Amazon Cut Me Off!

S

staticlag

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 26, 2010
Messages
1,679
Yeah so I have some money to upgrade one of my servers for the holidays.

Put 10 - 3Tb drives in cart ready to pay.

Quantity auto-changed to 4

Buy 4.

Go back and check if they are sold out. Nope. Add 6 more. Order auto-changed to 4.

Try and buy 4.

http://i.imgur.com/AHHNZIY.png

Boo Amazon :mad:

Newegg never minded large buys
 
Probably residual effects from the hard drive "crisis."
 
Amazon's Limited Purchase Quantity policy usually makes you wait one week before ordering more.
 
Ehhh.

I see it as they saved you from not buying HGST/WD.

But i'm sure you're running redundancy...just... maybe saved you a couple future RMA's?
 
Don't blame Amazon, blame the idiots that will buy 20 hard drives, unpack them, but then decide "oh crap never mind these aren't all that great after all" and return them, or have Amazon package them pretty decently all in one box only to have a UPS guy throw it eight feet into the truck, and then kick it towards your door on dropoff damaging hundreds of dollars of merchandise in one order.
 
It's a normal policy with Amazon. We had that happen at work. Over the past year we've been replacing our old 14-17" 4:3 monitors with newer ASUS 24" models. After almost a year and about 40 or so they decided we were done and can't buy anymore.

Not sure how they set limits, but they are there.
 
carlbme said:
It's a normal policy with Amazon. We had that happen at work. Over the past year we've been replacing our old 14-17" 4:3 monitors with newer ASUS 24" models. After almost a year and about 40 or so they decided we were done and can't buy anymore.

Not sure how they set limits, but they are there.
Click to expand...

Wait. You're telling me you can no longer buy them at all? Even if you wait a little while before ordering more?
 
I suspect this has to do with return policy, both to lower lost/damaged package cost and other customer supplies. Advertising implies available stock. Large purchases deplete availability. I also expect a good deal of Amazon (or other etailers) is "added to" order items.
They are in it for the money.
The Asus decision seems odd. perhaps Asus is "rationing" stock among etailers or making a model change.
 
Yeah with the seagates I have had to RMA roughly 30% of them. Not the best, but affordable and they will match my existing 10 -3TB drives. And as you guys know uniformity really helps zfs setups achieve their potential.

Man I tell you though, those Old Samsung 2TB HD hd204ui (F4EG) in my arrays are really taking hits. SMART # 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate Starts increasing on them all eventually and then the errors start happening. (All have 3 yrs uptime)

Code: 
                            extended device statistics       [B]---- errors ---[/B]
    r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b s/w h/w trn [B]tot[/B] device
   16.9    1.2  689.0   15.7  0.0  0.0    0.0    2.2   0   1   0  12  51  [B]63[/B] c0t50024E9004C47070d0
   17.3    1.2  689.0   15.7  0.0  0.0    0.0    2.1   0   1   0  17  69  [B]86[/B] c0t50024E9206402F7Cd0
   16.5    1.2  689.0   15.7  0.0  0.0    0.0    2.4   0   1   0  21  81 [B]102[/B] c0t50024E9004C47087d0
   17.3    1.2  689.0   15.7  0.0  0.0    0.0    2.1   0   1   0  23  92 [B]115[/B] c0t50024E9206402F9Bd0
    5.8    1.1  462.2   15.3  0.0  0.1    0.0    7.6   0   1   2  17  70  [B]89[/B] c0t50024E9004C47082d0
   17.2    1.2  689.1   15.7  0.0  0.0    0.0    2.2   0   1   1  27 111 [B]139[/B] c0t50024E9004C47086d0
   17.4    1.2  689.0   15.7  0.0  0.0    0.0    2.1   0   1   1  24  98 [B]123[/B] c0t50024E9004C4706Dd0
   17.3    1.2  688.9   15.7  0.0  0.0    0.0    2.1   0   1   3  29 105 [B]137[/B] c0t50024E9004C47071d0
   16.6    1.2  689.0   15.7  0.0  0.0    0.0    2.3   0   1   1  16  60  [B]77[/B] c0t50024E9004347C8Bd0
 
It is not only about HDDs.

I needed to buy 50 LED bulbs. Those I needed were listed at Amazon as available without limit at the original price P. Put them in the cart, attempted checkout. The quantity dropped to 18 - as in no more in stock. OK, I went to the product page - qty 35 available at P+$3.Bought all I needed at 18*P + 23*(P+$3). Checked back the product page - unlimited quantity available at P-$1. Added the whole qty 50 to the cart, successfully checked out. Immediately cancelled the first order.

So the first order I placed was $96 above the first advertised price, but ended up purchasing the same quantity for $50 less than the first advertised price. All items were "prime" sold by Amazon.

Go figure. These shenanigans are very common when you need to buy more than 10 items.
 
You guys also have to remember that Amazon is an e-retailer and not a wholesaler. They need to cater the availability of their products to more than just a few people, especially when they have a good advertised price on sale. Just imagine how frustrated you get when you see something advertised at a good price only for you to see it out of stock when you arrived at a B&M store in the 90's(I am looking at you Best Buy, CompUSA, and whoever else fits the shoe).

