pissy Amazon stuff

[fflo]

Pesky amazon.com has now finished its gradual removal of items from my order, as it did with others who took advantage of the other day's (possibly inadvertant, but so what?) online import cut-outs, and the site shows no record of my ever having made the order to begin with. This after yesterday's e-mail from them seemed to be reassuring me that the remainder of my order (down to 31 of 69 items at that point) would go through. I'm awaiting input from what happens next with disclaimerwill's protest e-mail to fashion my own. I've had only one round of correspondence with them so far.

It may be a losing battle, but I was so excited about them records. More'n I have been about CDs in a long time.

I'd e-mailed them saying the following:

>---------------
01/31/05 07:40:25
NAME: Xxxx Xxxxxxx
ORDER NUMBER: xxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxx
COMMENTS: Hello! I was reviewing my outstanding order this morning &
saw that a number of items had simply disappeared from it! Can you
please correct this error? I can forward my original e-mail receipt
if you need it for some reason to reconstruct the order.

I spent most of the day Saturday shopping online & have been very
excited about the good deals I found. Now I'm worried that I may not
get all my purchases. Please respond as soon as possible!

--Lisa Nichols

They wrote back:

From: "Amazon.com Customer Service" <cust.service03@a...>
To: [me]
Subject: Your Amazon.com Order (#xxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxx)
Date: Jan 31, 2005 2:18 PM

Greetings from Amazon.com.

First, we sincerely regret the error that resulted in an incorrect
price being displayed for some of the items in your order.

Because these item's [sic] correct price was higher than our stated price,
we made the decision to cancel these items. In accordance with our
posted policies on pricing, we were unable to offer these items for
the incorrectly posted price.

Our pricing policy is posted in the Help section and is accessible
through numerous other areas of our web site. You can read it here:

http://www.amazon.com/o/subst/help/pricing.html/

Further, please note that at any given time, despite our best
efforts, a small number of the millions of items on our site may be
mispriced. We do, however, 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.

We realize that the cancellation of these items may have been
disappointing, but we want to make sure that your decision to make a
purchase with us is based on the most accurate information possible.

Furthermore, as regards the other items in your order, please be
assured that the remainder of your order will be shipped as soon as
possible. Once they have shipped, we'll send you an e-mail message
confirming the date, contents, and method of your shipment.

Thanks again for letting us know how you feel about this issue. I
hope you will give us a chance to serve you again in the future.


Best regards,

Thokchom S
Amazon.com Customer Service
http://www.amazon.com
==============================

disclaimerwill is gearing up for a fight, and I'm joining the battle. Seems a company can make any policies it wants, but they may not be in accordance with something called the Uniform Commercial Code. (I keep thinking of it in my head as the Uniform Product Code, but that's a creature of another stripe.) Thus, we may have some recourse. We shall see!

Comments

[groovesinorbit]

Good luck with that. Jeez, what a mess. We had some stuff selling through Amazon over Xmas. Had a couple sales, but much less than we were expecting. Canceling our account was a major drag. No communication from them, even after they said there would be. Nothing potentially illegal, as in your case, but annoying. Finally got it resolved, but they're not user-friendly by a longshot.

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

I received the same cancellation e-mail you did- which is clearly bullshit- and so here's the letter I sent to their help department (I've removed any identifying information because I'm paranoid, and you know who I am anyhow):

Hello.

I recently received an automated e-mail informing me that my order number [BLAH], placed on January 28, was cancelled due to "an error [which] caused an item or items on [this] recent order... to be displayed at an incorrect price." Though I received no similar e-mail for my orders [BLAH] and [BLAH], they have apparently been cancelled as well (despite the fact that I was not informed as such), because they have also vanished from my account.

This is thoroughly unacceptable. The cancellation notice I received made reference to the Amazon pricing policy, which “is posted in the [Amazon] Help section and is accessible through numerous other areas of our web site.” The pricing policy, as currently posted, clearly states, “we cannot confirm the price of an item until you order.” I did, in fact, order these CDs at a price of 99 cents apiece and received confirmation e-mails to that effect for each order. Ergo, according to the language of your policy, the prices were confirmed.

