Brent says an Amazon billing snafu gave him two free MP3s then sent him an email saying the transaction was canceled. By the time Amazon had shut down the order Brent had already downloaded his songs. He has a theory as to why the muck-up occurred:

This morning I downloaded two $0.99 mp3s from Amazon. No problem. Several hours later, however, I received the following email from Amazon stating that my order was being canceled because the method of payment wasn’t valid.

Hmm. I already have the product, so of course they can’t really cancel it.

The problem stems from me having two debit cards listed on my Amazon account: My recently canceled debit card, and my new active card. For some reason Amazon processed the digital download using my old card, but never used the second card as a backup method of payment the way Paypal would.

Anyhow, I’m wondering how vulnerable Amazon would be to large-scale digital theft. What if I’d downloaded hundreds of digital albums instead of two mp3s?

My bank account wasn’t charged, btw. And, yes, I’m updating my primary payment method now in case Amazon still wants their $1.98.

Has anything like this ever happened to you? What do you think Brent is on the moral hook to do to make sure Amazon gets its money?

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