Walmart also does the same thing as I was at the local one down the street here in my ghetto neighborhood. I saw this Asian who clearly looks like they run an inner city convenience store(tobacco products, liquor, and just enough groceries to get a city tax break) come in to buy baby formula that was advertised in a very low rate. They cleared the entire stock and probably filled 2 full shopping carts with the advertised baby formula which I assume they plan on reselling at their little "grocery" store. Walmart put a stop to them despite there being no advertised maximum you can purchase because they could not have their entire stock being depleted by one person.
 
I don't agree with that. If they don't want people buying all the stock then put a cap on it. If not it's first come first serve.
 
Why don't you guys contact their business departments they have those there for you to use. I can imagine that automated limits exist for many reasons but you should be able to get around them by going through business channels.
 
amdgamer said:
You guys also have to remember that Amazon is an e-retailer and not a wholesaler. They need to cater the availability of their products to more than just a few people, especially when they have a good advertised price on sale. Just imagine how frustrated you get when you see something advertised at a good price only for you to see it out of stock when you arrived at a B&M store in the 90's(I am looking at you Best Buy, CompUSA, and whoever else fits the shoe).

Walmart also does the same thing as I was at the local one down the street here in my ghetto neighborhood. I saw this Asian who clearly looks like they run an inner city convenience store(tobacco products, liquor, and just enough groceries to get a city tax break) come in to buy baby formula that was advertised in a very low rate. They cleared the entire stock and probably filled 2 full shopping carts with the advertised baby formula which I assume they plan on reselling at their little "grocery" store. Walmart put a stop to them despite there being no advertised maximum you can purchase because they could not have their entire stock being depleted by one person.
Click to expand...

Bingo. Amazon and Newegg probably are trying to stop people from becoming resellers. Not uncommon to see people use Prime as drop shipping for items they sell on ebay at 20% markup. Especially stuff like CPUs where foreigners are willing to pay a premium above US MSRP because non-US MSRP is way higher.
 
dr/owned said:
Bingo. Amazon and Newegg probably are trying to stop people from becoming resellers. Not uncommon to see people use Prime as drop shipping for items they sell on ebay at 20% markup. Especially stuff like CPUs where foreigners are willing to pay a premium above US MSRP because non-US MSRP is way higher.
Click to expand...

Not uncommon? You're telling me it's common for them to do this? How would you know? Not trying to troll, just seriously curious as to how/why they do this and how you know so much about it?

/Eager awaits reply.
 
felt said:
Not uncommon? You're telling me it's common for them to do this? How would you know? Not trying to troll, just seriously curious as to how/why they do this and how you know so much about it?

/Eager awaits reply.
Click to expand...

https://www.google.com/search?q=eba...la:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

I mainly learned about this when I was googling for whether or not I should ship to a mail forwarding address that forwards my stuff overseas. International buyers use them to get around the restrictions most sellers have to avoid shipping internationally.

EDIT: And not to forget, there's also other ebay buyers sometimes using ebay/you as a drop shipper. Your item will sell and the buyer will say they don't want a receipt or invoice in the package. It's because they're going to immediately forward your item to their buyer and they don't want that person seeing that they could have gotten it cheaper directly buying it from you.
 
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dr/owned said:
And not to forget, there's also other ebay buyers sometimes using ebay/you as a drop shipper. Your item will sell and the buyer will say they don't want a receipt or invoice in the package. It's because they're going to immediately forward your item to their buyer and they don't want that person seeing that they could have gotten it cheaper directly buying it from you.
Click to expand...
Interesting, I've had a few buyers request this before and wondered what the real reason was. They always say "it's a gift".
 
wtourist said:
I suspect this has to do with return policy,
Click to expand...

I would be willing to bet it may have a bit to do with Amazon knowing on which items they lose money. Which is probably a lot more than you'd guess. They're the kings of "loss leader" pricing on the internet. Selling you items at a loss, hoping you'll buy others having a healthy margin.

So, if they know they're losing $30 on every item some individual or corporation is buying, it makes a bit of sense that they don't allow you to buy 20 or 200 of them.
 
A few of the stores around my area have put limits on buying, Walmart being one of them. What they have seen is that people are buying up all of the sale items they can, so they can raise the price and make a few bucks by selling the items online (through various sites).

That seems fine and well, but the problem they have now, is that the buyers are trying to return what didn't sale for a refund. So they have these people bringing in buggies and buggies full of returns.

I guess the sellers are cool with it, cause if they can't make money off of it, at least they can get their money back. The stores on the other hand, not so much.
 
EnderW said:
Interesting, I've had a few buyers request this before and wondered what the real reason was. They always say "it's a gift".
Click to expand...

Asking for the mention "gift" and no invoice can just be to avoid customs, without intending to send the order to someone else. I did this a few times but that also meant that when French customs decided to check out the "suspicious" package full of wifi devices (when these were still expensive), they decided themselves the value of it all and it cost me an arm and a leg in taxes ! Now I only order in the EU, prices are not that much higher that ordering in the US makes sense (especially with the strong euro).
 
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