E-Commerce Invoicing, Billing and then...Cancellation?

This understandably irate Anonymous Coward asks: "I recently ordered some memory from an on-line retailer for an insanely good price. It turns out that the price was *too* good -- claiming ' a mistake' they backed out of the order (I had assumed 'crazy promotion' and ended up buying other stuff as part of the order). However, not only did their cancellation come after I'd received a full invoice AND receipt, but my credit card had already been billed. Adding insult-to-injury, since I live in Canada, once they had refunded my CC amount, I was out a few bucks on exchange rates and fees! This isn't the first case of this I've seen - buy.com seems to get into price 'mistake' fiascos all the time, and Argos in the UK had a TV-for-3-pounds gong show last year. But where does the responsibility lie? In my case, I'd been fully invoiced, charged, and receipted before the cancellation. IANAL, but isn't there some point at which the invoice becomes legally binding? I do know the old bit about 'if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is' but I also know that if I sign an invoice or click that 'I Agree' button, I'm in a contract. Shouldn't the other party be, too?"

Did the order ship?

[Psycho S. Illusion]

Thats interesting that they charged your credit card -- merchant policy about this is fairly clear: the seller cannot "settle" on your card until the merchandise has shipped. To settle on the card before the goods have been shipped is a fairly major breach of their merchant agreement.

I'm assuming one of two things: 1. the seller is a US Corp or has a merchant account based in the US, or that the credit card policies are similar world-wide. (Yeah, big assumption, I know, so you can skip the US-centric flames...)

It'd be interesting to mention that bit to your issuing bank and see what they do...

IANAL or anything, I just write software that processes credit cards...
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Buy.com

[NetJunkie]

Everyone sure does come down on buy.com for that monitor mistake. I thought they did a great thing when they fullfilled as many orders as they could. Get over it. I buy stuff from them a LOT, and have had nothing but good service.

Letter from Amazon.com

[Siqnal 11]

Dear potential Class Action Lawsuit participant, Thank you for your recent purchase. As you are aware, our Market-droids recently came up a plan for ripping-off our customers without them being aware of it. As we are desperately out of touch with public opinion, and woefully ignorant of illegal trading practices, we decided to implement their plan. Unfortunately someone spotted this and we're now in some really deep shit. In an effort to place some spin on this situation, we're refunding the money that we ripped you off for. Not only that, but we promise that if you notice us ripping you off in the future, we'll refund that money too. We value your business and appreciate your trust; after all, without your complete and total trust we'd never have a hope of pulling off anything as underhanded as this. We hope that you will continue shopping with us. Really. We need your business, 'cos we're hemorrhaging cash faster than we can possibly hope to sustain and sooner or later our Venture Capitalists are going to notice. Hugs and kisses, Amazon.com P.S. You're not using any '1-Click' technology in any of your software, are you?


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talk to your credit card company

[scotpurl]

Get your credit card company involved. How is it you're out money when you didn't get _anything_ from them?

Even if the exchange rate did vary widely, and in your favor, you don't think they'd suddenly refund you more than what they billed you?

Me smell rat.

Re:talk to your credit card company

[Imabug]

the money he mentioned he's out of is probably a result of foreign exchange fees that credit card companies have taken to charging lately for any money transactions that don't occur in the card's native currency.

imabug

me too...

[stylewagon]

I've had a similar sitch happen to me. I ordered a new monitor from a company here in AU. Their site said they were in-stock, they confirmed the delivery date/time/loc - then called me to say that they were no longer in stock and wouldn't be restocked for another 3 weeks...

That night my ccard was billed for the invoice total.

I then cancelled my order and waited 5 days before my refund came. Called to complain/get a rocket up 'em - and was told that the finance guy was home sick and that nobody else can could initiate the refund payment. [cue smoke from ears]

I then decided to buy from another company. Ordered and arranged delivery on a Saturday morning. Waited all morning for the courier to arrive - and he didn't. Called the company - the couriers knock off at 12pm (it's now 12:30pm) - "they're not answering their phone and we have no after hours contact telephone number... Could I wait until Monday?"

I rearranged it to be delivered the following Tuesday. Sure enough it turned up on Monday night... And the bloke had the nerve to complain that, while delivering my monitor, he was missing the Olympics...

I won't even mention the story about Network Solutions double charging me for a domain registration.

Still, due to the miserable AUD I might end up making a few bucks out of it...

With the gift of hindsight:

:: Always ring and check that 'in-stock' actually means it's sitting in the warehouse.

:: Online shopping is a myth (in AU anyway) - in all my experiences, the gains to be made by ordering over the internet have been shot to bits by having to phone customer support when things - as they always have for me - go wrong.

Buyer beware...

sometimes it works!

[kongstad]

A collegue of mine was looking for a router when he came upon a site that sold an Intel 550T routing switch for $35!

The price from the week earlier was $2300!

He ordered include a switch with his total order, and received it a week later! He later sold the switch fro $1200. Neat little profit!

I tried to order one a week later, but it was out of stock (big surprise).

when they got a new shipment and were ready to send the switch they noticed the error and cancelled my order :(

Re:Did the order ship?

[Elvis Maximus]

merchant policy about this is fairly clear: the seller cannot "settle" on your card until the merchandise has shipped.

I think the key words there are "merchant policy." If I'm not mistaken, this is a policy matter that differs from merchant to merchant. If anybody knows otherwise, I would love some details.

I took particular interest in this recently because Amazon.com charged my credit card for a significant amount about three weeks before shipping an order I made (and when they said they shipped it, they were lying, which I found pretty shocking). I looked around, but I could not find anything to cite that said they didn't have the right to do this. The ABA runs a pretty helpful shoppers' rights site [safeshopping.org], but it did not speak to this issue.

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