I hate when rebated items get delayed like that. Just happened to me, an order I was going to use a MIR on from Fry's Outpost got backordered, so I canceled it to avoid the headache I knew would ensue.

They really should be honoring a quoted price though, especially with it in writing that they would make an exception.

Amazon has been absolutely terrible this holiday season. I've got six packages missing in action at the moment. Customer service has been terribly slow at taking action :(

Last year was bad, this year is just a nightmare. Thank goodness I started shopping "early", hate to be one of those people that thinks it's ok to start shopping around the 20th and rely on Amazon to make things right.

This just happened to me, but I am not sure if it was a Black Friday item or not. I ordered a gamepad last Wednesday, and the order was processed normally. I waited 3 days to see when it would ship out. Instead, I got a notice that "your order has been cancelled." No reason given, no apology, just "Nah, we don't think we will honor the contract between buyer and seller". I emailed them and all they could say was "either your card was declined (it wasn't) or we ran out of stock". hmmm...no raincheck? All I would have really wanted was an apology for selling me something they didn't have.

One of the pitfalls of buying online- little to no viable actions against this type of stuff. If a store advertises and sells something, they should be legally bound to either fulfill the item, or offer an equal item - legal statement be damned.

Based on reading the forums, it seems that there is something else going on here (e.g. it was actually a pricing error). It's hard to tell with out more documentation.

If this is Amazon's bad, it really surprises me. All of my experiences with their customer service have been stellar. Granted, I am usually dealing with quality of products, not ordering issues, so maybe they are better there since they can pass the cost of defective products back to the manufacturers.

I actually had Kohls.com do something similar to me. I ordered a Sonicare toothbrush and replacements heads for really cheap. They didn't fill the order and then later sent an email saying they were "unable to fill on this out-of-stock item." Meanwhile they are offering it online and in their stores. They weren't out of stock, they just didn't want to fill an order they weren't making money on. I still need to address them about that.

And I WAS going to order COD4 from Amazon today, but this makes me second think that option. Maybe Worst Buy will get me business (which also sucks!)

This isn't unique to the holiday season. I received similar treatment on a sale hard drive last month.

"Yes we have it." "No we don't." "Order it this way." "No you can't."

Schizos.

Could it be Dermot maintenance is busy fielding Amazon's outsourced cust svc calls?

Fine print:
"We reserve the right to arbitrarily cancel orders, provide conflicting answers, and erase records showing our misconduct."

Why not just file a chargeback against them? All you have to do when filing the dispute with your card company is include a copy of the packing slip and their "we'll drop the price" email along with the item on your card statement that shows that you were overcharged?

If a merchant scams you, DON'T take it, this is why you have federal antifraud laws protecting you when you use credit cards.

a total pain in the @$$ to save a few bucks on a mouse or whatever - but can't they be taken to small claims court for fraud for claiming that they would honor the discount in the first e-mail? It would cost them more to come and defend themselves than it would be to just cave and honor the price.

Contact Amazon's Executive Customer Relations dept. in Washington state: ecr@amazon.com.

How about the problems with the Black Friday Wiis they sold?!?!?

Amazon had on their description page that customers would receive a copy of wiiplay and an extra nunchuck with their order.

"Product Description
Includes one Nintendo Wii System, a total 2 Wii Remote controllers, 2 Wii Nunchuk controller, Wii Sports (5 Games
including boxing, tennis, baseball, golf, and bowling), - Wii Play (9 games including billiards, laser hockey, shooting range, find
mii, table tennis, tanks, fishing, charge, and more.Product Size:17 x 12 x 7inches."

when customers got their orders in they received only the wii. Amazon is now claiming that the description was from a 3rd party vendor.... I printed out the page and it's sold from Amazon LLC. Not a 3rd party vendor. I've called and that's now the official line their quoting. I'm filing a claim with the BBB and the FTC!

Amazon.com has really started to slip in regards to customer service and service overall. Since they started offering "Amazon Prime" Super Saver Shipping has become absolutely TERRIBLE. I used to count on getting an amazon package within a week, regardless of whether I paid for standard shipping, or used Super Saver Shipping. This year I've had 2 separate orders (both over 200$) take over 2 weeks to arrive.

It's a shame because I really used to like Amazon.

@Cerb: That's happened to me too!

I am most disturbed by Amazon deleting the order history. That seem very sketchy and underhanded. If it was an honest pricing mistake was that really necessary?

