Amazon UK new pre-order pre-payment policy

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by imarcq, May 19, 2019.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. fabre

    fabre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    Way to go!
    I haven't placed new pre-orders with amazon and I am going to buy my records elsewhere (the only thing I've been buying there over the last year).

    I've been meaning to ask you if you have ordered from vinylgourmet.com? I saw that you are from Portugal and I have an account there but didn't order because the shipping costs to Germany are so high. Apart from that I think the prices are quite good.
     
  2. RiRiIII

    RiRiIII Forum Resident

    Location:
    Athens, Greece
    Best service from Sergio at VinylGourmet.
     
    fabre likes this.
  3. RiRiIII

    RiRiIII Forum Resident

    Location:
    Athens, Greece
    One small trick that I make use of, is to pre-order using a debit card with zero balance. If and when they decide to charge it, they will not suceed. Then they will be sending 2 or 3 reminder messages in a period of 3-5 days urging me to update the payment card. In this way I get some time so as to rethink and revaluate the pre-order without having the risk to be charged.
     
    dastinger, fabre and imarcq like this.
  4. fabre

    fabre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    Thanks for the tip, good to know. Nonetheless, I will only order if they are much cheaper than anywhere else. I am a little fed up with amazon and these changes in terms of business.
     
    imarcq likes this.
  5. dastinger

    dastinger Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portugal
    I know the owner, Sérgio and am a customer for some time now. I usually go to his place to buy. He used to have an account here and was very active. Excellent service. Shipping might be expensive, but his mailers are top notch and adds an outer sleeve if you ask.

    Pricing is also pretty good for what we usually get in Europe. Go ahead and buy, you won't be disappointed.

    I thought about that before, I'll start doing it.
     
    imarcq and fabre like this.
  6. fabre

    fabre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    Thank you both for your input! I thought so. The website is very nice just for the information alone and like you said, prices are good for all these imported stuff. It's usually much more expensive in Germany. The only downer were the shipping costs when I put some items in the basket.
    I think I will try it out when I have a little more to order than just one record, hopefully the shipping costs won't increase too much.
     
    imarcq likes this.
  7. All Down The Line

    All Down The Line The Under Asst East Coast White Label Promo Man

    Location:
    Australia
    I have never ordered from Amazon before and now doubt I ever will.
     
    imarcq likes this.
  8. garrincha

    garrincha Forum Resident

    Location:
    Plymouth, UK
    congratulations and thanks for your input
     
    imarcq likes this.
  9. All Down The Line

    All Down The Line The Under Asst East Coast White Label Promo Man

    Location:
    Australia
    No congratulations or sarcasm required.
    Like the OP has stated I think this pay in full in 5 days even if your pre order is a month or more away is lousy.
     
    RiRiIII, fabre and imarcq like this.
  10. RiRiIII

    RiRiIII Forum Resident

    Location:
    Athens, Greece
    Amazon UK has charged my card for Bill Evans in england (RSD vinyl) and the availablity date is 1-2 months aka unknown!
     
  11. imarcq

    imarcq Men are from Mars, I'm from Bromley... Thread Starter

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    That's crappy. There seems to be no consistency at all. I ordered the RSD CSNY 3LP set which has now has availability unknown and I wasn't charged. Also, so far, for the exact same King Crimson Project July pre-order I initially got charged up-front and cancelled, but when I reordered THE SAME ITEM after complaining, the 5 day window has passed with no charge!?!

    I think at this stage, all we can do is log any sneaky up-front charges here, and hopefully work out if there is any buying pattern which triggers these surprise pre-payments.

    It all seems a bit random right now! :(
     
    All Down The Line likes this.
  12. CraigVC

    CraigVC Senior Member

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    That Bill Evans RSD vinyl isn't even a pre-order, is it, as of April 13 2019 when it was released worldwide? So how the hell can Amazon UK justify taking payment for an out-of-stock item they likely will never deliver on (because we all know how tough it is to score one of the limited copies of that LP available)?

    By the way, here is my information to add to the mix, in case there are any patterns to be detected other than "random" ...

    I have two open pre-orders on Amazon.co.uk, neither of which has been charged to my credit card yet. One pre-order was placed on April 13 for an item to be released on June 7. The other pre-order was placed on April 24 for an item to be released on June 14.

    Craig.
     
  13. dastinger

    dastinger Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portugal
    I tried creating a virtual credit card with only €5 and use it to pre-order Mr. Shing-a-Ling again and immediately got an e-mail from Amazon.fr stating that payment was declined. So, they either sent an authorization request that got rejected or they immediately tried to charge my card (which I find unlikely since they were adamant regarding the 5 day rule). Just letting you all know that this method does not seem to work well. Not sure what I'm doing wrong compared to what @RiRiIII is doing.
     
    Luisboa and imarcq like this.
  14. garrincha

    garrincha Forum Resident

    Location:
    Plymouth, UK
    hmm, this is very strange. there seems to be a 50/50 split of those who are being charged after 5 days and those who are just being charged once the item is despatched. I am in the latter at time of writing, fwiw

    would be interesting to get to the bottom of why some are being screwed and some ain't

    what we've already established:

    - it has nothing to do with being a prime member or not
    - it is not limited to Amazon UK - although nothing to suggest Amazon.com customers are getting hit. would be good if others could chime in from Amazon FR/Can/It etc, to see if we can establish whether this is being rolled out across the board, or limited to certain countries
    - it doesn't appear to matter whether you are using a debit or credit card

    my guess at this point - and I could be waaaaay off, is that this is some sort of glitch or anomaly and WILL NOT become a new policy. I appreciate folk have chatted to customer services and have been advised that this is now standard practice, but honestly, these guys will tell you anything to get you off the phone. if they don't know, they'll generally make stuff up to get rid of you.

