We have box sets.

February 15, 2007 9:41 AM

We have box sets. Slashdot has the goods on Amazon trying to give flashbacks to MetaFilter with their new and improved pricing shenanigans in which they deliver two box sets to lots of people for the price of zero, wait a five days (crossing over Christmas in the process), and then demand that people return them unopened. Now they've begun charging people's credit cards for what Amazon decides they should have paid.
posted by NortonDC to MetaFilter-Related at 9:41 AM (52 comments total)

And for those at home who are a bit lost, some context, including that classic line.
posted by cortex at 9:48 AM on February 15, 2007

Yeah, this is inside baseball, hence sharing it in MeTa.
posted by NortonDC at 9:50 AM on February 15, 2007

Eesh. Hope people are calling up their credit card companies, and DEFINITELY the BBB, to complain.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:08 AM on February 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

In a previous slashdot thread, someone mentioned virtual credit cards, which you get through your bank and have a very set limit on them after which they go poof. This sounds like a very good time to use those (ethics aside, since I don't believe in stealing even from the biggest of the big).
posted by Eideteker at 10:16 AM on February 15, 2007

yeah, dispute with CC and you might not get charged, but otherwise, I don't see the big deal. Price mistakes are *very* common online, and anyone who's followed them at all knows to expect that the order will be canceled or at the most they'll get a small make-good. What is unusual here is that Amazon actually *shipped* these orders -- at this point, sure, it's their boo-boo, and they *should* pay for it, but it's also likely most of the people who ordered these could not reasonably expect that the price was not a price mistake (and more than likely, KNEW it was a price mistake and tried to take advantage of it), so I think they're justified in trying to charge folks the actual cost.

I expect for most people it'll just be a chargeback with their CC and they'll still get their "free" box set. For folks that used a debit card -- well, lesson learned. Always use a cc if you're trying to take advantage of a price/coupon mistake. Also, count on it being unfufilled 95% of the time.

Addendum: for those of you feeling real sorry for the customers, here is one of them. . I think any outrage at Amazon's actions may be misplaced.

More discussion here.
posted by fishfucker at 10:20 AM on February 15, 2007

Gah. "Hey look... I can get free boxed sets! What shall I order?...

Look! Starsky and Hutch! EVERY SINGLE EPISODE!"
posted by koeselitz at 10:36 AM on February 15, 2007

I can only shake my head at the selfishness and flexible morality of the slashdot hive mind. Go read the +5 comments.

They overwhelmingly think that because it's legal to take advantage of a checkout error, it's therefore Amazon's fault and if you order 50 free DVD boxed sets, you're all clear. And Amazon will suffer PR damage for asking their customers to actually pay for the things they order. Let's boycott them.

Yeah, sure, slashdot. Let's see you enbrace that "it's legal therefore it's okay" with intellectual property. When SCO uses patent law as a weapon, lets see you tell the people they sue "learn your lesson, next time get a license."

One day it's about freedom, the next it's about free stuff. And they are so righteous about it!
posted by cotterpin at 11:02 AM on February 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

we not only get the government we deserve, we get the businesses we deserve, too ... so, when buy one get one free sales become rare as hen's teeth online and customer service departments become dense and unresponsive to complaints about billing, etc., you know who to blame
posted by pyramid termite at 11:04 AM on February 15, 2007

What is unusual here is that Amazon actually *shipped* these orders ...

No kidding. Are orders packed by machine? Nobody looked at the sales slip and wondered, hmmmm, how did this guy get 100 boxed sets for free?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:11 AM on February 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

Hmm. "Return it or get charged", I can see. "Return it unopened or get charged", not so much. Unless they've got a deal on free time machines that I'm unaware of.
posted by Bugbread at 11:21 AM on February 15, 2007

Fantastic. A slashdot hive thread on free as in bear as in checkout code error. I see where this is going. Ewww.

That DVDTalk thread is amazing. They should try their hardest to super ban that kid, geez.
posted by cavalier at 11:32 AM on February 15, 2007

The DVDtalk thread depresses me, as does the little bit of the slashdot thread.
posted by drezdn at 11:44 AM on February 15, 2007

including that classic line

I've always been disappointed that "why, that's Calvinism!" never got any traction.
posted by nanojath at 11:56 AM on February 15, 2007

bugbread: That DVDTalk thread is amazing. They should try their hardest to super ban that kid, geez.

