Amazon Overcharge Vent!

BlueEyedGirl

Azari wrote: »

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.

I did think about it, but decided against it. My therapist would want to spend 2 hours analysing why I complained! :rotfl:

daytona0

geerex wrote: »

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,)

I can't believe that this post was slated so much!

1. Ghost transactions happen quite regularly. I worked in a company similar to Amazon and they were a recurring theme with some card issuers - WE HAD NO CONTROL OVER THEM. Your post highlights a very real possibility.

2. The point of view by Zedicus and some others seems to be more of the "Amazon were useless but then they got their act together" mindset. I'm more skeptical of this because of how much money Amazon have likely invested into their system. It is going to be fairly error-free when it comes to taking payments. The company I worked for was rubbish in comparison, and it NEVER charged customers more than they were due to pay! It was mainly either customer error, or ambiguous terms and conditions! Still, it is also a possibility.

So all in all you are both potentially right. I just don't get why you have been the subject of such scrutiny! Also don't understand how Zedicus' post got more "thanks" than yours, but hey ho!

Sheldon_Cooper

daytona0 wrote: »

I can't believe that this post was slated so much!

Two reasons. It wasn't relevant because no one really cared about the mechanism that Amazon used to foul up the payments. Secondly, before the MSE team removed some text the poster had been rude about the OP and others.

2. The point of view by Zedicus and some others seems to be more of the "Amazon were useless but then they got their act together" mindset. I'm more skeptical of this because of how much money Amazon have likely invested into their system. It is going to be fairly error-free when it comes to taking payments. The company I worked for was rubbish in comparison, and it NEVER charged customers more than they were due to pay! It was mainly either customer error, or ambiguous terms and conditions! Still, it is also a possibility.

I think you are making the same mistake as a couple of others here and obsessing about the MECHANISM of the foul up, rather than the fact it happened, and CS hadn't a clue. I doubt anyone cares whether a poorly implemented system caused the foul up and corrected itself automatically, or if it was some weird glitch that was corrected manually.

Also don't understand how Zedicus' post got more "thanks" than yours, but hey ho!

Because more people took the view that Amazon fouled up the payments and the CS and weren't any help ane weren't interested in the people trying to make out it didn't matter because that's how Amazon designed the system?

GreatBeyond

Sheldon_Cooper wrote: »

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.

People all through this thread have mentioned Amazon have made a mistake in how they processed these transactions, they didn't it's simply how their system is set up to take payments.

Saying it's a mistake leads people to believe that Amazon have made an error and something unusual has happened. All I'm trying to say is that this is not the case and explain why the charge was taken. If you genuinely don't believe I have an understanding of this check my comments on the first page before the OP has come back to say what the outcome was, when I said it would all even out it wasn't guess work.

Amazon might be at fault, they might not be, that is absolutely not what I am trying to argue against, I posted to say no mistake was made, which it wasn't.

If you don't like the payment system Amazon use, get in touch and ask them to change or don't use the website to purchase things but don't attack people who are explaining why something has happened - which if you read my posts back is all I have done, I did not apply blame anywhere just tried to use the knowledge I have to help someone.

I have also said that the only mistake made by Amazon was that their advisor was not able to properly explain why this had happened and that's a training issue Amazon should address as this is a pretty common issue to deal with for Amazon customer services.

Edit: just to also point out that an authorisation for the full amount of a purchase is in no way limited to Amazon and authorisations in general are widely used throughout retail and hospitality.

wealdroam

GreatBeyond wrote: »

People all through this thread have mentioned Amazon have made a mistake in how they processed these transactions, they didn't it's simply how their system is set up to take payments.

I'll stop you there. The rest of your post is not important, to me at least.

The fact that that's 'simply how their system is set up to take payments' is the very issue that I and others have difficulty with, and that is the first mistake of Amazon.

Just because Amazon's system is 'set up that way' does not automatically mean that it is right.
To add to that, if Amazon's customers, and indeed their very own customer service personnel, cannot understand how 'the system' works, then it is faulty.

As there seems to be a risk that Amazon's ordering/payment system can in certain circumstances lead to their customer being deprived of access to their money in their bank account, then Amazon should be looking to find a way of avoiding this issue.

