First of all, thanks NeptuneHigh for the email .. sorta helps me out a bit about what to do with my DVD order (if they arrive in time)

As for that quote above, and the bold part .. well, actually the price I agreed to pay was $8.97 in shipping ONLY after the checkout had glitched. I paid that and so the transaction is complete.

Had the cart accuratly given me the expected total, I doubt I would have proceeded. If I had of and they only charged the Visa $8.97, then I would have expected them to come after me.

You're welcome. Glad I could help.

Exactly - the price everyone agreed was clearly displayed at checkout, through confirmation, in the confirmation and shipping emails and on the invoices.

It clearly states on the invoice: 'Balance Due: $0.00.'. Nobody who was sent the DVDs was informed of a pricing error before shipping.

I doubt any bank or credit card provider would side with Amazon after being shown all of the above. I think Amazon are due a hell of a lot of chargebacks on the 28th.

I dunno, consulting a lawyer with the clock ticking at $350+/hour might be a bit much just to keep your one cent copy of The Nanny, Season 2.

Seriously, there is very little, if any, settled law on this specific issue and you aren't going to find a lawyer who specializes in online consumer purchase contracts or the like. Bank lawyers would have the necessary expertise but they are boring and you wouldn't want them here posting here anyway.

Which reminds me of another hoary old contract defense, failure of consideration. For a contract to be valid, it must be based upon some "consideration," which is a fancy word for something of value being exchanged by the parties. In many contracts, money is the consideration that is traded. If a contract is not supported by consideration to both sides, then it fails and is unenforceable.

When you contracted to "buy" 2 DVD sets for $0.00 (as it is apparent many did), Amazon received no consideration, nothing of value, except perhaps your undying gratitude. Therefore, the purchase contract fails, game over, case closed, pay the man on your way out the door, kthxbye.

Now you might say "What about the $4 I paid Amazon for shipment? Isn't that some kind of consideration?" and that would be a valid point if Amazon made any extra money for itself beyond its actual shipping and handling charges. I'm betting Amazon doesn't declare your shipping charges as income on its balance sheets so it's probably a losing argument.

Oh, please. Its clear that you have made up your mind about right and wrong in this case -- every post of yours here has been an attempt to rationalize Amazon's actions. This latest is just a false appeal to authority -- "Amazon knows what they are doing because they have lots and lots of lawyers, and all you peons don't."

You would lose that bet. Amazon has regularly listed "shipping and handling" fees as a profit center in their SEC filings.

But then I guess my point would be, how could Amazon know who knew it was a mistake and who just happened to be purchasing those sets on the promotion? And again, I grant you that if you ordered this anywhere from 3 to 100 times, you're not going to be able to play dumb. I'm not playing dumb and I did it once, but how could they prove that?

Not sure they have to prove you knew it was a mistake, just that is was a mistake. All Amazon wants is their merchandise back, or for you to pay for it. Besides, I am not sure who could possibily not know it was an error if they were getting 2 dvd sets for free.

They had a set of rules for the promotion, and they were not followed - because of Amazons mistake. I would think this would void the sales contract. Imagine if I sold you a car - we had a contract written up, and you paid the price on the contract. I accepted your money and turned over the keys. Then it turns out through my mistake I actually didn't own the car, and the person who did own it wanted more money for it. How relaviant do you think that sales contract would be at that point?

I would say that analogy isn't quite appropriate because ownership would trump any kind of transaction and it would become a strictly legal issue. Even still, I would assume Amazon would be in a hell of a lot of trouble if they're selling cars that aren't theirs. What if they asked for the car back 2 weeks later after they've installed new tires, new stereo, OR given it to a family member, donated it to charity, etc... I don't know of an analogy that wouldn't have a counter to it based on how Amazon has handled this.

I think your points are reasonable and I've tried to answer them as best I can, but we're on opposite sides here, and I think we would be regardless of if I purchased the sets or not. And I'll go back to an earlier point that was made, there was no manipulation of their promotion at all here. There is no way to differentiate between someone just purchasing these goods and those taking advantage (within obvious reason). I think we would have a different arguement if this note was sent 15 minutes after the packages were mailed, or somehow the message got to the customers before they could use them. And by use I would mean open the sets, give them away, whatever... If I physically don't have those sets around anymore, what do I do if they did not give me enough warning to make a decision?

Check out http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...&nodeId=508088 and scroll down to Disputes.
It appears that only cases involving intellectual property rights will go to court.
Anyone willing to bite the bullet, email ECR and state they wish to initiate an arbitration hearing?

Anyone who purchased the sets on the promotion expected to buy one get one free (rather than buy one get double the amount of the lower priced item taken off twice which was clearly an error). As soon as that didn't happen, they'd have known something was wrong. So if you just didn't notice the final charge, then I guess you're innocent but you also wouldn't mind paying what you owed (since you expected to pay that all along). Only if you saw the lower price with the double discount before finalizing your order, and if you saw that, you knew something was not working right.

I agree, but all I was trying to argue was intent.

I guess that begs the question "When do you actually agree to a price?" Is it when you put the items in your cart and see the b1g1 offer, as Amazon states, or is it when you are checking out and see the prices in your invoice and click "order" or "confirm" or whatever the button says? I would have to say the latter. I do not agree to the terms of the sale until i click all the way through to where i cant back out of the sale anymore. Amazon had ample opportunity to back out of the order. They did not.
Bottom line is that the customers agreed to pay what the final total said when they clicked on that final "order" button and not a penny more.

