I'm not going to email Amazon or call them. Im just going to tell my CC company not to let them make charges. Let Amazon jump through hoops.

I would simply point out that their own terms and conditions state that they are to either cancel your order or contact you to resolve the price PRIOR to shipping. I would advise them that you intend to dispute any additional charges, and ask for confirmation that they are going to cancel any future rebill efforts. Be as polite as possible.

another easy response - I saw the banner, got the email, went to the site, saw the sale, they had it marked in several places... a "glitch" doesnt show up 3-4 different places in 3-4 different forms. Mistake, maybe. Glitch, noway. They intended on selling those DVD sets at that price.

That's just absurd. The buyers here used an exploit, not an advertised/intended price, so your scenario has nothing to do with what happened.

The most entertaining thing about this thread are the amount of people here who continue to whine and complain -- and try to come up with similar scenarios -- when you all KNEW what you were doing probably wasn't going to work and certainly wasn't "right". Take some responsibility for once.

The point is that Amazon has made an enemy of many who regularly buy DVDs. They will probably lose more money from bad PR than from the glitch or mistake or whatever it was. I never took part in the deal but feel more disinclined to do business with them in the future.

I'd say at least 25% of the deals at DVDTalk involve a blatantly obvious misprice or taking advantage of some loophole in the offer.

Examples:
Suncoast 2 for $32 deal
Target $5.99 deal
Planet of the Apes head at DDD
Disney Deal
Neon Genesis Evangelion at Overstock
ATL at Overstock (priced at $ 0.00)
Transformers Toy deal at Target
$10 off at FYE no minimum (Was supposed to be 10%)
Rome $20 at Suncoast
Family Video $5 off $5 coupon (One per customer, but people used different email addresses to use it multiple times)

And so on...and so on....

LOL, for real? I actually will buy more from them now that they're not afraid to go after scammers who exploit and abuse the system.

The only enemy they've made are the people who took advantage of the glitch and knew all along what they were doing. That's not going to result in "bad PR" except among some of the members of this board who hilariously are now refusing to deal with them because they didn't honor a technical glitch that they knew wasn't intended in the first place.

Seriously, could this thread BE any more entertaining?

Yes, it should get really entertaining when people start demanding their money back for losing lottery tickets as well.

you can do that?!

The price that shows up during the Checkout process is the price that I expect to pay. That goes with every transaction I make on every single website. If I don't approve of the the price being charged me during the Checkout process, then I cancel the transaction before I complete it. If an item is being advertised on the site for $12 but shows up at Checkout for $50, then I cancel the transaction. If an item is being advertised for $50 but shows up at Checkout for $10 then I just might go ahead with the transaction. Who knows if there is some discount being applied that I don't know about?

I've gone to stores, picked up an item that was marked at a certain price, took it to the register and it rang up for a lower price. The cashier looks at the price with a funny face, then goes ahead with the transaction. He doesn't know if it's on sale or a marked down clearance item. It could be a misprice, but who knows?

If the price at Checkout isn't what Amazon.com agrees to then they can cancel the transaction before it ships. If both parties agree to the price at Checkout and Amazon ships the item at that price than the transaction is complete and neither should complain.

It's worth a try! It's about the same odds as you take with these price glitches.

Like the final checkout page of my Amazom orders, the packing slip on my Amazon orders, the amount charged on my debit card, the amount in my emails from Amazon, the amount shown on my order list on Amazon....is that enough....should I keep going?

Except that this is quite unlike buying a losing lottery ticket. As many people have stated, if Amazon had cancelled the orders before they shipped no one would be starting threads to complain about it. I dare say most of us expected exactly that to occur. However, once you've "won the lottery" (if we must carry that completely non-applicable metaphor even further) and the item is shipped, you expect the retailer to honor that transaction.

