That would be nice!!!

Its still on the first page, and always seems to be in the top half. Im sure as the internationals start to get there parcels and as it gets closer to the 28th, things will start to heat up.

I just got pretty lucky. I replied to Amazons email notifying me to ship or be billed. I sent the reply that was posted earlier to Amazon. And this was what they sent me

"Thank you for writing to Amazon.com.

Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience you may
have experienced with this order.

Please note if you are being charged any extra amount, please write
back to us with the amount you have been charged and we will refund
you the same in the form of a Promotional Certificate.

I've checked your order, and found that we recently offered a
greater discount on "Soap - The Complete First Season" than at the
time you placed your order.

Since this item was shipped so recently, I have requested a refund
of $1.10 to your credit card. This amount reflects the difference
between the price you were charged $23.09 and the discounted price
$20.99. The refund should be processed in the next few days and
will appear as a credit on your next billing statement.

You may view returns and refunds by clicking the "Your Account" link
at the top of our web site, then clicking "Go!" next to "open and
recently shipped orders." Completed refunds will appear at the
bottom of an individual order's summary page.

Please note as this order was payed using the promotion certificate
and the remaining with the credit card, we could only refund the
amount charged on the credit card $1.10.

To compensate for the remaining $1.00, please accept this $20.00
promotional certificate to utilize on your next visit to
Amazon.com.

Please note, this promotional certificate code has been
automatically added to your account. You will not receive a claim
code.

When you place a qualifying order, you should see the promotional
funds listed in the order cost summary that appears just before you
submit your order. As long as the order qualifies, you will not
need to do anything to receive the promotional discount.

If you do not see the promotional discount in your order summary,
please check the e-mail notification you received or visit our
Help pages to read the restrictions associated with redeeming this
promotional certificate:"

So they just credited my account back the $1.10 and gave me $20 which I have already redeemed. So even if they charge my credit card I am back to even or so.

Wow.
Congratulations.

Your post has cemented my decision to avoid purchasing from Amazon till they get their shit together.
I get threatened with my card being charged, and "tough shit" emails repeatedly, you get a price match and a "we're sorry" credit.

Out of curiousity, how is the email signed?

I hope this solution is satisfactory. Thank you for shopping at
Amazon.com--we hope you will visit us again soon.


Best regards,

Tony
Amazon.com Customer Service

Damn what post/email did you use?

This was hardly a 'glitch', this was a major cluster-f***. It's my understanding that this affected everybody who used the promotion, not just a few people. I've been in this biz about 20 years myself and I'll say it again:

Anybody who goes live with a promotion and who doesn't send some real orders through is an idiot.

Anybody who goes live with a promotion and doesn't monitor it during day one is an idiot.

Anyboy who goes live with a promotion and doesn't have an easy way to pull the plug on it with a moment's notice is an idiot.

We're not talking about 'quick fixes' here, we are talking about a backout plan. All new implementations (no matter the size) should have one.

It was a few pages earler thank you OP

Dear Amazon -

I'm writing in regards to an email that I received about this order. In it, you state that I was incorrectly charged and that you are requiring me to either return the items or that you will charge me the corrected price. I don't believe that this action is legal for you to do (charging an additional amount for items that you have already shipped and that I have received). In all 4 of my orders, I agreed to pay the amount that was specified on the final checkout screen and nothing more. In fact, quoting from your own email that you send when an item ships:

We thought you'd like to know that we shipped your items, and that this completes your order.

Any action taken by Amazon after I have paid the indicated amount at checkout and after you have shipped (and I have received) is not legal. If you pursue in your action of trying to charge me an additional amount for these orders, I will have no choice but to initiate a chargeback with my credit card company.

I hold Amazon in high regard as a company and I hope to continue to do business with you in the future. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

That was the reason I almost PAID for Amazon Prime. I got a 3-4 month free subscription and they kept f'ing up my delivery times. I think I got a handful of things on time, and most everythign else was 1-5+ days late. Every time I'd call up and get a refund of the shipping cost and a concession coupon. I could have paid the full price for prime and come out way ahead.....but I want to cut back on my spending, so that would be rather counter-productive.

-p

I've tried that email 3 or 4 different times; all with the same response: TOUGH!! Now pay-up or return the DVDs!

I am sending this email as confirmation that you are authorized to
return your opened media items for a full refund, due to the billing
error surrounding the DVD Television show promotion on December 23rd.

Thank you very much for shopping with Amazon.com.

I asked him about the possibility of a promotional certificate, since I'd decided to return the DVDs. He said that while sometimes they were allowed to do that, in this particular case they were told not to issue any...

That's better than getting a promotional certificate, using it then being told the promotion was a mistake.

Quick question for those who participated in this ‘deal’ –

Since when you place your order/s, you knew the pricing was a mistake, what is your reasoning for not returning the order? Assuming that you will not be out any money on shipping, doesn’t it seem like the right thing to do? I am sure you don’t feel that you are entitled to them since it was an obvious mistake.

Why should it matter when the error was caught, or if you received them already? Is it just some sort of ‘stick it to the man’ mentality? Seriously, why not just return them?

I got 2 sets of Married... With Children and paid for 2 additional sets of ALF, not affiliated with the deal. My reasoning is that I played by their rules, I didn't manipulate any internal software and placed the order as normal. Amazon had every opportunity to fix the "glitch" prior to shipping the items, but by shipping the items they completed their own obligation per their agreement.

