Apparently Amazon some time ago had a promotion that when buying a DVD box set, you could get a second of equal or lesser value for free. The problem is, when the offer was used, Amazon misteakenly took the price down for both DVD box sets, selling both boxes eiter for free or at a fraction of the price of one of the box sets.

The problem comes in that Amazon did not realize this, and shipped orders after having honored that price. Amazon's own policy states that:

If an item's correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation.

So the worst case scenario is that Amazon will cancel your order if you do not wish to pay the difference. But being Amazon did in fact ship the orders it is now stating that they will charge credit cards the difference in price if the items are not returned unopened.

Based off of Amazon's own policy, they do NOT have the right to do this. The only right they give is either you first agree to pay the higher price, or the order will be cancled. Their policy as it was written when this occured does not allow them to charge you AFTER the shipment occured.

The problem is it's fully possible for someone buying multiple items besides the DVD's to not have understood what the discounts were for exactly, but then checked out after feeling the final price was exceptable. They then could recieve the items, and opened them the moment they got them (as I often do myself) only to find out later that they now OWE ADDITIONAL MONEY for the order. At this point it would be TOO LATE for them to return them.

This is a totally unexceptable circumstance, and Amazon's hard defined policy does NOT allow Amazon to do this. If I had purchased DVD's and been given this deal I would simply refer Amazon to their own policy and say that if they were to charge me they would be in direct violation of it (which would give me the legal recourse to cancel the chargebacks on the credit card).

The fact that Amazon is trying to overlook their own policy here is completely unacceptable in my book, however.