[ericmuyser]

I doubt they will cancel the orders. Amazon lives by customer service. They seem to just write off their mistakes directly from revenue. I learned this when I was scammed for a $5000 and Amazon let the scammer keep, refunded me and closed the issue in one fell swoop.

[judge2020]

This probably plays into the antitrust issues.

Amazon is so big that they can drop probably $200,000+ In revenue in exchange for news articles like this one and to let users know Amazon always takes their side.

Say a new non-unicorn competitor joins the e-commerce space. They can't afford to burn money like Amazon can, so disputes are treated on a case-by-case basis with investigating sometimes taking weeks before choosing whether or not to side with and refund the customer or not. This causes:

1. People don't think this competitor cares about them/sides with them as much as Amazon does since support cases take a long time 2. People get angry when eventually they don't get their refund (since Amazon will courtesy refund long time prime customers often with no questions asked) and post about it online [with a warped story in their favor]

Suddenly people stop buying from this company because there isn't a 99.5% chance that the company will refund any future fraud or mishaps. Why take the chance buying from them if Amazon is known to always do whatever it takes to keep you happy?

This is a prime example of how eBay works as well. Maybe this has recently changed, but as a seller, ebay is commonly known to always side with the buyer in disputes unless the seller can prove the buyer's claim wrong. This is largely to prevent eBay from receiving a name of a service where you can get scammed easily (whether or not this has achieved the desired effect is another story).

[dodobirdlord]

> Suddenly people stop buying from this company because there isn't a 99.5% chance that the company will refund any future fraud or mishaps.

In this scenario one company offers a better product via a better customer experience. Simply being able to offer a better product because of scale is now enough to get people talking about antitrust issues. Not everything is an antitrust issue. It's really starting to grate on me that it's impossible these days for a title to have "Amazon" in it and nobody to be down in the comment section grinding an axe about trust-busting. Is it an antitrust issue that Amazon can hire better lawyers if they get sued? Is it an antitrust issue that Amazon can afford to staff enough customer support employees to process all of their complaints in a timely manner?

[okcando]

This complaint is closely related to the idea that selling a product at below-cost is anticompetitive, and that does have basis in antitrust law.

The idea that customer service can be a "product" run at a loss to gain an unfair advantage is at least a little compelling. I don't know if it has merit but it's an interesting question.

[judge2020]

As it is/was with oil, the only real issues are when they're used to harm the consumer after the companies that under-sold their product later sells their product for much more or otherwise harms the consumer.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing?wprov=sfti1

[Can_Not]

> It's really starting to grate on me that it's impossible these days for a title to have "Amazon" in it and nobody to be down in the comment section grinding an axe about trust-busting

How do walk right into text book examples of modern antitrust issues and get mad people notice?

No, of course none of the strawmen are the issue, it's their vertical and horizontal sizes that break the theoretical math of competitive markets and the use of their weight to enforce their hegemonic authoritarianism on/against municipalities and small businesses.

[bogwog]

They'll definitely cancel the orders. I once got a coupon from them for 50% off my first Prime Now order, and tried to buy $1000 worth of electronics for $500. They just canceled it and didn't even let me keep the coupon.

[samstave]

I canceled my prime subscription, but they charged me anyway..

I called and got a refund, but I also told them I wanted a $25 'convenience fee' --

They paid it.

[bogwog]

Now that sounds like a made up story

[samstave]

Completely true.

The issue was that the prime was a $99 charge and I just paid rent. Their $99 made my account go negative and I got an overdraft fee.

So I told Amazon I wanted a convenice fee for my time having to call them and to pay me the overdraft fee.

The guy put me on hold for a few minutes - then came back and agreed. and I got my $99 plus $25 that I asked for.

[daenz]

Seems like relatively cheap viral marketing for Prime Day, honestly.

[turtlecloud]

No it happened to me before where I ordered a 10TB drive for $60 when going rate was somewhere around $350 at that time. I only ordered one and then they canceled and gave me $20 gift card.

[sombremesa]

That used to be the case, but Amazon is no longer as customer centric as it used to be. Still a heck of a lot better than Google, but that isn't saying much.

Source: received an incorrect item from Amazon (women's briefs instead of a set of pens!), later told that the pens I'd ordered were now out of stock so I was just S.O.L.

[blackoil]

Did they refund the money?

[rwc]

Amazon is less customer-friendly than ever before. They refused to adjust a TV I purchased 7 days ago to the Prime Day pricing which was $400 off. The only solution according to them was to purchase another TV at the Prime pricing and return the original. That's unfriendly to the customer, it's unfriendly to the planet, and it's unfriendly to Amazon's bottom line. An all-around disaster.

[zrobotics]

Not trying to pick a fight, I'm genuinely curious- why should Amazon be expected to do that? Even with their attitude for good customer service, if you purchased an item a week ago why should they give you money now because it is on sale? Prime day isn't exactly a secret, I would say the fair argument here is that you wanted a TV in a hurry and weren't interested in waiting for the sale. Otherwise, should they also refund me 60% of the 2k I spent 2 years ago on my last desktop PC?

[my_username_is_]

If it's still within the return window for the product, it seems perfectly reasonable to honor the discount. Amazon would actually save money by doing this, because they're not incurring the costs of the additional delivery or return.

[kadoban]

They should do it because they'd have to do it anyway, just with a lot of nonsense in between with shipping, if the customer insists and does the return.

The difference with your 2 year old PC is that nobody has a 2 year return window.

[rwc]

It's standard practice in retail that price adjustments are made if a price cut happens within the return period of the purchase.

[zrobotics]

This starts to make sense to me after reading the sister comments. Within the return period, environmentally it does make sense (CO2 costs of shipping a large TV aren't negligible). I may not be savvy enough, if I see an item I bought on sale I don't think "I should return this and buy the same item" but it does make perfect sense to do so.

If i see an item I bought on sale I think "damn, I missed out", but a rational consumer (economics sense) would think "I should return this and buy another". I just approached the question from my typical viewpoint, which is "you buy it, you own it" and not expecting any additional customer support.

That, and social anxiety means I would be far more comfortable paying the extra $400 than bugging an associate for a refund.

[astura]

Amazon always had an official "we don't price match" policy. The price matching they did was always unofficial, but it's long gone now.

Some credit cards have price protection so if you paid with one of those, take advantage of it, it's really pretty easy!

[imajoo]

Wow.. that's odd. I remember when they changed their price matching policy to no longer price match, but I thought TV's were still eligible, but I guess now even that's changed..

[cthalupa]

Were they both sold by the same vendor?