Revenge of Amazon

[cgallery]

Back at the end of may I was looking for an inexpensive combination square. During my research I was looking at the Empire units at Amazon. After researching a little, I decided to put my bucks towards a Starrett instead.

Fast-forward to July, and I received an E-Mail from Amazon yesterday that they were shipping everything in my shopping cart, including two different combination squares and a bottle of Lava hand soap.

Yes, I had put all of it in my cart, but I never ordered it. This, I guess, is the hazard of leaving CC information on file with anyone.

Even if they thought this was an order, they shoulda sent an E-Mail confirming I wanted something I inquired about approx. six weeks ago before shipping it!

Why is this revenge? Cause I got a good deal on a 1GB thumb drive and router bits using a promo code approx. three months ago. They're getting even.

In their defense, cust. service said to just refuse the boxes and they would take care of the rest.

[Bruce Cohen]

Just because they're out to get you, coesn't mean your paranoid.

Probably just a computer glitch, in all my years of dealing with Amazon, I've never had a problem and always found them to have great service and courtesy for their customers, alomst as good as Lee Valley.

Bruce

[steve-u]

That is very curious since you need to enter your user name/email address and a password to start the process to pay for and ship an order. I almost always have items in my shopping cart and never had that happen to me. If other people use your computer to order from Amazon you may want to talk to them about being careful. One thing I NEVER do is to let my web browser save any logon/password for any website. --- Steve

[steve-u]

I also should add that you can go to Amazon and then select "your account" which is just to the left of the shopping cart. Then go to "where's my stuff" and select the options for view my order where you can look at recent or back to six months or sorted by year. When you find the order select view to get details about the exact date the order was placed, etc. This may be helpful in determining what was going on.

One great thing about websites like Amazon is it sure makes it easy to get an invoice when you can't find any at home for warranty, etc. They have invoices back to 1997 for me.

Steve

[xli1]

I feel sorry to hear this. In fact, I always use virtual account number for my online shopping. Citibank CC and discover card, maybe some other credit card offer virtual account number service for free. Every time you order online, you can use their software to generate an credit card number which is associated with your original card number, but it is different, you can also set up the limit (any amount you are paying) and it will normally expire in one month. Of course, you can also increase the amount and extend the expiration date. You can even close this account number. For some of the website, they will ask you enter you CC information before they can give you final price (including shipping), for this case, I sometimes just use an old virtual account number to just make sure they will charge me without my agreement with the charge. I think this service is super, you won't go wrong with it, besides, it's free! Give it a try, you will love it for your online shopping.

[ScottGolden]

'Features' of Amazon's Cart

One thing I have noticed with Amazon, is that when you put an items in your cart it remembers it forever.

I am guessing that their idea is that if your browser crashes with items in the cart they will remember them for you.

Or they might just figure they can get more sales by forcing you to remove the items.

I almost got caught the same way but saw the items in my cart when I was completing my order.

[ScottGolden]

One more thing

Looks like Rockler does the same thing.

I just found a honing guide that's been in my cart for at least 6 weeks.

Scott

[mpauly]

Similar thing happened to me with the gorrilla glue over at HDT. Placed it in my cart, got to the last checkout screen then decided to hold off for a while and closed the browser. Then I got a order confirm email. Oh well, anyone need some gorrilla glue? lol!!

[Andrew Benedetto]

Amazon has always come thru for me and I never had any items added , some in the cart for months.

[thekon]

I had something similar happen. I was looking at a very expensive delta bandsaw but just couldn't afford it. Somehow I supposedly hit the order button? but the order never showed up etc........but i then got an email saying my order was shipped? very weird! so i emailed them to cancel which they said they could not. but the weird part was the saw never showed up and never got billed to my cc.

[Ken Weaver]

I keep things in the wish list. Like the idea of the virtual credit card number, will have to look into that.

[davidtu]

.... but the weird part was the saw never showed up and never got billed to my cc.

And kids that's the story of how I got a free band saw.

Now, go to sleep.