jjcool

My question is this: If according to the legal postings I have seen, Amazon and DVDPlanet are saying that because there was some egregious error that the buyer used to order these items at a substatially lower price, thus declaring the contract between buyer and seller null and void. These items were then shipped to the customer, without a contract. Could we then look at these items as unsolicited? IE unordered un wanted materials that arrive at your doorstep that you are not responsible for?

Peep

Thanks for clearing that up, Mark. When I heard that people were using Google Checkout to scam free DVD's from you, I thought you may have changed the 'status' of items so that Google Checkout wouldn't work. I also assumed that people could still place non-Google orders against 'on order' items.

Sorry to hear about your 'bad file' problems. I've been there myself and it sucks.

Sean O'Hara

Yes, he should give us technical details of a security flaw that allowed people to hack the site and get extra free items.

Sheesh.

marylandjoe03

Still unclear about the initial post. Why is DVDPlanet sending out rude letters for ONE error, where the person got 2 free DVD's from one order? The person did say 20 orders were placed with only BOGO.

Why would DVDPlanet harass someone who placed that many orders, where about 20 of 21 were filled correctly?

Goldblum

We have not seen the original email in total. I think that would answer many of your questions.

Brooklyn

The packing slips do not always reflect the charges. My orders are sent to a
seperate address than my billing address, as such no prices are shown on my
invoice.

marylandjoe03

Not sure why we need to see the original e-mail "in total". What are you looking for exactly? Original poster stated what was received, and the DVDPlanet response did not contradict the poster. Point remains that DVDPlanet is unprofessional in sending out such a mailing to a person that got ONE extra DVD, in over 21 purchases.

Sean O'Hara

They found that people were cheating to get extra free DVDs. He got an extra free DVD. I'll take his word that he didn't cheat, but it's not unreasonable for them to suspect him given the circumstances.

i86time

The problem is, the retailer didn't just suspect the OP, they came right out and accused him/her. The full text was not posted, but one sentence read, "DVDPlanet has determined that such orders were made in an attempt to defraud DVDPlanet from proper payment." (bold and italics added)

According to Webster's, fraud is the intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right, etc. I had wrongly assumed before that fraud could be unintentional, but by definition it is not. By sending out that email, DVDPlanet was stating that everyone who managed to get more than B1G1 in that promotion did so intentionally, which evidence stated by the OP seems to refute.

Mosskeeto

DVDPlanet said that:
"We had a ton of Buy 1 Get 20 free type orders".
So an order with one extra boxset for free is not his biggest concern. According to Mark more than a few people managed to tweek the system but I'm inclined to think that their program is buggy. If there was a common Google weakness it would have been posted somewhere (word travels fast) and every merchant would have been exploited. I feel for them and the position they find themselves in, but I think it's a programming error.

kintnerboy

As of right now, the stock status of all DvdPlanet merchandise is "On Order".....seems like they have a real problem there.....

marylandjoe03

Accusing a person and sending an email stating that you have defrauded them is unprofessional, and quite frankly litigious.

Peep

They had this problem back right before New Year's and Mark said that it was because they uploaded a faulty inventory file. I was sort of hoping that they had put some safeguards in place for preventing that from happening again.

I hope it's not preventing them from shipping orders.

jjcool

So is dvd planet back to being a decent etailer?
I used to buy a bunch of stuff from them back in the day, then for a while they were real flaky. Am I remembering this correctly?

movieguru

Just out of curiosity, don't any retailers test the functionality of their websites and shopping carts to ensure that "errors" like this don't happen? Do the employees that are retreiving the items from the warehouse and packaging them for shipment not check the invoice for any discrepancies or unusual activity? It seems odd that a large order like the buy 1 get 20 free would go unnoticed or unchecked before shippment.

Mosskeeto

One of the problems with Google purchases is that the packing invoices (at least from DVDPlanet) do not show any pricing whatsoever of the items being shipped. So the packer just pulls the order and prepares it being totally unaware of costs associated with that order.

Mosskeeto

I was waiting to get a polite, non-threatening letter from these people but it seems like my case may have been under the radar.
All of my first several GCO orders, which appeared normal, wound up being filled in duplicate. None of these titles were placed as B1G1 Free. The status online never progressed beyond "In Process" but suddenly they arrived in a large box and subsequent orders followed the same pattern for a while. So I just called in and arranged to have a return USPS label sent to me and back go a bunch of duplicate premiere titles:
Battle Of Algiers CC, The Leopard CC, The Sorrow And The Pity, Seduced And Abandoned CC, La Commare Seca CC, The River CC, Pandora's Box CC, Mon Oncle CC, Ju-On, Dead Of Night/Queen Of Spades, L'Avventura CC, A Better Tomorrow, Gate Of Flesh CC and A Kiss Before Dying.
There was absolutely NO manipulation of any sort on my part and I had no intention of taking advantage of any merchant but now I'm inconvenienced into having to go to a post office, maybe having to wait in line to return their mistake to them. I asked for a UPS label but that wasn't an option.

Deke Rivers

i find this whoel thread rather humorous as there have been countless times in the past that a glitch in some E-tailers system gets posted and every jumps on the bandwagon to get something for nothing before the glitch is noticed..usually resulting in that e-tailers website being brought to its knees....
ats ome point people are gonna get caught
now to send a letter without solid proof may not be the right path ..perosonally I could see the e-tailer just cancelling the suspected orders

darkside

I have yet to have any DVDs from my last three orders ship and I'm wondering if this kind of stuff is the reason. They have sat in process for weeks. I ended up cancelling the first order after no progress in 6 weeks and I'm close to cancelling the second one as well. The first two orders were not Google Check out.

One thing I learned with the first order I cancelled was since I'm using store credit for DVDs I traded in DVD Planet just wants to cancel the order and keep the store credit. I had to call and demand the store credit back in my account. The second order has been sitting idle since November. The last time I called I was told that one DVD was holding up the whole order, but that they showed that DVD in stock an it should ship soon. That was two weeks ago and still nothing. My most current order was a single DVD that showed in stock to use Google Checkout, but again that DVD has also not shipped after a week.

Needless to say, DVD Planet has dropped off my list of stores I want to shop with. Unfortunately I have a lot of money tied up in store credit and it appears I may never get that money out in DVDs.

Josh H

Sending out the letter to people who clearly abused the system seems reasonable.

Sending it without proof, and sending it to the poster of this thread who had numerous orders that were fine and just happened to get 1 extra free one in one of the orders is not as that clearly suggests that it was an accidental system glitch that the user didn't notice or they would have taken more advantage of it. Plus I'd think you'd want to give the benefit of the doubt to what is obviously a high volume customer given the large number of orders placed in just this one sell.

But I realized long ago that DVD Planet and customer service don't go hand in hand and said fuck them and haven't shopped there for a couple of years and never will again.

Minor Threat

corbin dallas

li·ti·gious [li-tij-uhs] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective
1. of or pertaining to litigation.
2. excessively or readily inclined to litigate: a litigious person.
3. inclined to dispute or disagree; argumentative.

Goldblum

I think we all know what Maryl (and Joe) meant.

marylandjoe03

Corbin, do you have anything to contribute? No? Thought so. Litigious.

jjcool

Interesting. I read it as Maryland Joe. ie Joe from the state of Maryland.