No - i was taking the perspective of using a card at the pump - no signature - no pin - no anything.

Then when i put it up against the amazon issue, i relized they were unrelated and took my post down. The example of the gas station is different than that of amazon.

Using a card vs getting recharged on a card.

PS - watch the personal attacks... I believe the topic specifically states against this

This is basic point of sale law. They sold X items for X amount of money on X-X-X day. End of story. It is against the law to charge a person after the transaction is complete. This is plain and simple. Those who are NOT getting these charges reversed NEED to start a new thread discussing these clueless credit card companies.

I for one would like to know what companies stand behind THEIR customers and what companies stand by their MONEY.

You can go around and around with the morality of the situation but the SIMPLE fact remains that Amazon illegally charged customers after the sale was completed.

Once that line is crossed everything becomes grey and the whole thing is bust. Who can trust the credit system if this becomes common place. Retailers can charge you after the fact if they see that the cashier didn't scan that box of batteries you picked up at Walmart. So they process that transaction after you leave because they have proof(camera) that you took the item but did not pay for it. It is the EXACT same situation.

I know that's sounds ridiculous but so does this whole situation to me.

Making mistakes by selling something for a penny or nothing is the responsibilty of the retailer making those prices not the buyer.

And let's look at the big picture here: Amazon is not going bankrupt. In fact I would guess that this whole fiasco doesn't even make an impact on their yearly sales. But since they decided to alienate their cutomer base then I would suspect that this is going to hurt them done the road. I know I won't buy from them. I'm not going to sell thru them either now as I cannot trust a company such as this.

As a follow-up to my adventures with Amazon and Discover Card, after Amazon ignored 3 emails in a row that I sent them -- they didn't even bother to reply with the FU email -- I finally started upping the ante fighting Discover.

I eventually got ahold of someone who told me to submit additional proof that I had been charged without permission. I sent them a letter detailing the events, a copy of my packing slips, the confirmation summaries, and a link to Amazon's own policy about not confirming price until shipped.

Today, I was credited back for my charges. So, Amazon, now I'll ignore YOUR emails!

What I find ironic.. between the e-mail and calls to my credit card company and Amazon.com, the time, resources, and people used to fight me for these charges will far exceed the amount of money they are going to recover from me (about $70), assuming they win the fight. And I will fight this to the end on general principle. You cannot charge me one price, ship the items, say repeatedly that the order is completed, show a $0.00 balance due on the shipping invoice, and then later charge me again. Any company who does this (Amazon) or facilitates this (CC) will no longer have my business.

I faxed my CC company today all the documentation I received from Amazon. I sure hope they side with me, for their sake.

I agree with you completely. Good luck with fighting the good fight and let us know how it turns out.

I agree, but also would think it goes both ways. At some point, the effort to correspond with Amazon and the credit card companies, both by phone and e-mail while explaining the situation and sending documentation, will cost you (and others) more than if you would have paid in the beginning.

Which is why, after this is resolved, the people affected should look even harder for more 'errors' at Amazon and abuse them for even greater values - to both make up for personal costs and to inflict a proportionate amount of discomfort. Because while ~$50 of hassle is a lot to most individuals, it doesn't even register on the annoyance-meter for Amazon.

Yeah, that's a great idea, cause even more headaches for yourself.

I believe this thread was created specifically for those of us directly affected by the Amazon pricing error to share our experiences and because we were tired of the moralizing by people who did not make any purchases but felt compelled to tell us of the error of our ways.

Did you make a purchase Chief? Have you been charged yet? Or did you just drift over to this thread to defend the merchant....

I totally agree with you Leeta. Apparently the chief likes to stir up animosity.

While my post was at least partially tongue-in-cheek, I'd like to point out that by using a "Controlled Payment Number" for each purchase I've ever made with them, Amazon has not been able to cause me any headaches at all. Anyone who might consider following up on the theory of proportional annoyance would probably find them very handy for reducing "blowback."

No, it was created to talk about if amazon charged anyone yet. And my posts have been directly related to what amazon has done and why I feel they think they can get away with it. While I have my own personal stance on the situation with those that got in on this "deal", I have left those thoughts outside of this thread. And I am actually siding with the people that think amazon is in the wrong for recharging the credit cards. And tried to give some discussion as to WHY amazon thinks they can do so. But somehow has somehow been turned into a "bash the Chief" forum.

Maybe I'm missing something, but the creation of this thread with the title "Anyone charged yet?" suggests to me that it is meant for discussions by people who actually placed orders with the pricing glitch and might get charged by Amazon. Not for outside commentators.

Not that I'm bashing or anything; that's just my take on it.

This thread has long since been a simple fact-posting thread. Opinions from both sides have been posted since its beginning (probably moreso from the anti-amazon side). It seems somewhat petty to only complain about opinions from one side.

(for those sick of the attacks and arguing)

You can debate in the other 10 threads on the subject.

This thread was created in response to the the original thread - which contained a lot of moralizing and name-calling from both sides. This thread was intended to deal only with the after-effects of the glitch and leave the ethical considerations elsewhere, since they seemed to bog down the other topics.