People knew what was going on but it is a game we all play every time we see certain deals, price errors, code mistakes, etc. . Will the retailer cancel all the orders, let us have one or even all of our orders? That is the game we play & if the retailer cancels before the deal is completed then we move on to the next one. If Amazon had cancelled before shipping I'm sure most people would have been fine with that. You win some, you lose some. Next deal please & moved on with no hard will toward Amazon. Amazon went past the point of no return & is now crying foul because of their incompetence in many areas of this deal.
This is not the first time such problems have happened to Amazon. They should have created a system that was suggested in one article. (Create systems to automatically track sales trends and flag any unexpected increases in volume to allow verification of price before the sales are complete)
Regardless of whether you ordered from Amazon or not doing this deal, surely you agree that Amazon completed the contract by shipping the goods & charging the credit cards & therefore, with their all around incompetence & failure to have any system in place to catch such things they should just let this go & move on. The deal is done.

Wow, 13 pages of posts! It used to be the only way a thread got this big this fast was when it was about the latest DDD 20% sale.

So you checked out expecting the titles to be almost (if not completely) free? The instore clerk isnt going to check something out to you that rings up free.

Do you go through a check out process for all over priced stuff you are interested in to see if it checks out cheaper than its advertised? No, noone would, cause they expect it to be what they advertised. Noone would believe you if you stated otherwise. It would be too tedious to do that with ALL things you are interested in.

People are just trying to find justification now...

You got the DVDs, and will probably not be charged them. You got what you want. Everyone knows that most people did this with intent of taking advantage of the glitch, but want to still look innocent.

Most even state that they wont even go back cause Amazon is now trying to do something about it.

OMG when is the next sale~!???

Kidding...

Each are results from one another. Nowhere on the site could you show me that it said the DVDs would be free. Banners vs ads vs email vs the actual pricing on the check out are all from different areas of the site. Not products of one another.

And someone from the MTV marketing department could have gotten ONE email stating the wrong price of the Beavis & Butthead sets, and in turn made different things to advertize them.

It was still advertised that way... Unlike Amazon...

What if the B&B sets were "advertised" at $1.50 each, instead of $5 each. Is that ok with you? Does that fall within your imaginary line of morality. Or would you have passed on that deal as that is essentially free. Just curious.

false advertisement vs glitch in system - you decide

My point was that people knew what they were doing, so they shouldnt act all innocent. That was the only point i was trying to make.

EDIT: If Amazon had "advertised" the free (or nearly) free DVDs, we wouldnt be having this discussion.

I agree with everyone else. They shipped the items, they deal with the consequences. They have no legal recourse to charge people for the items shipped.........

And to the guy who seems to think Amazon is "better" because they are "going after" people who took advantage of this:

It does not make Amazon better, and they are not going after anyone. They are bowing up and threatening to do something illegal in an attempt to recoup losses after a botched sale. Yes, it is illegal to charge an individuals credit card without EXPLICIT permission to do so. They are trying to do it with IMPLICIT permission via an email. Its a subtle difference, implicit vs. explicit permission, but it makes all the difference in the world.

They had several opportunities to correct this before it got to this point. First, when they wrote the script for the sale. Second when they noticed the large volume of sales for next to nothing. And third, before they shipped them. And we are talking about a company that stores everything I look at on their site and offers me special suggestions when I login. But they dont have measures to stop something like this from happening?

One time I was at a hardware store and they had a router marked at $25.00 when it was supposed to be $250.00. I put 10 on a cart and took them up to the front and paid, and headed out to my car. A couple of minutes later the manager came out to the parking lot and demanded that I bring them back inside, that I could have 1 at $25 but if i took the rest he would call the cops. Pretty absurd right? Thats exactly what amazon is trying to do.

Incidentally, I loaded up all 10, told the guy to call the cops, and drove off. Of course, I never heard another thing about it.

As far as what is advertised.......

I would argue that whatever the price on my final confirmation screen says is what is advertised. It is not bought until I click the confirm button. Whatever price I see in the cart on the final confirmation screen is as good as a price on an item in a store. It has to be honored.

And for the record, I did not take part in this deal.

I think that you made it about 50 times already.

Very true. And he didn't answer my question about the $1.50 vs. $5. Where is The Chief's imaginary line of morality drawn. Inquiring minds want to know.