jhiter24

I just found out that what I thought would be a $16.45 charge for DMC was actually a $50.98 charge. I called Amazon up and they said that their was a glitch in their system and the charge was right cause the code wasn't properly used. All very understandable but I explained that I never got an email or phone call saying that they changed the price and she basecally said too bad. I was wondering if their is anything I can do or will I just have to send everything back? Thanks for the help

Chris

bmello

They basically told most everyone "too bad". They screwed up and are taking a hardline approach hoping customers will not bother returning the merchandise or fighting it with their credit card company. I'm never going to bitch if a misprice falls through but what amazon did this time really pissed me off. All they had to do is cancel the orders or notify us of the mistake before they decided to charge our credit card a different amount than agreed upon. Either send back the merchandise or fight it with your CC company!

Thunderball

What kind or order did you do? How did you use it improperly?

jhiter24

I had DMC, and 2 horizontal stands. I was just wondering if anybody actually got the deal to work. I just wish they would have let me have the choice of cancelling the order. If I return it, do I have to pay for the shipping?

I also have a GTA3, demo disk, and horizontal stand. Is this going to be just as screwed up?

Thunderball

Ah, you did the horizontal stand thing...that explains it..

sorry to hear about your luc.

jhiter24

explain please?

Nefarious

The least they could, and very well should, is send you pre-paid mailing labels to return the items. If not, I'd dispute it and note that you offered that as a resolution. Just make sure you have a copy of the original email.

Thunderball

Basically, from what I've heard so far, people who used the horiz/vert stands are getting burned because they didn't get 3 games. The system glitch allowed the Jampack to go thru, but that technically is a game.
Anyway, they SHOULD have sent you an email..but I know they didn't.

jhiter24

That makes sense actually. I think I am going to send this one back but the one with my GTA3, I am going to raise hell. What are the chances of the credit card dispute going through?

Thunderball

Well, I really don't know..the coupon code was for "equal or lesser value" and "3"games. It looks like Amazon will be honoring the Jampack screwup because of the "3" games things...but the stands should never have been allowed.

Nefarious

Chances of the credit card dispute would be improved, I would think if you can show you contacted them (email, written letter) and tried to come to some sort of resolution.

I wouldn't want to guess about success otherwise. I know I would probably not try a dispute if I charged it with a Visa. Just more difficult. American Express, on the other hand, is the bomb when it comes to disputing charges.

Thunderball

So is Discover

djones6746

A couple of my orders contained the jampack demo disc....some contained three actual games....When I started seeing people using accessories with this deal..I had a feeling they would be experiencing the problems in which they are currently experiencing. I agree that Amazon should email customers and explain the problem... cancel the order etc....but using these stands with this promo was really pushing it. I would still advise fighting this through your credit card companies or probably a better idea is to just return everything for a full refund. Good luck all!!!

Thunderball

Have you gotten any of your JPack orders yet? Are they being charged properly?

HotThang

Just jumping in before the mods close this thread but...

The coupon was for 3 games...Buy 3 and get the least expensive one free. For everyone who tried to take advantage of the "mistake" in Amazon's coupon system...TOUGH! THe deal was in Black and White and you took a risk when you tried to take advantage. I would love to hear how you explain the fraudulent charge to your credit card company. Unbelievable!

In the meantime. I'll enjoy my FREE Grand THeft Auto 3 that arrived today! Can't wait to get my two other GAMES.

Josh H

No kidding. I've seen similar posts about DVD's and other things in these forums in the post. It's always amusing to hear people whine when they get caught trying to rip a company off. Grow Up people.

gcribbs

In this case you are wrong. Amazon has a specific policy on their website as to how they handle mistakes and misprices. they will either ship you the items and charge the lower price or they will contact you for an authorization to charge the higher price.

Credit card company rules are very specific. If you authorize a merchant to charge you a specific amount and they charge more without getting your authorization the amount in excess of the amount authorized can be disputed and removed.

You can feel free to tell anyone that pushed the envelope(including Geoff the owner of this site who told everyone about the jampack loophole) that they are morally wrong for using this loophole. However ths does not mean that Amazon has any legal basis to charge more than the consumer approved.

If I go into a shop and a cashier charges me half of the retail of everything i buy by mistake. Morally i might be obligated to pay the additional money. however if the merchant decides to charge me more on my card than I approved at the register after i leave they are legally wrong.


Dispute any overcharges with your credit card company. Do not spend any more time other than one phone call to give amazon the option to fix this. If they refuse then dispute the overage by including your receipt from amazon as your proof of what you approved.

they could have done the easiest thing and cancelled all orders- Instead they commited credit card fraud by charging whatever they wanted to consumers cards without getting approval to do so.

From Amazon's own website:

We cannot confirm the price of an item until you order, but please note that we do NOT charge your credit card until your order enters the shipping process. Despite our best efforts, a small number of the more than 4.7 million items in our catalog are mispriced. Rest assured, however, that we verify prices as part of our shipping procedures.

If an item's correct price is lower than our stated price, we charge the lower amount and ship you the item.
If an item's correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation.


Amazon blew this one. I guess you can argue that we are not worth keeping as customers.

here is their rules on promotions:

Promotional Offers

There are always many promotional offers to take advantage of while shopping at Amazon.com. As we do not have a complete list of every current promotion, it is best to simply visit your favorite sections of our store on a regular basis. You should also make sure that your Customer Communication Preferences are set so that we are able to let you know about all of our great offers.

