Back before Christmas, I ordered a product from Amazon that was to be a gift for my husband. The page said that the order wasn’t going to ship in time for Christmas.
It was $139.99 with free shipping.
I looked around on the web before ordering and found that Amazon’s price for the item (a light therapy box) was significantly cheaper than any other site. I also found that Amazon had two listings for the same product, one at $139.99 and the other at $179.99. I was puzzled, but ordered the cheaper one.
On January 11, I get an email from Amazon saying there was a delay in my order and the new shipping date would be the end of March. I went to the site and found that only one listing still existed on Amazon, the $179.99 listing, and that it claimed usually to ship in 1-2 weeks.
I okayed the delay. Today I got an email that my item has shipped.
So, were they trying to scare me away from that order? Am I being unnecessarily suspicious? It won’t make me not buy from them in the future even if it’s true, I’m just curious if it sounds like a ploy.
It’s not uncommon to find the same product for a lower price on Amazon. Whenever I want a particular book, I always search for it in their bargain section. I’ve been righteously pissed when I noticed I had bought a book for full price in the regular book section, and then later discovered it in the bargain section for significantly less.
If you want to call it a rip-off, I wouldn’t much argue. Personally, I think all of the products should show all available prices, rather than having to go look for them.
Amazon usually has pretty good customer service. I’d bet if you sent off an e-mail complaining about this, they might offer you some sort of compensation. With only one exception, that’s what they’ve done when I had issues with them in the past.
I found that Amazon was a total mess this year. I tried to order “March of the Penguins” and was told that it would be weeks to ship - though it was in the stores (at the same price) the next day. My wife had an order that was supposed to be ready to ship in days take weeks. I suspect that they try to scare you when you choose free shipping in order to make you pay to get faster service, but I’m not sure. That’s been common every year - the other mixups I’ve never experienced before.
My orders from Amazon used to arrive in 2 - 3 days. When they switched to Prime (I didn’t purchase that service), my items started taking a week + to arrive. I haven’t patronized them since the summer.
The bargin books and the regular books are two different things. You’ll see that at Borders and B&N too. The bargin books are usually remainders sold to the bookstores for cheap and handled differently from the books kept in the regular stock.
Amazon got some press a while back about their pricing system. Different customers would get different prices depending on their buying habits. But I thought (can’t remember for sure) that Amazon said it was something they were testing and discontinued the practice.
I don’t think they were trying to scare you away. Sounds like they had a deal with the same product tracked differently (like remainders above), ran out of the “deal” ones, and so had notified you about the wait. I’ve found they usually overestimate how long the delay will be.
I haven’t noticed much of a shipping problem with Amazon. They did offer me 3 months of free Prime last month and it totally rocks, BTW. I get books almost overnight and I don’t have to worry about grouping things. Works out to less than $7 a month so I’m totally gonna sign up for it.
the problem is most likely that the 2 books have 2 different barcodes (2 differente SKUs (stock keeping units)) … for you they are the same thing… for a computer system they have nothing in common