It’s Worth It

About 2 years ago I ordered a book from Amazon.com using an echeck payment.  After a few days, I noticed that the money never came out of my account, so after about 2 hours of searching Amazon.com’s extremely un-user-friendly site, I sent them an email that said, “I received this book, but I do not believe it was paid for”.  The fine folks in the customer service department sent me an email telling me, the book had in fact been paid for.  Great!

A week later I get a call from a collection agency.  I get these calls all the time.  There is a man and a woman who have been giving out our phone number for about 7 years and as far as I can tell they have never paid a single bill in that time.  I am in the bath, my answering machine picks up and I hear the typical…”This is an attempt to collect a debt for..” Holy crap, WHAT???  It’s my name.  I jump up and try to answer, but they are already gone. I call the number back.

I know you will be stunned to find out the man on the other end was none to pleasant.  I tell him my name and the case number and he says, nope nothing.  I said, “But there has to be something because you called me at my number and used my name”.  He insist there is nothing.  Ok, fine.

A few days later I receive a letter in the mail from a guess who?? The collection agency.  I call the number again.  This time an equally unfriendly woman takes my call.  She can’t find anything either.  I said, Listen, clearly there is something to this claim and we are not hanging up until we figure it out.  I was probably more pathetic then forceful, but she did agree to look deeper.  To her amazement there was a default notice under my name from Amazon.com. They were looking for their $20 that I told them I owed them that they refused to believe.

I am super annoyed because I knew that and tried to solve the problem and now it’s at collections.   I explain everything to the woman, but she could give a flying flip. Eventually, I just say, “How do I rectify this?” She says, send us a money order for the amount, blah, blah, blah.  I do and I include a copy of all the emails and such.  I also recontact Amazon.com to explain the whole thing and I resend copies of everything.  I am worried about my credit. They kind of say, our bad, but not really.  The emailer tells me I don’t need to be upset because it is just their in-house collections, not one that reports to credit bureaus. He/she said it was because their bookkeeping, collections and customer service departments don’t talk to each other, so that was probably the issue.  Yeah, probably. You would think that would end the matter, but because God likes to keep me humble for the next 6 weeks I still got emails from Amazon.com claiming the book was not paid for.  I sent another email(up to about 30 by now) back with all the emails and the confirmation number from the collection agency, but this time I also included a threat to contact an attorney if they sent one more email.  They stopped. 

I swore I would never buy another thing from Amazon.com and I haven’t…until today. 

Today I bought An Ordinary American’s Book

12 thoughts on “It’s Worth It

  1. I shop on Amazon all the time (ordered about $800 worth of books one Christmas, when everyone insisted on giving me cash and/or Amazon cards…this was pre-shooting days), and just use a regular debit card or Amazon gift card. I’ve never had a problem with them, and usually get my order (even used stuff from resellers) within a week or two.

  2. Actually, Amazon had better give a flying flip because if this unpaid item that you attempted to rectify and they did not fix was caused by their error and they report it to a credit agency they could be in serious trouble if you press the issue legally. When something gets to credit reporting and it was a result of their error, there are regulations that you can hammer them with. If you used your credit card, the Fair Credit Billing Act comes into play. I recommend that everyone peruse FTC.gov to get an idea of what your rights and protections are. Amazon may be due the money, but if they screwed up and wouldn’t listen when you tried to rectify it they only have a certain amount of time to attempt to collect using the form of payment you gave them. If they fail to collect within the proper time frames, they will be out the money and can’t come after you for it.

    Also, I may have to check it out.

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