Amazon Overcharge Vent!

geerex

Zedicus wrote: »

2 out of 10 for comprehension - must try harder.

A more accurate summary.

OP Orders goods from Amazon for a stated price.
OP Discovers that Amazon are stating that they have charged her a different price and the her bank statement reflects this.
OP queries this with Amazon who are completely clueless about what's going on and try to fob off OP with explanation that charges are correct.
Amazon get their act together and correct the charges.

A succession of rather dim people with poor comprehension skills take the opportunity to give the OP a hard time because Amazon fouled things up and, even when it's carefully explained to them, STILL cannot understand that Amazon were wrong.

Yes, Amazon " corrected" their "mistake" by allowing a predetermined automated process to complete.
No action was taken because of the OPs contact. None at all.
Try it yourself, see the same thing happen. Happens to me all the time, "ghost" transactions for multi-part orders or combo orders where a subscribe and save item is despatched as a "1 of 2" with something unconnected. Asterisks appear against the relevant transactions on my Amex account, my RBS debit account simply "ringfences" the appropriate sum.

(Text removed by MSE Forum Team,)

Zedicus

Your argument seems to be that because Amazon do this all the time this makes it acceptable.

That is, frankly, ludicrous.

It also does not address the issue of why Amazon CS could not simply have told the OP that it was a known problem with their systems and would be rectified shortly. OP seems perfectly reasonable and I'm sure she would have been quite happy with that.

GreatBeyond

Zedicus wrote: »

2 out of 10 for comprehension - must try harder.

A more accurate summary.

OP Orders goods from Amazon for a stated price.
OP Discovers that Amazon are stating that they have charged her a different price and the her bank statement reflects this.
OP queries this with Amazon who are completely clueless about what's going on and try to fob off OP with explanation that charges are correct.
Amazon get their act together and correct the charges.

A succession of rather dim people with poor comprehension skills take the opportunity to give the OP a hard time because Amazon fouled things up and, even when it's carefully explained to them, STILL cannot understand that Amazon were wrong.

I'm sorry but you are completely wrong.

When an order is placed on Amazon they contact your bank to ensure that the card is valid, this is done in the form of an authorisation for the full amount of the order. The payment is not taken at this stage. If you order 2 items at the same time and the total amount is £30, one item in the order is for £25 and the other for £5 the will authorise the card for £30 - the full value of the order.

Now if items are able to be shipped together then the £30 that the bank were already holding would be be used when Amazon asked for the payment at the dispatch stage. Simple.

If the items are not able to be shipped together, for example the £5 item is coming from the warehouse in Wales, the £25 item from the warehouse in Scotland then the respective amounts would be charged as each item was dispatched. If the £5 item ships at 13:00 and the £25 item ships at 18:00 you would see two separate payments on your statement reflecting each charge.

Generally the bank will recognise what has happened and get the initial authorisation cleared sometimes however they will treat the individual payments separately from the initial authorisation and continue to hold on to the funds, so in my example the bank would have the £30 as a pending charge and £25 and £5 have already been removed from your account.

Now I would agree that it's incredibly frustrating but to sit here saying Amazon have made a balls up is complete rubbish and misleading to anyone who may have this issue in the future. This is how Amazon process payments, the only mistake here is that the person speaking to the OP didn't explain the process properly.

Amazon did not take any incorrect charges in this case, the money that was returned to the OP was returned by the bank, that money was never in Amazons possession. Amazon did not correct charges, the charges taken were correct and reflected the items that were shipped, when they were shipped.

Sheldon_Cooper

GreatBeyond wrote: »

I'm sorry but you are completely wrong.

No he isn't, he's absolutely correct.

You seem not to understand the situation.

Now I would agree that it's incredibly frustrating but to sit here saying Amazon have made a balls up is complete rubbish and misleading to anyone who may have this issue in the future.

I am so sick of people coming up with nonsense such as this.

If you buy something for £x and the seller charges you in such a way that you have £1.5x unavailable in your account even if it is only for short time that is unacceptable and a balls up (as you put it) on Amazon's part.

Amazon should only make the amount you agreed to pay unavailable to you - end of story.

