I was almost taken in by a bait-and-switch type of scam normally seen on eBay. I was actually shopping on Amazon, where I normally feel much safer. Now, less so.
If I had my 1-Click purchase button active, I would be quite angry the next time I checked my bank statement. I was looking for refillable K-Cups so I can put in my own coffee, a nice dark Italian espresso I enjoy almost as much as Kona. There was a good deal for a decent version, and I added a bunch of them to my shopping cart. Wow, was I lucky I did that instead of 1-Clicking the purchase. I had to remove something that I had added earlier this week.
The total for my purchase was $8 even. The shipping total, however, was almost $200. After I popped my eyeballs back in, I slowly backed out of the shopping cart.
On eBay, you can see some amazing deals, until you spot that the shipping adds an incredible stupid amount to the purchase. Lots of eBay folks use this scam to get their products in front of you so you think the “buy it now” price is an incredible deal. After years of complaints, eBay finally changed their website so when you sort by lowest price, they include the shipping in the calculation so the scammers appear way down the list towards the end.
Apparently Amazon doesn’t do this. The coffee pods were cheap, but the third-party seller tacked on five bucks per pod to ship. Each. Now, you know if I had purchased them, I would’ve received a nice single box with all of my order in there, probably ten bucks at the very most for shipping.
Trust him, he’s on Amazon.com!
I went to Amazon customer service, and while Randell was polite, he said it was a third-party seller so Amazon wouldn’t do anything. I explained that this seemed to be an eBay bait-and-switch, and I was shopping on Amazon, where I expected to have my purchases free from this kind of tomfoolery. That’s one reason why I was shopping on Amazon. Most of my friends have their 1-Click Purchase button active. They never would’ve seen this coming until they looked at their bank statement.
I was annoyed enough that I asked Randell to turn my Prime automatic renewal off, which he did. I am heading over to Barnes and Noble to buy Carlton Mellick III‘s new book from Eraserhead Press.
If you have your 1-Click Purchase button active, I highly recommend you turn it off. It’s worth the extra minute to confirm what you’re buying and what the actual costs are. You might get scammed by a “good deal”, and Amazon couldn’t care less. They seem to be more than happy to let the bait-and-switch folks scam their low-price list and then say it’s the third party seller’s fault, even though you 1-Clicked something on Amazon and used your Amazon payment method on file.
Be safe. Don’t become complacent with places like Amazon that rely on you not noticing this kind of thing when you 1-Click Purchase something on their website.