@blondegrlz:
Yes, I noticed that too with my order. It showed up for the 3 days, but when it was arbitrarily cancelled by "someone" for "some reason"...the order that I placed had completely disappeared from my account. Huh? The order was placed...why is it erased, due to the fact soemone on their end decided not to honor it?

Toys R Us did the same thing on BF... they shorted my order by 2 NDS kits and then tried to charge me full price + shipping to get me the 2 I was owed. 2 calls and an hour later I still need to call to get my shipping charged back.

I've had several "amazon" orders cancelled because they were 3rd party items-the vendor no longer had the item (least likely) or didn't want to sell them for the price listed on amazon (most likely).

Because of those orders and no recourse being offered by amazon, I've completely stayed away from amazon. When i search for a product using google, i skip the amazon listings.

I ordered the MX Revolution mouse too- got an email a week later saying that shipment would be delayed...and then two days after that another email informed me that there had been a pricing error and the order was automatically canceled.

I wrote Customer Service yesterday to voice my displeasure-

a) that discovering a 'pricing error' more than a week after the orders were taken was ridiculous
b) that it was difficult to believe that Black Friday specials weren't reviewed by multiple Amazon employees prior to being made live and advertised.
c) Even if it was an error, why wasn't the mouse offered at the 'correct' discounted price to people who purchased it at the 'incorrect' price?

The extremely helpful response- "In accordance with our posted policies on pricing, we are unable tooffer this item for the incorrectly posted price. We apologize for any inconvenience or disappointment this may cause."

@hiphopnerd: Consider reporting them to your state atty. general. I think most states have laws about a merchant being required to honor a price listed.

I think this is referring to the Logitech MX Revolution mouse, which I am now very glad I decided to order from Newegg that Monday instead of Amazon (same advertised price as Amazon after rebate, and actually $15 less thanks to the short-lived 20% off Paypal checkout promo).

I've had very good experiences with both Newegg's and Amazon's customer service, so these problems with Amazon surprise me. They were very quick to replace my defective iPod Touch back in October, but that wasn't during the holiday rush.

I had the same items canceled on me. Now I am wondering if they're ever going to give me my money back.

@wkzero: If you were actually charged (shouldn't be til they ship) just chargeback on them.

From the above, it seems like it would pay to keep copies of everything you do with Amazon. A good Firefox extension for doing that is called Scrapbook:

[amb.vis.ne.jp]

I had a problem a couple of months back with Amazon where they featured a rebate for a PSU but the link they provided to the manufacturer led instead to a rebate fro memory. There was no link to a PSU rebate to be found. However, after some back and forth where they could also not find the rebate link, they credited me for the rebate amount.

Amazon doesn't have proof readers? This is a mistake that shouldn't have happened. To keep their reputation in good standing, they should honor all the orders and take a beating on that item.

Word spreads fast on the Internet and this is not worth them getting bad publicity over.

I have been an Amazon Prime customer for two years. I pay $79.00 per year and I get free two-day shipping on all my orders. It has really been worth it to me because I order thousands of dollars worth of stuff from them. I have never had a problem UNTIL this Christmas season. Suddenly after Thanksgiving my packages started coming standard shipping, one was lost, one sent standard when I paid $3.99 extra for one-day service and one DVD was smashed because they sent it in a flimsy envelope. I truly was shocked. It was like an evil spell had been put on their shipping and packaging department after two years of super service. I wrote them 4 times before customer service replied that they were "sorry". Period. No promise to improve or explanation. Needless to say I will not renew my Prime subscription with them and they will loose lots of sales from me.

I just ordered a ton of stuff with amazon for the holiday season, I am not really worried about late orders since I have plenty of time till the holidays. I have never had problems like this with amazon though but with so much online competition out there you would think they would wisen up if there is a problem, they are not the only choice for online shopping now.

I have ordered a good number of things from Amazon, for our family and a co-worker, and I have never had any trouble at all with them.

One DVD from another seller was bad - but he checked it and refunded price, shipping and the return shipping.

@BigNutty: Actually, no, Amazon doesn't have proofreaders--haven't since 2003, when I was one of the last of them...and there are only three copyeditors.

Same deal with the Wii's ordered on Black Friday. The product description said it would come ith a few extras and was being sold at regular price. Customer Service rep verified over the phone that it was a promotion, but then it arrived without the extras and they said they never offered it. It has been an absolute mess. It seems they posted these deals to get people on their site and buying instead of people shopping other sites that were having REAL Black Friday deals. This was totally shady on their part.

