As we’ve reported since 2012, the consumer protection department at Macy’s has a novel approach to consumer protection. In trying to prevent fraudulent purchases from going through, they seem to just go ahead and stop some customers from making purchases online entirely.

Not all customers, obviously, but some. That’s what happened to Esme when she tried to make a cosmetics purchase.

Macy’s infamous consumer protection anti-fraud department must still be working overtime. Over the past 3 days, I tried to order a Shiseido skin care set online and four times my order got cancelled. The last time I tried, I even spoke to a human being and gave her a different credit card number. She apologized and waived the express shipping cost.

The worst experience of all was the last attempt: I got an email from Macy’s saying my order was confirmed. So I thought, ah, at last. But many hours later, I got an email from Macy’s saying my order was cancelled. I am not ordering from Macy’s ever again.

This is the most ridiculous ecommerce website. I know for sure that Macy’s does not want people to shop online. They want people to go to their physical stores.

There’s definitely something odd with the fraud department, Esme, but that’s an implausible conspiracy theory. A working e-commerce site on that scale requires a big financial and personnel investment. There would need to be a huge difference in profit margin between regular stores and the website for this theory to work, and you would never hear about any successful purchases from the Macy’s site.

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