Amazon.com has some CRAZY CD PRICES right now!!!

They sent me an NSX. Now I'm getting hounded by Seinfeld and Leno.

 

Actually, this had occurred to me, but I was trying not to be paranoid. I haven't checked all the items in the past couple days, but I know that some of them have been out of stock. Some of the Dylan CDs were out of stock when I placed the order last week. It seems strange that they would have such difficulty getting them in, but I'll have to see what the item pages say.

 

Such drama,

Seriously though. Amazon is a pretty good E-tailer in my experience. Actually they can
be considered an E-Wholesaler. I would also add that in my many years in dealing with
Amazon and we buy 90% of everything we need from them, they've never pulled a
bait and switch and have always gone the extra mile in trying to keep us happy and coming back.

As a result, we keep giving them business.

This is my personal experience in dealing with Amazon.

 

Well, I sent an email to Amazon earlier today about two items from my order placed during the misprice period that were showing as being in stock on the website but I kept getting delayed shipping notices and got this as a response:

"Your order for these items had been stuck as there was an error with our price on the website.

The actual cost of the items were $12.99, but the price reflecting on the website when you placed the order was $2.60.

However we have corrected it on our website.

We will still honor the price of $2.60 for both of these items for you.

We have worked to resolve the technical issue with this order and these two items will ship soon.

Your new estimated delivery date is February 15, 2012.

I hope this helps. We hope to see you again. Have a nice day !"

Soon after I got the shipping notices for the two items, so it appears that they had intended to cancel the items but had a glitch in the system which put them in limbo.

So if you have been getting the delayed shipping messages, you may want to go ahead and write them.

BTW - I'm not trying to say that Amazon is a bad E-tailer and don't really run into much if any problems in buying from them except for how they used to package records. Matter of fact, I think that they set the high bar for online shopping. However, I do believe that they sometimes are less than forthright when it comes to price mistakes and how they deal with them. I've had items cancelled by Amazon due to priceing mistakes and that doesn't bother me. It does bother me when an item gets placed in a loop until one of us blinks.

 

I chatted online with someone at Amazon this evening about my outstanding orders. 10 of the 11 discs are in stock, so I asked Amazon to ship those 10 now. As expected, the person at Amazon said that the orders were delayed due to a pricing error. Again I pushed for the 10 discs to ship now. He then said that he needed to turn this over to a "special team" and that he would e-mail me in a few hours. I figured that meant I would get cancellation notices in a few hours, so I called him on it. He assured me he wasn't going to cancel the orders.

Then I cited your experience today where you got the person to process your order right away -- no "special team", no e-mail in a few hours. That got him moving. He proceeded to upgrade my orders to overnight shipping. I am now supposed to get discs tomorrow, Saturday, and Monday. Of course, none of this prevents them from delaying my orders further. I doubt I'll get anything tomorrow.

 

If the items were in stock, I'll bet that you do get them at the speed they indicated. Congratulations!

 

Thanks, but I'm still skeptical. One CD was upgraded Thursday evening to overnight shipping for Friday delivery. It hasn't shipped yet. It's not going to arrive Friday, and there's been no e-mail message announcing a new delivery date. I'm afraid that the guy just upgraded everything to overnight shipping, but we're just going to keep playing the delay game.

 

Here we go!

I have one outstanding order of four CDs. All four CDs are in stock, but they keep delaying the shipment. Before I started the online chat with Amazon last evening (outlined in a previous post), the four CDs were slated for two-day delivery on Monday. With Prime, two-day free delivery meant they would have had to have shipped yesterday (Thursday). Anyway, pushing Amazon to ship them since they were in stock, I got them to upgrade all four CDs to free overnight delivery. They then broke up delivery as one CD on Friday, two on Saturday, and one on Monday.

Of course, this happened Thursday evening, so I couldn't see how they would get me the one CD by Friday. Lo and behold, I got a delay notice this morning. That CD is now slated for delivery on Monday. Now, the CD was upgraded for free overnight delivery. That means they could ship it today for delivery tomorrow. As stated, two CDs from the order are already slated for delivery tomorrow. Why not deliver this other one tomorrow, too?

I bet all of these CDs will be delayed further. Thus, I'm not expecting anything tomorrow or Monday. As stated in the quoted post above, they upgraded the shipping to make me feel like they were doing something for me, but I expect the delay game to continue.

 

I'm getting the "Approval Required" shipping delays, too. I have to daily approve four batches of "backorders" that are actually in stock.

 

It's amazing that Amazon actually plays these games. Keep delaying orders of in-stock items hoping you will cancel before they do? You get the impression they are never going to ship these items. When I chatted online with someone at Amazon last night, they said my orders were delayed due to pricing errors. They never explained what the purpose of the delay was or what was going to be done to change the order status. It wasn't until I pushed the issue that they volunteered to upgrade the outstanding orders to free overnight shipping. Of course, that means nothing if the status of the orders is still delayed due to pricing errors. I expect more delay notices, meaning another online chat session or perhaps a phone call.

Weird.

 

I have 16 CD's that are still showing with a delivery estimate of tomorrow at the latest -
never got a delay notice. they were previously marked as 'shipping soon' and now showing as 'not yet shipped' - ?
should I say something or see if they ship today?

 

Did you pay for overnight shipping? That's $3.99 per CD, so I doubt you paid for that. Therefore, you aren't getting your CDs tomorrow. Expect a delay notice sometime today. Amazon has been sending out these delay notices much later than they would under normal circumstances. There is nothing normal about the way Amazon is handling these orders. They are obviously flagged, and Amazon is playing games. As someone suggested, they are probably hoping you will give up and cancel the order before they do. Without pushing them, I doubt they will ever ship it.