This seems to have absolutely nothing in common with the situation at amazon. In your example, you dont own the car. Of course you cant validly sell something you dont own. So I should get my money back, and you should go to jail for selling stolen property. Thats just (un)common sense. Amazon, however, did own the dvd's. If they choose to sell them for below market value that is their prerogative. I'm not gonna argue with that. I would disagree with AMazon then changing thir minds after the transactions are completed and trying to charge more.

choose - They "chose" to give DVD sets at nearly no cost? Or there was a mistake that people took advantage of?

changing thir minds It wasn't their intent, nor decision to sell them at those prices, and most (if not all) people realize that. They aren't changing their minds, their minds were that it was 2 for 1, not 2 for 0.

trying to charge more They aren't charging more, they are charging the price that it should have been.

Legit victims of this were TRYING to get the price 2 for 1. And the glitch ended up making it less than what they expected. They were still willing and wanting to pay the price that the company intended with the 2 for 1. The non-legit victims of this knew that by going in and selecting these DVD's that the price in the end would be less because of the glitch.
So either
a) they want you to pay for the 2 for 1 items you were expecting to pay -or-
b) they want you to pay for the items you intentionally were trying to get from the company than less than intended -or-
c) send them back

I don't agree with the "must be unopened" part. If they would accept the unopened items and just eat the losses of NEW vs USED, i think alot of this would not be an issue.

But what if you gave the items away in the time between when you received them versus the notification you will be charged?

you still fall under one of the 2 groups.... legit or non-legit, either way you were expecting to pay more initially, or you were intentionally side stepping it.

If you gave them away, it was your option. And you have opted to exclude the returning of the items as a solution.

So i would say you should pay for the items as you expected the promotion to be. Or pay them the money you are intentionally trying not to pay them.... depending on which group you fall in.

Not that I don't see your point, but how is giving them away different from opening them? I chose to open them, therefore excluding myself from the return policy.

Now, had I been informed of this whole snafu BEFORE I had opened the DVDs, I never would have done so, and I would assume the same goes to many who gave them away. The problem here is not so much a narrow return policy, but an unnecessary delay in the presentation of the options. Responsibility for that delay, for whatever reason (vaild or no), does fall upon Amazon.

-Toilet Dcuk

The difference to me is that the timeframe in which Amazon shipped the items and notified you of (again) *their* error was enough time to do virtually anything with the DVDs. They are giving you no alternative choice to sending back the unopened DVDS, even though I had them 4 days prior to their email. The largest part of their error (after shipping the items in the first place) is that customers ALREADY HAD the items. They could have done anything with them by that point and Amazon is mandating that you did not open, give away, break...etc, etc the goods while you had them. It's an unreasonable and arrogant assumption for them to believe that all customers did not open the DVDs and still had them in their possession.

Toilet Duck:

Once again, the whole reason this debate exists is because Amazon accepted payment and then shipped the items to the buyer. Had Amazon cancelled all orders before shipping them as is their right via their policy, there would be few if any complaints about this deal.

Did most buyers know they were taking advantage of a mistake on Amazon's website? Yes. Did Amazon realize that they had made a mistake on their website and then correct it the next day? Yes.

Did Amazon cancel all orders or offer to ship the items to the buyers only if they paid the corrected price? No. Amazon did not follow their own policy.

Amazon had the option to cancel all orders. For whatever reason (lack of time, lack of resources, lack of organization), they did not. That is not the fault of the buyer, but the fault of the vendor. Amazon accepted payment, packaged up the DVDs and then shipped them to the buyers. Then five days later they sent out an email attempting to reverse their mistake.

If every seller sent emails to buyers telling them to return shipped items because they were mispriced on their website (a la the recent Walmart $25 snafu) there would be a major uproar on this board.

The only reason Amazon is taking their current action in this particular case is because they believe they've found a loophole that gives them some leverage against the buyers -- more leverage than they would normally have in a conventional misprice scenario.

If merchants thought they could get away with pressuring customers to return mispriced items, you can bet that they would all be sending out similar emails.

Sorry, let me rephrase.

I understand your position on the opened vs. unopened policy, but your argument for the 'giveaways' (that they chose to exclude themselves) could also be used by Amazon in my situation ("you chose to open the dvds, we don't accept opened returns, tough shit, pay up"), despite the fact that I was unaware of any potential repercussions for opening what is in fact, my property. If customers were unaware of potential repercussions for giving away their own property, how can they be held any more at fault?

-Toilet Dcuk

Both parties are at fault here. This is not one or the other, nor have i ever said it was.

This wasnt a misprice... This was a mis-totalling. A promotion glitch. They didnt say "buy this DVD set for 0.00".

Again because it is different. It isnt a misprice.

there's a difference in loss of NEW vs OLD (little loss)
and
SOMETHING vs NOTHING (total loss)

I just mentioned that Amazon should make a special case exception here. A personal opinion i added that would alleviate alot of the issues. If they can get their product back in working condition, then they should allow for it. They can't proove someone did or didnt give something away.

But none of this takes away from my point that you were either willing to pay the 2 for 1 initially, or are trying to side step paying the expected price cause you knew you could.