I'm more upset by all their banner ads for Ghost Rider.
posted by Gamblor at 12:12 PM on February 15, 2007

Amazon really fucked up. Yeah, people took advantage of the error, but billing someone for sent items, and then billing them again without their agreement seems like mail fraud.
posted by bshort at 12:25 PM on February 15, 2007

(Gamblor, that was drezdn, not me. No biggie either way, though)
posted by Bugbread at 12:31 PM on February 15, 2007

but billing someone for sent items, and then billing them again without their agreement

How again did Amazon bill them for sent items?

I second pyramid termite and cotterpin. I'd like not to see Amazon turn more cautious and develop poorer customer service in the future for fear of getting exploited.
posted by artifarce at 12:56 PM on February 15, 2007

Also, sounds like there was another option besides nonconsensual billing though. Would've been nice if Amazon extended free returns though to help sweeten the request.
posted by artifarce at 12:59 PM on February 15, 2007

If you go to the ATM to take out $20.00 and someone had filled the machine with $50.00 bills, you'd be damn sure the bank would adjust your account balance by $30.00 as soon as the error was discovered. People knew that the deal was buy one, get one free when they made their purchase. It sounds like people who made a regular purchase, and then didn't try to game the system got a refund of the second charge if they sent an email to customer service. But if somebody runs up a $1600 purchase and then feigns surprise, well, I just can't get behind that.
posted by Roger Dodger at 1:01 PM on February 15, 2007

And while slashdot folks will contort themselves to justify any free shit, MeFi folks will contort themselves to justify any bad behavior by a corporation.
Here in Michigan, post-facto charging is against the law. It encourages businesses not to, you know, offer shit at prices they can't afford to, then change it.
And sure, some kid may have ripped them off, but seeing that as justification for this bullshit is like pretending that there are welfare queens driving Cadillacs.
posted by klangklangston at 1:04 PM on February 15, 2007

Nobody looked at the sales slip and wondered, hmmmm, how did this guy get 100 boxed sets for free?

I doubt anyone looks at the sales slip at all. That's what the bar code is for.
posted by smackfu at 1:11 PM on February 15, 2007

amazon's packing system is very automated. they have pickers that "pick" the items from the bins/shelves, but i believe after that point, it's pretty automatic.
posted by kerning at 2:36 PM on February 15, 2007

Yea, I suppose an operation of that size can't have someone "thinking" over every order, but you'd think there'd be some sort of flag system in place to prevent orders like this from being shipped. On the other hand, I'm glad they haven't taught computers to think yet- it means I still have a job :-D
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 2:39 PM on February 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

From here:

The Unordered Merchandise Rule: Under this United States Postal Service regulation, the mailing of merchandise to a consumer without his or her express request or consent, (other than free samples clearly marked as such, and merchandise mailed by a charitable organization soliciting contributions) is considered an unfair method of competition and an unfair trade practice in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. All such merchandise may be treated as a free gift by the recipient.

This, of course, covers items that were never ordered by the recipient in the first place, but it was the closest thing I could find in 2 minutes of googling.
posted by bshort at 2:40 PM on February 15, 2007

This, of course, covers items that were never ordered by the recipient in the first place, but it was the closest thing I could find in 2 minutes of googling.

The thing is, these were items ordered by the customer...
posted by drezdn at 2:57 PM on February 15, 2007

Will someone rub my neck? I didn't realize common sense caused me to contort so much.
posted by Roger Dodger at 3:09 PM on February 15, 2007

klangklangston : "And while slashdot folks will contort themselves to justify any free shit, MeFi folks will contort themselves to justify any bad behavior by a corporation. "

No, MeFi folks will contort themselves to point out how morally superior they are to whomever a topic is about. And if there's ever a disagreement on the morality issue, MeFites want to be more moral than as many people as possible, so when companies come up, and you have one company versus many individuals, MeFites will take the company side, because being more moral than one isn't as good as being more moral than many. But if you have multiple companies against one person, MeFites will take the side of the person, because again, being more moral than one isn't as good as being more moral than many.
posted by Bugbread at 3:11 PM on February 15, 2007

And one specific (if counterintuitive) result of what bugbread describes is the tendency of threads to explode into asshattish melees when confronting two reasonable individuals having a civil disagreement as equals. When there is no moral advantage present, the werewolves come out.
posted by cortex at 3:16 PM on February 15, 2007

No moral advantage = full moon?
posted by cgc373 at 3:25 PM on February 15, 2007

I've read the whole forum thread. It's probably cut-and-dried legally, but there's some subtleties that a lot of "OMG DON'T RIP OFF AMAZON" people are missing.

Some buyers were charged for the DVDs - if you ordered two box sets of different prices, the cart charged the user the difference between the prices. Of course, if two box sets were equal price, nothing was charged.

Amazon is now charging purchasers the cost of the highest DVD box set, which means they are being double-charged the amount of the original charge.