Furthermore, although the Amazon cancellation notice states, “At any given time, despite our best efforts, a small number of the millions of items on our site may be mispriced,” literally thousands of CDs in your catalog—specifically, many of those listed as being on the Phantom record label—were listed at a price of 99 cents on that particular day, and my orders were selected entirely from that set of items. (I personally searched at least 5,000 of them.) While more than five thousand items may admittedly still be a small percentage of the millions of items you sell, five thousand comparable and easily searchable items, listed as being on the same record label, which all display the same price on your site could not reasonably or logically be assumed to be a “small number” by consumers who believe that they have stumbled upon a sale. Customers such as myself, acting upon these prices in good faith, then received the aforementioned confirmation e-mails (those with the subject line “Your order with Amazon.com” dispatched from the e-mail address auto-confirm@amazon.com) in response to our orders, thus (in your own words) confirming the items’ price of 99 cents each.

As a result, Amazon.com is clearly legally bound to honor the orders that I submitted on January 28, by the language provided on your site.


[Okay, at this point, the letter becomes too long for me to post it as a comment on Livejournal, so I'll continue it below...]

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

[Continued from above]

Furthermore, the Uniform Commercial Code effective in the United States clearly states that “The obligations of good faith, diligence, reasonableness, and care prescribed by [the Uniform Commercial Code] may not be disclaimed by agreement” [§ 1-302 (b)]. Inotherwords, any disclaimers contrary to the dictates of the UCC are null and void. I clearly ordered the items contained within orders [BLAH, BLAH, and BLAH] in good faith, these orders were confirmed by Amazon, and I am therefore entitled to receive them for the price confirmed by the e-mails that your company dispatched to me despite your stated choice to "at our discretion... cancel your order."

The UCC goes on to state that “The remedies provided by [the Uniform Commercial Code] must be liberally administered to the end that the aggrieved party [i.e., a party entitled to pursue a remedy—in this case, the buyer] may be put in as good a position as if the other party had fully performed…” [§ 1-305 (a)], “Even though one or more terms are left open a contract for sale does not fail for indefiniteness if the parties have intended to make a contract and there is a reasonably certain basis for giving an appropriate remedy” [§ 2-204 (3)], and “Where the seller fails to deliver or repudiates the buyer may also (a) if the goods have been identified recover them as provided in this Article (Section 2-502); or (b) in a proper case obtain specific performance or replevy the goods…” [§ 2-711 (2)]. These sections and more make it perfectly clear that I, as a buyer, am entitled to receive the items I ordered for the price at which I ordered them, under the UCC.

For your convenience, I have pasted the contents of the three affected orders below. Under the statutes of Uniform Commercial Code described above, I expect these orders to be reinstated immediately and filled as quickly as possible, and I further expect to be notified of your intention to do so upon receipt of this complaint (in an e-mail complete with direct contact information for the person responsible for overseeing this transaction). Should this require further communication on my part, I can be reached at[BLAH].

Thank you,
[BLAH]

[groovesinorbit]

Go get 'em, tiger.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Yeah----I'm dying to hear their response. I'm only mentally drafting my next foray, which will include some reference to their broken promise of the semi-cancellation notice, and then a reference to my subsequently becoming aware of my right to have the contract fulfilled.

[groovesinorbit]

It looks like you guys (and a lot of other folks, I imagine) have a case. I hope Amazon won't put up too much of a fight, but if you need a class action lawyer, I can probably find one or two in the alum database.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much it would be worth to the buncha folks Willie knows, along with him and me... of course maybe all we'd have to do is get a lawyer to write a letter?

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

(Sorry it took me so long to respond to youse here; I was watching The Amazing Race.)

A guy I know from the music message board is, in fact, a lawyer, and he actually suggested that anyone who was affected by this and feels strongly about it should simply get a lawyer to draft a letter to Amazon. In his words, "Amazon does not dictate whether a binding contract was formed, the law does. They depend on their e-mails and language to intimidate and discourage people who don't know any better. That way, when a small minority does serve them with papers to dispute their bullshit, they immediately buckle and give in without a fight. It's the same with every corporation." That's his theory.

As far as a class action suit goes, he said that it might be interesting to try, just as an academic exercise, but we'd all most likely have a better chance of getting what we want if we take care of it individually. His opinion is that they'll want to keep the lid on this as much as possible, so rather than taking on a whole bunch of people in court, they'd be more apt to acquiese to the requests stated in a few letters.

I'm not sure what my next step will be if they don't respond favorably here. I'd like to see what you come up with for your complaint!

[groovesinorbit]

I bet a letter from a lawyer will do the trick. You're basically dealing with a bully here. If you push back, they'll back down, as your friend suggested.