Amazon either ran out of inventory or didn’t catch several pricing errors on their Black Friday sale until after they’d already begun to ship products, but either way a lot of customers just had their orders canceled. One customer even got tricked into re-purchasing a wireless mouse at full price because the CSR promised him Amazon would honor the sale price—then after placing the order received an email from another CSR saying that the promise was no good and he’d be charged the full $89.99. Then the CSRs continued their all-drinking, all-smoking holiday office party over at Amazon Customer Service.

The mouse was offered for $36.99 with a $30 mail-in rebate. Amazon sent an email out to many customers announcing that the mouse would be shipped late—too late for the rebate offer, in fact.

Here’s their first email to Eric:

Although our pricing policy states that we’re unable to honor the incorrectly posted price, due to the circumstances I am making a one-time exception.

I would suggest you to place a new order for Logitech MX Revolution mouse and write back to us with the order number from the link mentioned below.

Please visit the following link to provide the information we requested:

When we receive your order number, we will adjust the price for this mouse to $36.99. Also, when you contact us again from the above link, please use this mail for reference.

And here’s the follow-up he got after he went ahead and re-ordered the product as per Amazon’s instructions:

I realize that my colleague stated that they would make an exception and adjust your order to the incorrectly listed price. However, the current listed price of $89.99 for the item is correct and we cannot revert to the incorrect price. We regret that the price listed on our web site for the Logitech MX Revolution Cordless Laser Mouse was incorrect at the time you placed your order.

Another reader wrote in to tell us that he and his son ordered identical Logitech QuickCam and Logitech Cordless Mouse products on Black Friday at sale prices. A week later, his son received his order, while our reader’s order was first delayed, then canceled due to a “pricing error.” His order history has been erased and Amazon’s customer service refuses to tell him anything more about it, saying they’ve done all they can. We like to imagine that means the “delete” button for erasing order histories is really, really big and hard to press, and now they’re all exhausted from rewriting history.

(Thanks to Eric and De!)

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Discussion #1 on SlickDeals forums
Discussion #2 on SlickDeals forums
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