Update: Mike writes back to say that after reading the comments below, he checked his purchase history and the album is indeed listed there. What’s confusing is Mike didn’t buy it through iTunes, but through Amazon, but he says that other people did have access to his account and may have purchased it without his knowledge.

Mike originally wrote:

I recently checked the status of my “Upgrade to iTunes Plus” section of the iTunes store. I have never even considered upgrading any of my songs due to the fact that i payed $.99 for tracks with DRM and now they’re $.99 without DRM and Apple still wants me to pony up $.30 a track (this made more sense when they were charging $1.29 for DRM-free tracks). But for some reason I check back to see if they’ve added anything to my list. I noticed something quite peculiar today. They offered to upgrade The Raconteurs “Consolers of the Lonely” for me for a price of $3.30. Here’s the thing though, I didn’t buy this album from iTunes. I bought it from the Amazon MP3 store. The files aren’t even .AAC, they’re MP3. I thought perhaps I was just crazy, so I went back and found my confirmation email from Amazon. So Apple wants to charge me $3.30 to make a DRM-free album that I purchased elsewhere DRM-free. The best part is, the iTunes store sells the Album for $10.99, while I bought it from Amazon for $8.99. How many people do you think press the “Buy All” button without even looking to see what albums and songs are being upgraded?

I’m curious to see what would happen if I did upgrade that album via iTunes, but don’t want to waste the $3.30.

Technical glitch or evil plot to generate enough revenue to pay for a clone of Steve Jobs? Either way, if you’re an Amazon MP3 customer you shouldn’t just accept the iTunes upgrade package without making sure all the tracks they’ve identified are legitimately in need of the service.

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