    I can't believe something as big as this would have been rolled out on the sly, but I guess we will see.

    as an aside, and I think this is worth mentioning - most of the vinyl/cd's that I pre-order from other companies take the money out of your account immediately, sometimes months in advance - so if Amazon are changing their policy, as much as a ball ache as it obviously will be, in theory, they are only really bringing their pre-order policy in line with most other providers. guess we've got so used to the 'buy now, pay later' offer with Amazon, that we just assumed it would be a given for life.

    again - we will see
     
    imarcq likes this.
  15. imarcq

    imarcq Men are from Mars, I'm from Bromley... Thread Starter

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    It might be those earlier dates were in April? I had some older pre-orders that didn't get charged for. My CSNY wasn't a preorder, so exact same deal as your Bill Evans, in that it's out of stock and may not be in stock any time soon, if at all. You got charged, I didn't. Weird eh?
     
  16. imarcq

    imarcq Men are from Mars, I'm from Bromley... Thread Starter

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    Just to reiterate....I initially spoke to first contact call centre monkeys, didn't believe them, asked to speak to a manager. Two different ones called back, and one sent me the email I posted here. Seems weird that a variety of staff all said the same regarding the 5 day pre-charge.

    I agree, as you say that others DO charge up-front for pre-orders, BUT you know they are going to and can insure you have funds available to cover the transaction. This Amazon mess seems a bit random, so you could be caught out and unexpectedly overdraw your account. As long as they are upfront about terms of payment I'm happy. Just don't like surprises that could cost me extra bank fees. Some of these box sets cost £100s so it could easily bust my agreed overdraft if I don't check. So definitely not cool.
     
    Last edited: May 29, 2019
    All Down The Line and garrincha like this.
  17. Dubmart

    Dubmart Senior Member

    Location:
    Bristol, England
    My Bill Evans is showing as arriving 6th June - 16th July, haven't been charged for it yet!

    I have just discovered that if you have a pre-order from before they changed policy and you decide to change the card you are using they will immediately charge the new card, I'll leave my other couple of orders as they are especially as the release dates are somewhat vague and I'm not lending Bezos money for free whilst I pay interest on it and don't have what I've paid for.
     
    imarcq and RiRiIII like this.
  18. dastinger

    dastinger Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portugal
    I do agree that this happens, but it doesn't seem to be the case. It would be a really long shot that reps from different european Amazon stores are saying the exact same thing with the exact same speech. I mean, in my case, all they'd need to do was "Due to a technical error, you got wrongly charged. We issued a refund and you will be charged again when the item ships". And, again, even if they were just making up some excuse, how probable would it be that they all said the same thing with the exact same speech and number of days?

    I confirm that this is happening on Amazon.fr. I may try ordering something from Amazon.it to confirm, but I'd need to find something as cheap as anywhere else. I have a list of records I want to pre-order and most were pre-ordered on Amazon.fr.
     
    garrincha and imarcq like this.
  19. aperfecttool

    aperfecttool Ænimic \m/

    Location:
    RDU, NC, USA
    I chatted with another rep today about my pre-order for the upcoming King Crimson Heaven/Hell box-set (releases on June 7th), they did confirm that once Amazon confirms the order amount from their supplier all pre-orders will be charged after the 5th day, my order date was May 15th and my card got charged for the full amount on May 21st. She said it is the new policy moving forward as lot of customers' cards would get declined in the old system at the time of shipment so either the customer would not get the item or Amazon would be stuck with supply for a longer time or Amazon would ship the item and would go through the hassle of either recovering the item or the amount and incur additional expenses. But the confusing part is I have another pre-order for the ZZ Top vinyl box that releases on Aug 16th which I pre-ordered on May 18th but I have not been charged for that one yet o_O
     
    Jonpd and imarcq like this.
  20. dastinger

    dastinger Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portugal
    I posted this on the Tone Poet thread, but I'll leave it here as well:

     
  21. imarcq

    imarcq Men are from Mars, I'm from Bromley... Thread Starter

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    It's made me think twice about doing any pre-ordering. It was useful before, as you could have a few in place across the different Amazon stores and just cancel the worse deals! However I did have a pre-order for the Blamanche 6LP box at £42. I cancelled. It then went up to £50 pre-release but when I checked again today it was £40. So pre-ordering isn't always the way to go.
     
    Dubmart likes this.
  22. imarcq

    imarcq Men are from Mars, I'm from Bromley... Thread Starter

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    It's a joke! One hand doesn't know what the other is doing.
     
    dastinger likes this.
  23. Anthrax

    Anthrax Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    Even allowing for poor in-company coordination between departments/branches, it's been about two weeks that this has been going on. That's a long time. The new policy SHOULD already be clearly stated on Amazon's websites and communications. But it just isn't.

    What the f@ck are they playing at?
     
    imarcq likes this.
  24. All Down The Line

    All Down The Line The Under Asst East Coast White Label Promo Man

    Location:
    Australia
    Subterfuge?
     
    imarcq likes this.
  25. Dubmart

    Dubmart Senior Member

    Location:
    Bristol, England
    Here's a new twist, I'm currently not a Prime member so my pre-orders have tended to be shipped five days after release date and that's what has been stated on the Amazon page, I've just had shipping notification for an order that isn't released until tomorrow and I was expecting to arrive late next week, perhaps the taking payment in advance means they will be shipping as soon as they have stock although that does remove one advantage of Prime so who knows.
     
    imarcq likes this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine