amazon.com credit card fraud, bait and switch Internet

I have done a lot of business with Amazon.com. Have always thought of them as reliable and honest, and have made the appearance of going out of their way for a long time. Unfortunately, today I got a reality check in which I discovered that a lot of those times I thought they were going out of their way, they were in fact charging me more then they were supposed to and because we do a lot of business with them, I have overlooked it. Normally when I do business with someone, if they charge more, its easily catachable. But when you buy from someone friequently, a few dollars Ill overlook. This is where Amazon gets sneaky. Spoke with them on the phone and in chat, and the fact they hung up on me twice when confronted and dropped from chat three times, its a definate sign their up to no good. Now you may wonder if I spoke to them on the phone, why wasnt their number listed with this post? Its because they have a system where you dont call them, they call you. You select how you want to talk with them, then they call you immidiately. Or you can chat online. Anyway, here is whats been going on, and its been happening for a long time. Im only seeing it now.

How many times, I placed orders with them to get a seect few where Im told the card is declined and to use another form of payment. Sometimes I can change the card selected, other times the system wont let me and the staff tell me they cant either and to cancel the order and replace it. Here is where I found out Amazon.com isnt as honest as I thought. I got an email that an order I placed two days ago had the payment declined and to use a different form of payment. When the system wouldnt let me change it, spoke to staff who told me they couldnt either and to cancel the order and replace it as I mentioned above. I had ordered a software program that everyone else is selling for $40 or more. Amazon had it at $19.99. I canceled the order and went to place it again when I noticed the price was $38. Big difference from $19.99. The card I used, I used other places today. When I spoke to staff, they told me the bank had declined it and that they couldnt do anything about the higher price. I didnt place the order.

When I went online to see if there was any issues, I saw $19.99 being held by amazon. I call my bank and I can definately say I wasnt suprised when I was told that the charge for $19.99 would fall off in a few days. Guess what? This ment that the sale was never declined. If it wasnt declined, then why did amazon tell me it was? Turns out, when there is a substancial price increase, some of those sales will show as declined. And if you try changing the form of payment on those sales, the system wont let you and you will have to cancel the order if you want the item bad enough. I went over the bank statement for the past year. Im glad to say that I wasnt double charged, something I was worried had happened. What I was angry to see was the fact that a number of sales I had to cancel, had quite a price increase when the orer was placed over again. I also noticed it seems to happen more when purchasing games/electronics.. Pre-orders get canceled with emails stating they wont be carrying that particular item yet if you look on their website, they are in fact selling that item at much a higher price. Several books I preordered this happened to.