When I placed my orders last week, a bunch of CDs shipped right way like any normal order. A handful of CDs were cancelled the next day. I don't understand why there are outstanding orders and why they are being handled differently. They either should have shipped the remaining discs that were in stock right away or cancelled all the outstanding orders right away. Why the games?

 

it's strange - I selected 'super saver' so I guess we'll see what happens.
I did get 8 other cd's from the order last week.

 

I'm in the same situation, Dave. Except I haven't received any discs yet.

 

This has nothing to do with the CD price issue, but it seems somewhat related so I'll here.

How long do you feel is an appropriated amount of time to wait for them to ship an in stock item using supersaver. I order a $180 software package on Monday and it's still saying "Shipping Soon". I don't think I have ever waited this long for them to ship an item.

 

I'd either call or email them (I seem to do better with email but it's a YMMV situation). Was there anything else in the order that might have held it up? Otherwise it should have shipped by now if it was in stock.

 

Sorry that they appear to still be playing games with you. My dealings with them on this issue were via email as I never seem to get anywhere via phone and it keeps an accurate record of things should I need to communicate further. As for the delay issue, I was told in one of the emails that I had gotten from Amazon on something like this which happened earlier that the delay was due to the system trying to find a price from a supplier that was lower than what I had paid for it or closer than they could currently get. I don't claim to know the inter workings of Amazon's programming to say if that was a line hooey or if their buying systems are that sophisticated but it kind of makes sense. They're trying to eliminate or lower the loss that they'll take by honoring the price. If they can't reach whatever that number is in a certain period of time, the item gets cancelled by the system. Unless you've gone ahead and cancelled it yourself.

I'd try using email rather than phoning or chatting to explain what has happened so far and ask them to follow through on shipping the items as you were told earlier.

 

Thanks. I suppose there are any number of reasons as to why the pricing error occurred. Regardless, it's their screw-up, and they shouldn't jerk us around over it.

Your suggestion of communicating with them by e-mail is reasonable, but I was hoping to get the matter resolved quickly via chat.

This is ridiculous. Two CDs are showing as being delivered tomorrow, but they haven't shipped yet. They were moved up last evening from delivery Monday to delivery tomorrow, with free one-day shipping. What horsecrap.

 

Nope just one software package. It's not even a cd just an activation code in a box. Says they have 4 in stock and has said "shipping soon" for 5 days now.

 

Another chat session with no resolution. The matter has been forwarded to their "Escalation Team" and I will get an e-mail response at some point. That e-mail response will obviously be a cancellation notice. At least it will be resolved once and for all.

 

Keith, I've made no contact (yet), and everything (19 cds) are said to be arriving here no later than Saturday. And nothing has been shipped. Weird because last week they sent me a "good news, your order will arrive sooner" emails. Not sure if I should email them or not.

 

Success!

After the above mess via online chat, I received an automated e-mail asking me to rate my experience. There was a link in the e-mail to click if I was satisfied and a link to click if I was unsatisfied. Obviously, I clicked the second link. There, I got to explain the problem, so I outlined the issue with endless delays, false promises with upgraded shipping, etc. Just before I submitted the negative feedback, I noticed a statement saying that I would have an opportunity to discuss the matter further with customer service by phone. So on the next screen, I provided my phone number and asked Amazon to call me right away.

Amazon called right away. The call was from a 206 number (Seattle area), which I hoped would be an improvement over the folks I had chatted with. I explained the issue to a very nice lady and gave her the three order numbers that covered the 11 CDs that wouldn't ship. She proceeded to create a new order for the 11 CDs at no charge, and she upgraded me to free one-day shipping! She then cancelled the original orders.

The 11 CDs are listed as Shipping Soon and should arrive on Tuesday.

 

Now I can stop my boycott and order from them.

 

Here we go again...

Hello,

We're writing about the order you placed on February 01, 2012 (Order# XXX-XXXXXXX-XXXXXXX). Unfortunately, we are unable to ship the item(s) as soon as we expected and need to provide you with a new estimate of when the item(s) may be delivered:

Bob Dylan "Highway 61 Revisited (Reis)"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Thelonious Monk "Monk Alone: The Complete Solo Studio Recordings of Thelonious Monk 1962-1968"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Bob Dylan "Nashville Skyline (Reis)"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Simon & Garfunkel "Bridge Over Troubled Water (40th Anniversary Edition) (1 CD/1 DVD)"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Wind & Fire Earth "The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol.1"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Charles Mingus "Mingus Ah Um"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Bob Dylan "Freewheelin Bob Dylan (Reis)"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Kate Bush "Aerial"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
The Hollies "The Hollies' Greatest Hits"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Byrds "The Byrds - Greatest Hits"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Miles Davis "Kind of Blue"
New Delivery Estimate: February 16, 2012 - February 22, 2012
Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble "Texas Flood"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Michael Jackson "Bad (Spec)"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Simon & Garfunkel "Sounds of Silence"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Bob Dylan "John Wesley Harding (Reis)"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Donovan "Donovan's Greatest Hits"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Johnny Cash "At Folsom Prison"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Santana "Abraxas"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012
Harry Nilsson "Nilsson Schmilsson"
New Delivery Estimate: February 17, 2012 - February 23, 2012

We will make every effort to get the delayed item(s) to you as soon as possible.​

Well, at least there's no mention of them canceling the order. But they do go on to explain how I can cancel it...

 

Not to burst your bubble, but Amazon did that for me twice in the past several days ago and the dates passed with no shipping notices. Now they want me to answer an email acknowledging that there will be further delays. I am on the phone with them right now waiting to speak to a supervisor's manager. The supervisor said that there is a block on these orders that does not allow any changes other than upgraded shipping. She also said the CDs are in stock but will not be shipped nor will the orders be cancelled. Limbo.