Some buyers are successfully getting refunds from Amazon for the recent charges, by talking to online CSR rather than the dude on the telephone or corporate.

Some buyers are successfully disputing the charges with their credit card companies; they argue that Amazon is charging to the card above and beyond the price on the receipt, shipping ticket, etc.

That power-buyer, who bought 54-ish nearly free DVD box sets, removed his credit card info or cancelled the card or something, so he has yet to be charged.

If you returned the DVDs, amazon would refund the original purchase price and the shipping cost. Some people returned teh dvds, but were charged anyway, ebcause they were not processed on time, although Amazon received them on time.
posted by muddgirl at 3:25 PM on February 15, 2007

The thing is, these were items ordered by the customer...

... and they were given an invoice, and billed for a set amount. There's a packing slip in their box that shows that price as well.

Amazon is going to have a hard time billing people like this. The credit card companies are going to bury them under an avalanche of chargebacks.

If this was being done by a less reputable company then we'd call it fraud, but somehow, since it's being done by Amazon, you all are tripping over yourselves to find justifications for their actions.

I guess Amazon will check their code properly next time.
posted by bshort at 3:41 PM on February 15, 2007

bshort : "If this was being done by a less reputable company then we'd call it fraud"

Some would, but I doubt it's as many as you appear to think. If, for example, everybody had been charged a dollar, then, yeah, people would be calling this fraud. But when the campaign is advertised as "buy one, get one free", and people check out after observing that they are in fact getting a "buy two, get them both free" deal, I doubt there would be much of a change of opinions here whether it was Amazon or Zeke'sKwalityDVDBoxSets.com.
posted by Bugbread at 3:51 PM on February 15, 2007

In contention between actual humans, no matter how greedy, and fake-person corporations, no matter how good their PR, I think I'll take end up taking the side of the flesh-and-blooders, every time.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:55 PM on February 15, 2007

I'll take the taking of the ended up taken takers, by George (Takei)!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:32 PM on February 15, 2007

Take that!
posted by klangklangston at 4:36 PM on February 15, 2007

And that's a take!
posted by cortex at 4:37 PM on February 15, 2007

Take five, everybody.

That includes you, Brubeck.
posted by cortex at 4:38 PM on February 15, 2007

A few years ago, I was in the market for guitars. One morning while looking for sale items on a major online retailer, I noticed a sale price on a custom shop Fender Telecaster that looked more like a sale price for a Made-in-Mexico Tele. (There are basically three grades: MIMs are usually around $500, USA-made Teles are around $800, and handmade teles from the custom shop are around $1500). I investigated and found that they were mispriced, and ordered one immediately, cherry red, and then spent the next couple of days obsessively refreshing the gear forums, hoping nobody else was jumping on the deal.

The day my guitar was delivered (nicest neck I ever played, all the way up and down. I called it Mr. Nottingly on account of the heavily figured neck. I wound up giving it to my brother in trade for a busted 70's Bassman amp head and an old Peavey solid-state amp; I fixed up the head, first silver-taping over the "B" in the logo, then replacing all the caps and most of the wiring and the busted power tranny, gutted the bass amp, fit a new custom-made speaker in, and presto! Now I have a killer rig that never farts, always plinks). Right, the day the guitar was delivered I saw the first eBay auction for a brand new cherry red custom Fender Tele, and I knew someone got the same deal I did. Then the guitar boards noticed, a million orders went in, and the website was fixed within minutes.

The guitar market's like this, though. It's a collector's market; folks will scour garage sales and pawnshops looking for closet classics and mispriced gems. Sure, guys feel bad about giving an old lady $250 for the guitar her son bought before he went off and died in Vietnam, but they might get $25,000 for it, and she was asking $200. Both parties went away happy.

But a big online merchant with an actual brick and mortar presence isn't an old lady you feel bad for. They're a big giant idiot who should have checked its prices and scanned something in, had some employee somewhere with a head on their shoulders, who knew what was going on. And they knew it, and they knew they couldn't just charge the extra $1000 dollars to my credit card, because they fucked up. I did my due diligence as a buyer to make sure the price was right. They didn't.

And now, when I'm oozing sweet licks out of the Assman with my similarly cannibalized Gibson E-335s (a whole nother story in itself; I call it The Ambassador), sometimes I call my brother on the phone and say, "Plug on up, mon frere. I wanna hear Mr. Nottingly sing!" and I think, We're the good guys. That's right. We're the good guys.
posted by breezeway at 4:39 PM on February 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

From a customer service perspective, if I was in Amazon's shoes, I would have let it slide with most of the people that got through, but I would have deleted accounts for anyone that was excessively abusive (the 125 DVD guy).