One thing they should not be doing is sitting back and saying "everything is fine, you don't understand".



Edited to add:

GreatBeyond wrote: »

Edit: just to also point out that an authorisation for the full amount of a purchase is in no way limited to Amazon and authorisations in general are widely used throughout retail and hospitality.

I said earlier that the rest of you post was unimportant, but I was wrong now that you have added this bit.

It really is not good enough for Amazon, or any other retailer, to sit back and say "but everyone does it that way, so it must be right".

BlueEyedGirl

GreatBeyond wrote: »

If you don't like the payment system Amazon use, get in touch and ask them to change or don't use the website to purchase things but don't attack people who are explaining why something has happened - which if you read my posts back is all I have done, I did not apply blame anywhere just tried to use the knowledge I have to help someone.

Edit: just to also point out that an authorisation for the full amount of a purchase is in no way limited to Amazon and authorisations in general are widely used throughout retail and hospitality.

In NINE years of being an Amazon customer, the problem I encountered (which is why I started the thread) was a first for me. When you consider how often I place orders with them, that is rather strange. I have it seems purchased some 2000+ items from them in that 9 years, so for this to be a regular thing Amazon does simple does not wash with me!

I've also never experienced this issue with other online retailers.

GreatBeyond

BlueEyedGirl wrote: »

In NINE years of being an Amazon customer, the problem I encountered (which is why I started the thread) was a first for me. When you consider how often I place orders with them, that is rather strange. I have it seems purchased some 2000+ items from them in that 9 years, so for this to be a regular thing Amazon does simple does not wash with me!

I've also never experienced this issue with other online retailers.

Sorry - you are right I have made it all up. I pretended to know why this had happened and produced a false example purely to mislead people on this forum, cos that's the kinda thing I like to do. The fact that it tied in exactly with what happened was purely a coincidence - sometimes you just take a lucky guess.

Believe what you want, I know for an absolute fact what I have posted is the truth, it might not be popular but it is what it is.

BlueEyedGirl

GreatBeyond wrote: »

Sorry - you are right I have made it all up. I pretended to know why this had happened and produced a false example purely to mislead people on this forum, cos that's the kinda thing I like to do. The fact that it tied in exactly with what happened was purely a coincidence - sometimes you just take a lucky guess.

Believe what you want, I know for an absolute fact what I have posted is the truth, it might not be popular but it is what it is.

Believe in yourself, that is my motto! :T

JReacher1

BlueEyedGirl wrote: »

In NINE years of being an Amazon customer, the problem I encountered (which is why I started the thread) was a first for me. When you consider how often I place orders with them, that is rather strange. I have it seems purchased some 2000+ items from them in that 9 years, so for this to be a regular thing Amazon does simple does not wash with me!

I've also never experienced this issue with other online retailers.

It is hard sometimes to be a retailer. A customer who has shopped with you for 9 years and ordered over 2,000 items decides never to shop with you again due to one relatively minor issue over authorisations!

It's very unforgiving!

GreatBeyond

wealdroam wrote: »

I'll stop you there. The rest of your post is not important, to me at least.

The fact that that's 'simply how their system is set up to take payments' is the very issue that I and others have difficulty with, and that is the first mistake of Amazon.

Just because Amazon's system is 'set up that way' does not automatically mean that it is right.
To add to that, if Amazon's customers, and indeed their very own customer service personnel, cannot understand how 'the system' works, then it is faulty.

As there seems to be a risk that Amazon's ordering/payment system can in certain circumstances lead to their customer being deprived of access to their money in their bank account, then Amazon should be looking to find a way of avoiding this issue.

One thing they should not be doing is sitting back and saying "everything is fine, you don't understand".



Edited to add:

I said earlier that the rest of you post was unimportant, but I was wrong now that you have added this bit.

It really is not good enough for Amazon, or any other retailer, to sit back and say "but everyone does it that way, so it must be right".

Had you read the rest of my post you would see that I didn't say it was right, just that it was the way it was processed so that anyone else with this issue could read why it had happened if Amazon Customer Services failed to explain it properly again to someone else.

I would be pretty interested for one single person to either prove that I have said Amazon are right in processing payments this way or even better prove me wrong completely, show me that Amazon don't process payments in this was.