When taking advantage of a promotional offer, please be sure to read the entire list of restrictions associated with that promotion. If your order does not seem to reflect the benefits stated in the promotion, take another moment to review the promotion's restrictions. You can verify that the promotion was successfully applied when you receive e-mail confirmation of your order. The details of every order you place are also always accessible via Your Account.


So if you receive an email confirmation showing that the promotion was successfully applied you must have met the terms of the promotion since this is how they tell you to verifiy the promotion.

since I did not have a copy of the coupon I relied on their own system. if it failed them whose fault is it- mine or Amazon's

Lastly. I placed two orders one with 3- 49.99 games and one with 2- 49.99 games and one jampack.

they have overcharged my card by $5.51 on the one I did by the rules of the promotion. So I guess I still deserve this because I did not read something or maybe Amazon hires stupid programers. feel free to pick one.

They just screwed this up royally
I am waiting to see how much they screwup on my second order.

HotThang

OK I agree with you but not TOTALLY...

You say you didn't have the paper coupon in front of you so you had to rely on their system. So... did the coupon code just fall into your lap? You had to ge it from somewhere. And the somewhere that you got it from should have told you the proper use for it. When it was first posted here, the person that posted it clearly stated "Buy 3 Get the cheapest one Free". Then someone posted that it takes $50 dollars off no matter what and that was when people tried to take avantage. There was even a scan of the original coupon. So there is no excuse for "I didn't know what the coupon was for. I just blindly put in the code!" Whatever. The promotion was clear but unfortunately their system screwed up.


But, I do agree that Amazon should have either cancelled the orders or notified you of the extra cost. I definitely fault them for that.

I just don't see how anyone can win in a credit card dispute. Hooray to you if you do. If you stick your hand in the cookie jar, take extra cookies, and get caught...do you think you deserve the extra cookies???

Anyways...not really trying to start a huge ethical argument. If youget your games, cool. If not...oh well.

djones6746

Yes...they are being charged correctly..I had an order for Ico, Half Life and the demo disc.

Ico shipped....I was charged $4.49 for shipping. Half Life and the demo disc remain on this order with a total of $60.00 to be charged. I had not used the extra $10.00 coupon for this order as they had already begun the shipping process for Ico before I could cancel and reorder.

Most of my orders were for three games.....I believe two were used with the demo disc which Amazon is counting as a game.

bmello

I'm not whining because I got "caught", I'm bitching because they charged my credit card without my authorization. They shouldn't be allowed to do that whether its was my mistake or their mistake. What if they listed a DVD at a price of $13.99 but before they shipped it they realized it should have been $15.99. Then charged you the extra $2 and didn't tell you about it. Of course folks have different opinions on taking advantages of misprices. Maybe you should grow up!

tygloalex

[my opinion]I disagree. If I walk into a store, give them a coupon for 10 cents off 1 banana, buy 10 bananas and pay a total of 10 cents on my credit card, tough luck for THEM, not me. No company, no matter what, has the right to charge my credit card for a fee that was no authorized by me. They are at fault for not entering the code into their computer correctly, not me. [/my opinion]
It is also not fradulent. I in no way committed fraud. I placed an order, got a total, and expect to pay that total. If my shipments come in incorrectly, you can guarantee I'll be on the phone with Amazon right away crying and whining.

gcribbs

I will win in any dispute since I only authorized a specific amount to be charged and they violated their own rules by not contacting people. I guess being mischarged on my order that i did order three 49.99 games and having them still mischarge me is ok also.

The fact is that they messed up and are trying to cover it by refusing to do anything.

I am getting my games and i will get them for the price quoted.

Thunderball

Just quick update

gcribbs The $5.51 difference,may be for shipping. The same thing happened to me..but I have a lot of things "not shipped" yet and I'm not going to bitch too much over $5.51 when I got all this for a great price.

JAMPACK ORDERS are going thru! I got my first game from a JamPack Order today, and it was GTA3 $49.99, -$49.99 promo coupon. They are honoring them!

djones6746

I know!!!!

I do not believe Amazon could have decided not to honor these orders since the demo disc is software!!!

ricwhite

I think one confusing element in this deal was that the paper coupon had the limitations stated while the online deal didn't. I was browsing amazon.com when I came across the BUY 2 GET 1 FREE deal. I didn't read anywhere about the "CHEAPEST" item being free or, for that matter, any restrictions at all. I DID read the restrictions on the paper coupon, however, so I knew what they were. But it is very possible that somebody didn't know the restrictions if they were just browsing. Or. . . maybe they DID know but decided to take advantage of the online error.

So I guess it was an error on amazon's part, which certainly can happen. Amazon.com has what I believe to be a "GOOD" error policy; namely, to offer the customer a corrected price, or a cancellation. That is fair, in my opinion, and well within the law.

There is a very serious (and illegal) problem, however if amazon.com CHARGES something different than the invoice. They have a right to cancel any order they want. They have a right to change the price. But they don't have a right to charge your card the changed priced without authorization. Obviously, they know that.

Amazon cancelled most of the erroneous orders. The problem that amazon.com is facing is that some orders were already shipped - partially or in whole. What can they do now? Well, they can contact the buyer and explain the error and ask if they could charge more. I doubt they would get many takers on that.
On the partial orders, they could charge you the agreed price on the items shipped and then cancel the rest of the order. Other than that, they may have to "eat" the cost of the mistake.

As the saying goes, "we learn from our mistakes." Maybe what they will learn is never to offer another PS2 deal again. I hope not.