Bad Amazon. Bad.

For the very first time ever, Amazon.com has let me down.

Last week I sat down and painstakingly researched all of my textbooks for the upcoming semester, to figure out what was cheapest:

1. Buy from school bookstore, to sell later on Amazon marketplace
2. Rent from school bookstore
3.  Buy from Amazon.com
4. Buy from an amazon seller who will charge shipping

So I did the maths (I like the word "maths", plural. I don't know if it's correct to use in that context but I'm doing it anyway).  I did the maths and it was mixed, some of each option.  So I made my selections, and clicked "Checkout."

It's been nearly a week, selected the slower but free "super saver shipping", and I figured my order was plodding along somewhere, until I got this email today:

Due to a lack of availability, we will not be able to obtain the following item(s) from your order:

  Bernard F. Evans "Lazarus at the Table: Catholic and Social Justice"
  Albert C. Baugh, Thomas Cable "A History of the English Language, Fifth Edition"
  Robert MacNeil, William Cran "Do You Speak American?"
  Decimus Junis Juvenalis, Rolfe Humphries "The Satires of Juvenal"

We've canceled the item(s) and apologize for the inconvenience. If you see a charge for the canceled item, we will refund you within 1-2 business days.
    
If you are still interested in purchasing this item, it may be available from other sellers.  
If you took advantage of a promotional offer when placing this order, this cancellation may affect your order's eligibility for that offer. If this is the case, please contact customer service


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Note that all of these books listed above were to be shipped BY AMAZON.

Not all of them may have been owned by Amazon.

Amazon has a lot of different crazy ways to offer products.  I learned this after having signed up to sell some used books through their "marketplace".  There are basically three modes of retail:

1. Amazon purchases the product at wholesale, warehouses it, and ships it. This was the original retail model.

2.  An independent seller (like me) can sign up to have their book listed as a new or used option on a product's page.  When it sells, I ship it directly to the customer, and Amazon deducts a hefty percentage of fees and stuff from the sale before passing along some $ to me.   When customers consider buying a book from me, they are made aware that shipping costs $4 and the item would not qualify for Super Saver Shipping for orders over $25.

3.  An independent seller can sign up to have their book listed through Amazon, and ALSO ships that book TO amazon to be stored in the warehouse.  When the item sells, Amazon plucks it out of their warehouse and ships it, and charges the seller fees.  On top of the normal fees, the seller also pays a monthly "warehousing" fee.  This is what happens when you see a book or product that says "Sold by So-and-So, fulfilled by Amazon."   These items, warehoused by Amazon, also qualify for the free Super Saver Shipping.

These four books I ordered were all going to be fulfilled by Amazon.   I ordered more books than listed here, by the way.

1.  When I ordered, the books were listed as in stock, and to be shipped by Amazon.
2.  Nearly a week has passed, and now Amazon has realized they don't actually have the books in their warehouse?
3.  Notice they say" If you took advantage of a promotional offer when placing this order, this cancellation may affect your order's eligibility for that offer."  Excuse me?  This was your mistake.  Not only do I now have to go about compiling a new order, and will not get my books by the date expected, but you're telling me I could be punished monetarily by YOUR failure to complete my order?  Does this mean I won't get free shipping on the rest of my order?  THAT is not good customer service! 

I fail to understand how this happened.   I could see there being a mistake with one book.  Inventory is a difficult animal to keep under control.   But on FOUR books from the same order?  

I could see a larger system glitch happening, that might not have kept inventory availability real-time, resulting in a situation where orders exceeded availability.  After all, these are all textbooks, so it's very possible that a lot of other eager students hoping to save money have also ordered early in August as soon as they got their hands on their syllabi. 

But, DAMN, Amazon. 

I had just finished writing some product reviews on Amazon mere moments before reading the email.  Just cause I like to be helpful.  Product reviews are so incredibly helpful before buying something that I hesitate to buy new things in brick-and-mortar stores anymore, without first reading Amazon reviews.   I'm grateful that people take the time to write reviews, good and bad, so I try to do the same. 

Bad Amazon.  Bad!  If they had said "we had a computer error, you need to place your order again, we are sorry, here's a coupon or a gift certificate", I would be less miffed.  

You know, I haven't had a very good track record with purchases this year.  Everything I've bought has broken, or just plain sucked, or I felt like I got really bad service.   

I'm not even a cranky customer.   If I were like one of the people featured on notalwaysright.com, I would be totally unglued by now.