know we will ordered and they know that we know they aint sending it out for listed price .
Somebody who dosent know better would think from seeing that "Wow that must be a awesome box set and one helluva deal if that many people ordered " . We give amazon free advertising by our continued puchase of these deals . Hopefully they will send me a gc of some amount . I hope one day laws do come about that prevent e-tailers from doing this . Don't you think by now Amazon would have software set up so if a item gets X amount of purchases in X amount of time to flag it so it can be removed or possibly thier own software could show it out of stock until they verify ? I knew they wernt gonna send it , I only purchased for the sake of a possible GC . It just pisses me off to see it at the top of movers and shakers , even though the orders are all null and void ..............

One problem , Amazon will send some people GC's for the trouble and refuse to send them to others . This makes it unfair for the consumer .

This is also what ticks me off. It does seem likely that Amazon uses this "preorder misprice" tactic to boost sales for an item by generating a misleading advertisement as a "Top Seller." I wonder how many people actually order the set at the corrected price during the time that it falsely advertised (remaining on the "Top Seller" list at the corrected price) as such a popular item?

I am not a practicing lawyer but here is what I think:

A contract should exist at the time of the confirmation e-mail (an e-mail that accepts the offer of the consumer after the consumer placed the order based on the definate terms of the advertisement or the invitation to sell), but the fact that it is an automated confirmation may let the vendor off the hook somewhat especially if the customer is aware of this. Also, Amazon's confirmation is just to let you know that they have recieved your order and it is not a final acceptance of the order placed. The fact that customers can cancel at any time may make the contract "illusory" or uneforceable. It may also be "illusory" because of Amazon's "pricing policy" which informs the consumer that Amazon reserves the right to change prices when mistakes occur on thier behalf. Once Amazon ships the item and charges your credit card, because you have not rescinded your order or Amazon has not changed the agreed price, then the contract is enfoceable. Still, Amazon allows customers to return the product for a refund as a part of thier return policy. This is a good business tactic, but the "preorder misprice" tactic is not simply because it irritates consumers.

I do wonder though if Amazon purposely uses this "preorder misprice" as a tactic to boost sales for a particular item. It would be difficult to prove and Amazon's lawyers should be able to easily defend thier pricing policy so any lawsuit would seem costly and futile.

I am content with recieving a GC for Amazon's mistake.

Please, does someone know the answer to my question?

I can imagine it now, the higher ups of Amazon secretly plotting in a fiendish plan to move the Robert DeNiro box set:

Exec #1: "Damn! We order to many DeNiro sets!"
Exec #2: "I know, lets trick the public by mispricing it, then those mindless sheep will buy it simply because it's on the best-seller list! This plan can't fail!"

(Evil laughing)

Now this IS true. I used this point way back when to get a GC for the Brazil/Jet Li misprices. I didn't fault Amazon, but if they give out GCs to others for ordering this misprice, why not everyone?

I don't get why you think that. I mean of ocurse it will move up on the sales list, its a misprice and thousands of people are ordering it. That list is automatically generated from the orders.

Well first of all, it's not a Top "Seller", is it? It's a Top "Please let me have it at the price you advertised, but you may change the price if you want to". Shouldn't it be "Top attempts to buy"?

Man, EVERYTIME an etailer has a misprice, and we all KNOW it is a mistake everyone starts crying fraud and saying they are going to contact lawyers etc, Cmon people it was a friggin mistake , we crossed our fingers and they corrected it, move on....

It's also funny because everytime there is a one per customer coupon like RAF people abuse the hell out of it, then they whine about this...and then we wonder why these dot-coms can't stay in business...

Actually I don't think any contract exists. Amazon is inviting you to bargain and is offering a good at a price. Your purchase is a counteroffer on your terms (specific payment, shipping, etc..). Amazon then accepts your offer when it ships the goods. Without shipment, it's just an offer by you that can be revoked by canceling your order

Well you're getting into semantics. Technically I could pre-order 1,000,000 copies of 3000 Miles to Graceland, boost the DVD in to the bestseller list, and then cancel all my orders. So techincally they aren't exactly sales.

But the software that shows the best sellers is simply a thing recording what DVDs have had the most orders in the last so many hours/days (whatever the timeframe is). It's not like Amazon is putting it there, it's automatically generated by orders we make.

Don't hurt yourself bending over backwards so hard to justify their technique. Just because it's automated doesn't make it right. It's easy enough to automate it correctly.

They should call it "Top Orders" and * it with a notation that says "Subject to our ultimate acceptance. We may reject any number of these orders depending on ...". Anything less is misleading. And when the price changes drastically they should immediately remove the low price orders from the count. They know what will happen.