I was in the same boat with mouse on BF. Oddly while they claim it was marked to low, Dell.com had the mouse offered for 40.00 from Wed to BF. Most people opted for Amazon as it offered a 30.00 rebate.

In another twist the Nintendo WII's offered on Black Friday had the notation on the bottom of the product description stating that WII Play and an extra Nunchuck controller would be included with the purchase- it was not and they claimed we , all thousands of us were reading a Amazon.com Merchant offer.

While pissed, I will admit that I would have bought the WII anyways with or without.
Though I will say on their web forums (amazon.com) they have been pretty open to letting customers voice their anger openly on the site....

My wife and I unfortunately got stuck in the Amazon issues this year. We ordered 4 items, 2 were fine, one was cancelled for the same pricing error problem and the final item just hasn't shipped even though it was ordered nearly 2 weeks ago.

I've been ordering from Amazon for a few years now and apart from 2 or 3 packages packed poorly its been good.

What about their gold box offers? From reading this, if I hadn't already received my order, I would think that it would be a bad idea to buy something they've specifically advertised as being on sale (for one day only, even!).

It's not just Amazon - it's all the various store fronts that are run through the Amazon website. One week ago, I would have done nothing but sing Amazon's praises. I use them a lot for work purchases and spend over $10,000 each year. I used their site to find a low price on a GPS accessory that was around $13-20 and which I ordered from ANTOnline via their website. Suddenly 5 days later, I get a notice from Amazon that the order has been cancelled. No reason, no excuse, no explanation, just "your order has been cancelled" and it's zapped from my order history. Go back to re-order the item and it's offered at various sites for $30 or so. Writing to Amazon to find out what happened gets me a canned response that says "your order was cancelled by the vendor, we have no control, since it was cancelled it was deleted from your order history, too bad, so sad". Amazon - you REALLY need to get your act together.

The problem with amazon is that Bezos and company seem hell-bent on pitching their damn "kindle" e-book instead of concentrating on what made them great to begin with. I've had many orders from amazon in the past that came thru OK so I guess I"ve been lucky so far.

I must have been lucky. I order MX and webcam both twice (two different addresses) and both came in the mail and I mailed in both rebates. I think it's because I ordered them at 3am, when I first saw it (up for Apple.com BF sale start).

sweet deal -

7$ each MX revolution

-30 each webcam

The solution to this problem is extraordinarily simple. You have all of the tools you need.

Wait until the mouse arrives. This gives you more control over the situation, which I will explain in a moment.

First, contact Amazon's customer service again. This step is optional, but sometimes has it's benefits, such as written apologies (which can provide more evidence for step 2), courtesy drops in price beyond what you are asking for, etc. Include a full copy of the promise to alter the price before shipping it. Explain that you only placed the order because of the terms that Amazon set, and that if they had not offered those terms to you, you would not have placed the order. State that if they do not honor the price that their first representative promised, they have committed both false advertising and a bait-and-switch. Then tell them that if they do not immediately apply a credit for the difference to your credit card, you will file a dispute with your credit card company. You may wish to include a note stating that all your CC company requires (assuming yours is like mine) is documentation proving that Amazon offered you one price before you placed the order, and another after it shipped.

Second, file the dispute with your credit card company. This step is not optional. Do it regardless of the results of step 1. You're not bluffing, and the longer you wait, the more chance you have of your CC company rejecting your claim because too much time has passed. (Most require a claim to be filed within 30-60 days, though some allow more time to pass.) My bank usually just requires me to call in, explain the nature of the dispute, give them approximate dates of first and last contact, and then they generally issue an immediate credit for the disputed amount. Then they send you a short form to fill out. Include print-outs of your contact with them, and their promise to honor the price.

Don't wait to file the dispute; do it right away. Every dispute that is filed and found in favor of the customer (and against the vendor) is a black mark on their record with Visa (or whichever logo is on your card). Enough of those black marks and their license gets pulled. This is not to say that the black mark from your dispute is going to push them over that line, but your threat to file this dispute will make it clear to them that you have what you need to do it, and that you know your rights. You can always withdraw your dispute if/when Amazon issues the credit. In the case of my bank, they will automatically do so when they see the credit hit my account. And if Amazon refuses, you can still get it from your bank. You have documentation showing a specific price. You have documentation from Amazon proving that they promised to honor it. That is all that most CC companies need.

