Like many people here, I earn Amazon GCs from a variety of sources, and I like to apply them to orders that I have already made (usually to lock in good pre-order prices).

Someone a while ago suggested adding a title to your order that isn't expected to ship for a very long time (e.g., Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame) and then selecting the option to ship all the items together. And basically you just keep adding GCs to the order until you're ready for them to ship it and then cancel the one item that's holding up the order from shipping.

Sounds like a great plan, huh? It reminds me of putting stuff on lay-away at various discount B&M stores back in the old days. Unfortunately, Amazon sometimes (randomly?) decides to partially ship some items to you for no additional cost, and it's often before you're ready for them to do so (i.e. before you've paid them off with GCs).

Anyone have any suggestions on how to prevent this from happening? Anyone have any theories as to what heuristic Amazon is using to decide whether to partially ship the order or not? For example, I wonder if this is more or less likely to happen with large orders or smallish orders. Or do you think they only care about how long the wait is until all the items are shipped? My only personal experience with this phenomenon so far was when the street date for one of the items in my order was changed and they shipped the other items for no additional cost earlier than originally quoted.

I don't know if this is coincidence or not, but it seems that they ship partial orders if you pay with your own money, and ship whole orders if you pay with GCs/coupons.

My theory is that they ship partial when you pay so they can collect your money as quickly as possible (They charge you upon shipment, not upon order). However GCs/coupons are in a way pre-paid so there is no incentive for them to ship separately, especially when that increases their business cost.

Just my guess, but I've noticed that on 4 recent orders.

You could try editing your payment method by selecting to pay by cheque or money order until you haveyour GCs. That you still get hold up your order with good pre-order prices. However, it may take them loger to ship your items out since they don't process your order until they receive your payment.

Thanks for the ideas. I might have to try the different payment option, but could someone clarify the following:

If I select the check payment option and then proceed to pay the entire order off with GCs, do they immediately start processing the shipment or do you have to e-mail them or something?

I assume they don't throw your order away if you fail to mail them the check for a couple months?

Is it possible to change the payment option back to a credit card after specifying pay by check or money order?

Does anyone know if you can still apply GCs to the unpaid/unshipped portion an order that has been partially shipped?

[This message has been edited by Ed Sabol (edited September 01, 2000).]

The sure as hell better not ship my X-File Season 1! I ordered it along with Season 2. I got it because I'd like the set and the priced dropped from 25% to 30% off. I'll put up quite a fuss if they actually send it. I haven't paid for a DVD in over a month and don't plan on doing so anytime soon.

------------------
This Weeks Quote:

Say Lou, didya hear the one about the guy who couldn't afford personalized plate so he went and changed his name to J3L2404? --Marge Gunderson

I am Troy's Single Serving List

I did some experimenting...

I took a credit card order I had made previously and changed the payment option to "Pay by check or money order". Annoyingly, it removed the GCs that I had already applied to the order and placed them in my shopping cart, but that's no big deal, I suppose. I then changed the payment option back to my credit card, and it allowed me to add the GC balance back to the order. This seems like it's a very good solution to the problem! Ideally, I'd like to keep applying GCs to the order as I get them, but I can live with this. I just have to apply them all at once.

I'd still like to know if it's possible to apply GCs to the unpaid/unshipped portion of an order that has been partially shipped... That would be extremely useful information. Does anyone know?

Try to predict a title that they're going to mark up.
Here's something I noticed. If you have an item that they have raised their price on and you included it in an order where they seem to have trouble getting another item, if you selected ship when complete ...they won't ever flucking ship it you ...it'll show on hand, you may have already received other items that weren't "marked up" but this ONE item is going to sit there until you die! They're gonna fluck you, they always fluck you when you go through the drive-thru, they know you're gonna be a million miles away when you realize they flucked you and they know you're not gonna drive back ...oh wait a minute that's another issue.

RVN

[This message has been edited by RVN (edited September 02, 2000).]

Um, OK. Thanks for the rant, but it looks like changing the payment option to check or money order is the better way to go.

Anyone care to take a crack at the other questions?