In all the "giant faceless corporation talk" I think people forget there are actual humans involved. The price mistake was probably caused when some programmer entered in something wrong into the computer, and they'll probably lose their job over this.

I actually work for a company that sort of (on a very small scale) competes with Amazon. Due to the way our website updates, there have been things listed at 80% or more discounts that should have been regular priced. One time a customer noticed (fortunately not the thousands Amazon got) and placed an order on an insanely discounted item. Instead of sending the order, one of our people called them and discussed it with the guy, and he was OK with just canceling the order. He probably could have made a big deal about it, cost us a bit of money, and got his item at the low price, but he didn't.

To me, I don't believe in "gaming the system" to the point of trying to cause loses to the man, because I didn't want people to take advantage of me the times I made ringing errors at a register.
posted by drezdn at 4:59 PM on February 15, 2007

Some things I've learned from Consumerist:
It is unreasonable (and probably unlawful) to expect a company to honor a price if the purchaser knows the price is a mistake. Does any contract lawyer know the law I'm talking about? So if a Wide Screen TV that normally retails at 2000 bucks is listed at 1500 bucks accidentally, there's no grounds to argue that a consumer would know that's a mistake (25% off sales are not rare). However, if the TV was listed at $1, then the retailer could argue that the purchaser had no reasonable expectation to get the goods at that price, or something like that.

However, Amazon handled the whole thing atrociously. They waited too long to contact the customers, they didn't let anyone return already-opened boxes, and (as always) they're not effectively communicating the policies to their CSRs.
posted by muddgirl at 5:05 PM on February 15, 2007

Muddgirl— That depends on state law. Which is weird when dealing with the internet. Here in Michigan, though I expect that a lawyer might find loopholes (such as there are in the marking requirements, like a certain exception threshold), the marked price is the marked price, and it's on the merchant not to mark it wrong.
posted by klangklangston at 5:14 PM on February 15, 2007

It is unreasonable (and probably unlawful) to expect a company to honor a price if the purchaser knows the price is a mistake.

Shipping product is "honoring".
posted by mendel at 6:11 PM on February 15, 2007

I can't take a moral argument seriously from any of you who jumped at the opportunity to take advantage of an honest mistake. I don't want to hear ever again about greedy corporations or crooked politicians. You people just showed that you're willing to turn a blind eye when it is to your benefit. How does that make you any different from those you rail against?
posted by onlyconnect at 6:08 AM on February 16, 2007

Well, for one thing, I have a nicer guitar rig than they do. And let's see, I'm less likely to engage in shrill histrionics. Oh, and I'm more likely to have a sense of scale and perspective on these matters than the holier-than-thou set.

I also don't do all that much moral nose-thumbing when other people know a good thing when they see it. See, I recognize that I live in a house of glass, and that in some way, we all do. You don't?
posted by breezeway at 6:56 AM on February 16, 2007

Oh, poor breezeway, getting the guitar but not the allusion.

Of course, I never really had that camera. But I did get the girl.

And I did get a brand new 20-whatever volume hardbound Oxford English Dictionary for $340 shipped. Actually, I got two at that price and gave one as wedding gift.
posted by NortonDC at 7:13 AM on February 16, 2007

"I can't take a moral argument seriously from any of you who jumped at the opportunity to take advantage of an honest mistake. "

What the hell are you on about? I don't think anyone here took advantage of the DVDs. Grip thyself.
posted by klangklangston at 7:35 AM on February 16, 2007

You know who else can't take a moral argument seriously?
posted by cortex at 7:45 AM on February 16, 2007

Shit, that's great. The only thing better than being cool is being a fool. Serves me right for not following all links.

I've never been so satisfied to be made an ass of before. What's happening to me? Maybe I should go make myself a martini. Is it too early?
posted by breezeway at 7:47 AM on February 16, 2007

Sorry about that, breezeway. I obviously overestimated my ability to set up a joke. Rock on!
posted by onlyconnect at 8:04 AM on February 16, 2007

No worries at all, onlyconnect. I think it's hilarious when I step in shit like that. My fault for not doing due diligence on the thread. After all, the links were right up top.

Seriously, though, that comment was the most annoying (brilliant?) troll ever! It got klangklangston, too.

I don't think you have anything to apologize for: I've been chuckling about this all morning. Great stuff!
posted by breezeway at 8:48 AM on February 16, 2007

It got me, too.
posted by Bugbread at 10:49 AM on February 16, 2007

:O J

FISHHOOKED! Got me.
posted by klangklangston at 1:51 PM on February 16, 2007