Now, if they have NOT yet shipped the mouse and are waiting for you to approve it, there is no guarantee that this will work. Odds are that it will, but Amazon would have a legitimate argument that you were notified of the higher price and that you approved it. This doesn't change the fact that Amazon is in the wrong from a moral perspective, but that isn't your claim with the CC company; you are claiming that they promised you one price before you ordered and changed it after you did. It may not hold up if you agree to new terms after that.

The short version of the above is this: Stop worrying so much about it. Definitely continue to let consumer sites like this one know; it is good to be aware of customer service issues with specific vendors. But as a jaded consumer, I believe that it is par for the course for EVERY vendor to have some kind of issue now and then, and the larger the vendor, the more issues they will have. This will only be exasperated during the holiday season. ALWAYS buy with a credit card that you can dispute. ALWAYS keep copies of written communication from your vendors. And then it's a simple enough process to deal with them. :-)

@ EzraEkman,
I'm a Amazon CSA, and there are some holes in scenario you propose:

1. If CSA #1 says he will honor the advertised price that was shown in error and doesn't give it to you, he's passing the problem on to the next rep that you call. If you then call me, CSA #2, and say that the price wasn't honored and you give me the spiel you mentioned above, I wouldn't give it to you. Is it false advertising? Yes, I will agree, however, it is clearly stated on the website that Amazon does not honor price errors. It's a lot easier to prove an error through newspaper/radio/TV ads then the internet. You can submit a screen shot, but it's easy to fake those these days with minimal effort. (And, yes, there is a problem when CSA # 1 isn't doing his job, but he didn't follow company policy. And when you call me, I'm going to follow it, because I really need my job.)

2. If you go to dispute it the charge with your credit card company and provide the evidence from CSA #1 saying that Amazon would honor the price, you'll more than likely run into trouble because the first thing all the CSAs were told on Black Friday were that there was a pricing error with the mouse, and we were not to honor any requests for the original price. Again, We are trained from Day #1 that we do not honor pricing errors. CSA #1 simply didn't do his job. I've seen this happen before, and it's maybe 1-2 times out of five that someone wins the dispute. Also, once you dispute something with you CC company, there's nothing I can do to help you

3. If we have not yet sent out the mouse and you approved the higher price, there's little we can do to help you. If you decide you don't like the higher price, cancel the order.

4. If you're that upset about it, cancel the order and buy the damn mouse somewhere else.

To answer a few other comments...yes, Jeff Bezos is hell bent on selling the Kindle, and it's working, we're sold out of them until after Christmas (along with Wiis and Rock Star). ANTonline cancels a lot of orders, I'd avoid ordering from them. And I can see canceled orders, although I can't see why they're canceled.

And as always, the nicer you are on the phone to us, the more likely we're going to do everything that we can to help you, even if there's nothing we can do. I've put money on people's account just because they were nice to me.

@Amazonian:

Thanks for you input. Could you possibly explain why some people did still receive the mouse if Amazon isn't honoring the price mistake.

@Amazonian: If your company says it will do something, and then fails to do so, after the order has been placed, you will lose the dispute. If the customer had "approved" the price, they wouldn't have written the angry letter to this website. "I was just passing it on to someone else so I don't have to fix the problem" doesn't fly. If the company isn't going to honor its posted price, it's going to find the credit card company honoring it for them.

@Amazonian:

The problem with your explanation is that CSA #1 was authorized to speak on behalf of Amazon in addressing this issue. He or she was Amazon's employee, acting within the scope of his or her duties when promising that Amazon would honor the lower price. Amazon cannot avoid responsibility for CSA #1's mistake simply by labeling it a mistake. This is basic first-year-of-law-school agency law.

Amazon did something similar to me once before, then decided they could not honor a sale price after they sent me an incorrect item. I will never send them $1 again. Its not my fault they screwed up in shipping. I'm not surprised they're doing stuff like this.

I too became a victim of Amazon and wished I never saw that false "Amazon Promotion on the MX Mouse", because I already had ordered the MX Mouse from DELL for $40.00

I didn't click the "Amazon Link" in order to save a lousy $3.00 but because of the enticing Rebate Offer (good only for 1 day). I canceled DELL's order and bought at AMAZON.

To negate a "Promotional Rebate Item" irregardless whether there's a pricing error or not, smacks of improper sales practice and misleading advertisement to me. I was lured to amazon for a Rebate that became worthless due to Amazon.com,INC mistake. Hence Amazon should be held liable to reimburse consumers for at least the loss of the Rebate, if not more.

More curious is the fact that amazon claims it checks the price at shipment and then decides to cancel the order. So why did some people get their MX Mouse while others didn't ? Could it be that the "Pricing