This is how Amazon process payments,

Yet another person with the somewhat quaint idea that just because someone always does something the wrong way (even if it often does not have any visible effect) that means it's OK,

Amazon did not take any incorrect charges in this case, the money that was returned to the OP was returned by the bank, that money was never in Amazons possession. Amazon did not correct charges, the charges taken were correct and reflected the items that were shipped, when they were shipped.

That may well be the case, but it does not alter the fact that Amazon's systems are working in a way that means their customers may be deprived of more money than they agreed to pay and that is simply unacceptable.

How anyone can claim that there is nothing wrong with that and not appear an complete burke is beyond me.

GreatBeyond

Sheldon_Cooper wrote: »

No he isn't, he's absolutely correct.

You seem not to understand the situation.



I am so sick of people coming up with nonsense such as this.

If you buy something for £x and the seller charges you in such a way that you have £1.5x unavailable in your account even if it is only for short time that is unacceptable and a balls up (as you put it) on Amazon's part.

Amazon should only make the amount you agreed to pay unavailable to you - end of story.



Yet another person with the somewhat quaint idea that just because someone always does something the wrong way (even if it often does not have any visible effect) that means it's OK,



That may well be the case, but it does not alter the fact that Amazon's systems are working in a way that means their customers may be deprived of more money than they agreed to pay and that is simply unacceptable.

How anyone can claim that there is nothing wrong with that and not appear an complete burke is beyond me.

Believe me, I fully understand the situation.

You have completely misunderstood my point, I'm not saying the way they process payments right, wrong or okay. I'm just explaining the process and why it happened rather than pretend it's some kind of one off error.

Like it or not that is how Amazon process payments, no mistake was made and the same thing will happen every single time this situation happens.

Sheldon_Cooper

GreatBeyond wrote: »

Believe me, I fully understand the situation.

You have completely misunderstood my point, I'm not saying the way they process payments right, wrong or okay. I'm just explaining the process and why it happened rather than pretend it's some kind of one off error.

Like it or not that is how Amazon process payments, no mistake was made and the same thing will happen every single time this situation happens.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that anyone thinks this is a one off error.

I'm sure everyone knows perfectly well that Amazon run on computers and it's not a case of some clerk writing the wrong number on a piece of paper, so that if it happened once it's very likely to have happened before and to happen again.

Amazon have c**ked up the design of their systems in such a way that they will, on occasion, deprive their customers, temporarily, of more money than they agreed to.

The fact remains that Amazon were at fault here and the OP was perfectly entitled to complain about:

a) Them making more money than agreed unavailable to her.
b) Wasting her time by not immediately telling her clearly and succinctly what was going on.

BlueEyedGirl

GreatBeyond wrote: »

Like it or not that is how Amazon process payments, no mistake was made and the same thing will happen every single time this situation happens.

It won't happen to me again. I am not shopping with Amazon anymore, too many problems this year with orders. I have spoken to Amazon CS more times this year that I have in the 9 years I have been a customer! From now on, I will shop elsewhere. Amazon are not as competitive as they were, there are plenty of other places to shop!

JReacher1

BlueEyedGirl wrote: »

It won't happen to me again. I am not shopping with Amazon anymore, too many problems this year with orders. I have spoken to Amazon CS more times this year that I have in the 9 years I have been a customer! From now on, I will shop elsewhere. Amazon are not as competitive as they were, there are plenty of other places to shop!

I think you'll shop with them again. I've tried to boycott them myself and it's impossible! They sell everything

BlueEyedGirl

JReacher1 wrote: »

I think you'll shop with them again. I've tried to boycott them myself and it's impossible! They sell everything

I won't. I am one of those people who never goes back on their word!

Azari

BlueEyedGirl wrote: »

I won't. I am one of those people who never goes back on their word!

Could I suggest that, before you make a final decision to abandon Amazon altogether, you make a quick, friendly, complaint, detailing what happened and expressing you dissatisfaction.

I know you are not after compensation, but they may offer you something, and the knowledge that that implies they have accepted your criticism and acknowledged it would be nice.

I think you have been very unlucky with Amazon (and I doubt it helped having a few daft 'erberts here trying to make out they'd done nothing wrong and implicitly criticising you for Amazon's incompetence), because they are usually extremely good, and it would be a pity to deprive yourself of access to the vast array of products they have available.