Their correction for *their* error is to make what I believe is an illegal threat after most of their customers have received and opened their goods. By threatening to make an unauthorized charge, any sense of morality flew out the window for me. What they could have done is alerted me to their error, and let me know if I did not send back their sets then my Amazon account, along with all credit cards and shipping addresses would be cancelled without reinstation, but allowed me to make the choice.

I would have sent back the sets in a heartbeat if I had them. Hell, I probably would have purchased 2 sets and sent those back, since I don't have them anymore. I love Amazon, I'm a prime member, but if I make a mistake in my own business and I'm called on it, I don't have the option to make up new pricing rules because I made a REALLY big screw up. If I made an invoicing error, even my best and most loyal customers would call me on it. I would also have the choice to decide what customers to continue working with if they did not agree to my terms.

I'm not trying to be sarcastic, just trying to answer the question rationally and give an idea of where I stand.

I agree that this is what they should have done - just cut their loses, and get rid of the people who took advantage of the error. But just because they decided to take different route and try to recoup some of their loses, it doesn't seem like a reason to keep the dvds.

Mistakes happen everyday - I work in IT and part of my job is testing new projects or changes. Usually testing catches all the issues, but sometimes it doesn't. Just thinking it would suck to have this job at Amazon knowing that there are people just waiting to take advantage of any mistake, and then getting told too bad by these 'customers' when the mistake is caught. Those guys must be under a lot of stress...

But, and correct me if I'm understanding this wrong, wasn't the price correct
when you agreed to go to checkout? Couldn't Amazon have some grounds
due to that? Anything changing after that is obviously an error. Imo they
should allow for opened returns because there will have been those who
honestly did not notice the price discrepency, but ban those individuals
who made an excessive number of orders as there is no rational way to
explain how they were not knowingly exploiting an obvious mistake.

I never got the "you can return opened items" message (and I've actually been trying to), otherwise I gladly would have. I realize that others have and if I wanted to pursue it through another three or four e-mails, I could probably manage to find a CSR who would provide that. But I've struggled through enough cut-and-paste e-mails, and, unlike many here, I still haven't got a definitive answer yes or no on whether they will be pursuing the retro charge. I've given up now -- I've put in hours of my time trying to proactively rectify the situation to everyone's benefit (as opposed to throwing accusations amazon's way) and I still can't get a straight answer; at this point I feel the onus falls on amazon to provide a solution. And if they think that solution is to fail to reply to my offers to return the opened items and then to charge me without my authorization, they're in for a surprise.

-Toilet Dcuk

If you want to return it why not just claim one of the DVDs were defective. Amazon will pay shipping costs and refund your money. Seems easier than trying to negotiate with customer service.

No, the price was not 'correct'. The price when we clicked 'Go To Checkout' showed the full amount for both DVDs - it did not reflect the B1G1 at that time either.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't want to return it -- I was just trying to do right by amazon. By this point in the game, I'm perfectly ok with keeping the DVDs and disputing the charge. And it's not that I necessarily disagree with their position on the whole matter, but next time they should get their shit together before they open a can of worms this big.

-Toilet Dcuk

So where were customers alerted to the fact that the orders would be free?
Clicking proceed to checkout brings you to an order summary page, and from
that you place your order. Was it via the e-mail conformation only? That
seems wrong as folks are claiming the checkout page is the contract, as
well as some pointing out that others used 1 click checkout.

edited to add;
I believe I read the above wrong and you're saying that the order summary
page stated the lower than advertised price mistake. If so, that goes along
with what I was saying previously. Those who ordered proceeded to checkout
with the stipulation that the sets would be buy 1 get 1 free, not everything
free (ie; if you put 2 $20 sets in your cart then you are expecting a $20
charge upon buying 1 and getting 1 free). The fact that they were then
shown to be (all free) is the obvious (and non-advertised) mistake.

You asked specifically if the price when clicking proceed to checkout was correct. And no... it wasn't.

It was though. On the item's page there is no way it can predict the future
in that you will then choose another product in an advertised promotion in
order to lower its price. It was priced at X with the advertisement that if
you purchased another item from the promotion the lower priced item would
then become free. This is not what the order summary page reflected, and
what it did reflect (again, assuming I misread the previous post) was innacurate
(imo glaringly so) to the point where it can only be seen as an obvious mistake.

What if Amazon has no real intention of charging people's credit cards if they don't return the DVDs by the 28th? They might just be playing hardball until then in hopes of scaring a sufficient amount of customers (particularly those who made the most orders) to return their stuff.

Just a thought.

Can't wait to see this thread on the 29th.

I see what you're saying, I do, and I wouldn't consider myself an unethical or unreasonable person. The biggest problem I have with their solution is that I consider it illegal and threatening. I didn't order 20 or 50 sets, and though I don't want to get into another slippery slope argument, I do think that there is a difference between 2 and 20 in this case.

Honestly, if they would have sent me an email just laying out the facts of their mistake, the increased cost of other products to recoup their losses, and asked me to send back the sets and they pay for shipping, I would have. Instead, they tried to bully me by saying I agreed to the terms of their promotion even though *their* software was at fault. If they feel like playing intimidating, bullying, asshole corporation then they can deal with the consequences of pissed off customers.