Off Topic: Odd billing 'mistake' with Amazon purchase

[Conrad 16.5]

Saturday evening, I placed an order on Amazon's site, Sunday morning I get a notice from my credit card company about the purchase. I glance at it and it's $7.50 more than it should have been. Strange. I check out the invoice on Amazon's site. The invoice had the correct price. Hmm. No additional taxes or shipping charges have been added, what gives?

I call Amazon and enquire. The agent agrees with me on the price, and he digs into the transaction and places me on hold. He comes back and tells me that there was a billing error, but the error is with my CC company, they added the $7.50 for some reason.

WHAT?

The Amazon agent tells me that once Amazon presents the charge to my CC company that the amount will get 'fixed' and I'll get a refund. I don't buy it and I tell him so. He 'explains' again, same song and dance. Ok, I'll wait to see what happens after the dust settles.

I then call my CC company and explain what's what. The CC customer service agent calls BS and says that can't happen on their end and they will be 'keeping an eye' on this purchase for me and when they pay the charge, they'll be paying the original price, not the inflated price.

Something strange is going on here. If Amazon is overcharging by a small amount and then refunding that overpayment, something is screwy in their system. Is it on purpose? Can't be, right?

Anyone else have this happen with Amazon?

 

[N7turbo]

That is odd. What's also odd is when I return an item, then get charged for it anyway for not returning it

 

[Odrapnew]

I've never experienced that with Amazon.
Coincidentally I purchased something from Amazon on Saturday as well and everything lines up.

I have had some odd 'charges' that show up for a transaction, but are later refunded. They show up as a separate charge though. My understanding is sometimes a lower value charge goes to the credit card for verification before the main transaction goes through, but it's usually just a few $.

At least you have it documented with the credit card company and details of the actual transaction, so if it doesn't clear up on its own, should be an easy one to correct with CC company.

 

[Conrad 16.5]

I received a shipping notice for my order yesterday from Amazon. The price shown included the added $7.50. They included that cost in with the taxes, $20 in taxes vs $12.50 in taxes from the initial invoice. The problem is that with $20 tax applied to the order it makes the sales tax rate 10% when it should be 6.25%. 6.25% is what gets charged for EVERYTHING. Why 10%? I called Amazon again to find out.

No one knows where the additional charge came from, the issue is being escalated to the NEXT LEVEL (add appropriate echo). In the meantime, they refunded the $7.50 to my account.

Something screwy is going on.

 

[Conrad 16.5]

Ok, perhaps the final word on this odd charge.

Someone from the Next Level was supposed to contact me and let me know what's what. No one has contacted me but I received a notice of a refund yesterday, applied to my gift card balance.

What's really odd about it is that they refunded $8.29.

From the email.

Reason for refund: Account adjustment


Here's the breakdown of your refund for this item:

Item Refund: $7.80
Item Tax Refund: $0.49

We'll apply your refund to the following payment method(s):

Gift Card: $8.29

This amount has been credited.



And this was applied to a separate purchase I had made a couple of weeks ago, some dog chews. I'm fine with the refund but it just makes no sense to me.