Since those other topics seemed to dried up, moralizing and petty bickering is starting to show up here.

I regret not using them myself, although (ironically) I use them most every place else.

Didn't somebody elsewhere post that they had used one-time credit cards and that Amazon somehow got their credit-card company to still accept a charge against their account?

If Amazon has an authorization number, they can make another charge even to a close account, be it a one time use card or a credit card account that has been closed. What the card company will do is post that amount to your account & then bill you for it. I had an American Express gift card that once was charged by someplace (not Amazon, this was a year or so ago) after I'd bought something from them. The card was long since expired & empty, was a one time use card, but they still posted $50 to it & AmEx wanted me to pay it. I sent in documentation that was needed & the charge was dropped, but had I not had what I needed I would have had to have paid the $50. So those one time use cards are not a guarantee against secondary charges.

I believe the authorization number is only good for the approximate value initially authorized. Amex runs a different system than Visa (which runs a different system than MC, but my understanding is that MC and Visa processing are very similar), partly because normal Amex (not Amex blue) is not a "credit card" in the same way most visa and mc cards are.

Either way, with something like 7 years of regular use, I've never had an unexpected charge processed against one of my single-use numbers, and I regularly use them in passive-aggressive fashion, like for auto-renewing/auto-billing subscriptions that I do not want to auto-renew.

But this thread has provided me with much amusement.

Here's somethig for goldblum and the chief to chuckle at.... After not hearing anything for a while, I called my CC co. and asked what the status was. I was told that two weeks ago a letter was sent to me (which I never received) asking for more information. Apparently, the co. was under the impression that the 2nd (Feb) charge was for a 2nd order, and thus appeared valid. I told the rep I had never placed nor authorized another order, nor had I received any additional goods. I'm not sure if this idea of a 2nd order came from a CC rep who misunderstood my dispute or someone at amazon was fibbing, hoping to pull one over. After I cleared that up, I was told I would hear a result in about a week. A few hours later I get my mail, and I received a letter from the CC co (man, that was fast), indicating that they were 'unable' (-not would not-) to give me a credit. The letter claimed they could not force amazon to honor promotions or discounts that the company offered. I can't see where any of that was in dispute, so I called the co. back. The rep couldn't figure out why it was worded that way, nor could she figure out how that pertained to my dispute. The reasoning was nearly incomprehensible to me, but the only thing I took away from it was the CC co. was under the impression the 2nd (Feb) charge was how much the sale was originally for and what I should have been billed while the first charge was some discount or promotion price that amazon later decided not to give me. I had to ask the rep a couple times to explain to me how the co. got that out of all the documentation I sent in, including all email confirmations and invoices I received which indicated the same total as those billed (and agreed to) in late Dec., not in Feb. The rep told me that clearly there was some misunderstading over the dispute (I still don't know whether it was due to some CC rep or if it was some new claim amazon came up with) and told me how to dispute this decision. The icing on the cake... the letter was dated two weeks ago, the same date I called in to find out if they had ever received my dispute packet- yet no one bothered to mention to me they had reached a decision, nor did they tell me when I called in earlier today.

I can't believe my credit card company (Amazon Visa issued through Chase Bank) has not resolved this matter yet, and told me today it could take up to June 5 to come to a decision. I get the impression they are giving me the run around and trying to use up the time allotment for my dispute because they cannot make a final judgment. They told me they have 90 days to reach a decision from when they received my paper work.

I'm starting to get the impression the dispute department are biased toward Amazon by their behavior and statements during the last several phone calls I made to them. The person I spoke with today kept telling me they couldn't issue a credit until the merchandise was returned to Amazon. WTF? I kept telling the person I spoke with that Amazon will not take the merchandise back, and the charges they placed on my card in February for orders placed in late December were not authorized by me. I simply would like to have the charges removed from my account since I never authorized them when the orders where originally placed back on December 23.

When I initially called the dispute department in February and early March and explained to them the entire story they kept telling me what Amazon did was wrong. During today's call I got passed around to several different people, and they finally said they would resubmit the dispute again since they claimed they also needed more information from me, which I guess I gave them again for the umpteenth time.

Is anyone else still waiting for a decision on their dispute? Also how many with Amazon Visas got a charge reversal? If I end up paying I plan on cancelling my card.

I'm still waiting for AMEX to change their mind after I requested another look at the first denial. If I end up paying, I also plan on cancelling my card.

I got a reversal from my Amazon Visa, it took several weeks though. I also received a letter about a week after the reversal saying that they charges are reversed for now. It went on to say that if Amazon provides proof of the charges they could be reinstated. Not too reassuring, but they haven't posted the charges back at this point. They didn't remove them when I first called about it, but they stopped interest charges during the dispute process.

I'm still waiting on the charges to be officially reversed on my Citi Mastercard. I've already blown through about $4 in postage sending documents--I've gotten two rounds of forms to fill out from them, each resulting in another notification of "conditional credit." I was also informed by my credit card company that I needed to attempt to return the merchandise for them to be able to reverse the charges.
For fear of another hassle on the this level, Amazon never gets another cent from me.