Amazon.com: from stressed to Shane

A few days ago I wrote about my experiences with the changing prices of items in my Amazon shopping cart. Today I write that those problems are no more!

Why? Because today when I logged in to my account I found yet another one of those Amazonian messages:

Picture of my shopping cart: empty!

My cart is EMPTY. And I didn’t empty it.

I only recently started filling it for Christmas shopping so it couldn’t possibly have approached Amazon’s 90-day limit for holding items, either.

So. Where did all my stuff go?

I checked my ordering history to see if, perhaps, there was a perfectly logical reason for my empty cart, like how I might’ve checked out while I was sleepwalking.

No such luck. Nothing in my previous orders and nothing in my cart.

I wrote to Amazon’s Help Center and am awaiting a response, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s some prankster Amazonian out there in cyberspace, one who took offense to my previous opinion about Amazon.com. I picture him as a tentacled, three-eyed creature laughing maniacally at confused shoppers like me as he changes our prices and empties our carts.

Maybe he not only emptied my cart but is now waiting for my “Help!” message to flitter across the Amazonian support boards so that he and all the other tentacled creatures can laugh at us. Maybe he will respond, too, with a witty yet sardonic retort:

Amazonian: Whatsa matter, crybaby? Something wrong with your cart?

I will answer that response with witty yet sardonic repartee all my own:

Bonnie: Please, please, PLEASE give it back! That stuff was mine! PLEASE PUH-LEASE?

Perhaps the Amazonian will wave his tentacles and laugh at me because I am groveling. “Stand up and fight!” you might urge me, because you only have my best interest at heart and don’t want to see me cowed all my life by e-commerce bullies.

Really, it’s awfully hard to stand up and fight when you hate to shop and it took you 2 weeks just to make your list and check it thirty times and you only want to shop in PEACE… but okay, I’ll do it.

Bonnie: Amazonian Creature, GIVE ME BACK MY STUFF! Or, I’ll….

Amazonian: (sneering) You’ll do what?

Bonnie: I’ll, I’ll….

Amazonian: Cry? Ha, ha, HA!

Right about then I’ll have been pushed to the point of no return. I’ll flick my credit card at him and it will fly through the air in slow motion, end over end, traveling through time and space and my computer screen, until it reaches the braying Amazonian Creature and slices his head clean off.

As his lifeless body slumps over his computer, his scaly hand will fall upon the button that not only refills my cart, but also refills empty carts everywhere, giving all of us customers the original, cheaper prices, too!

Amidst all the cheering, I’ll check out quickly (but modestly) stopping only to look both ways to make certain no frothing and vengeful Amazonian creatures are bearing down on me.

On the other hand, I think almost everybody loves a Home Depot gift card for Christmas, don’t you?

5 Replies to “Amazon.com: from stressed to Shane”

  1. Huzzah for Ballpoint Wren, savior of Amazonian shoppers everywhere!

    The cart lives to serve. Perhaps it knew something about your gift choices that you didn’t? Like…Grandma really doesn’t want the complete boxed set of “Party of Five.”

  2. Huh, that’s weird. I’ve had stuff in there for much longer than 90 days, too. Yeah, I’m a bit of a procrastinator.

  3. No better Christmas pressie for a man than a Home Depot gift card! Me, I would prefer a gift card to Bath and Body, a coffee shop or a bookstore… 😛

    I’ve never really shopped on Amazon. Now, I guess I’m glad that I haven’t.

  4. Oh Bonnie – that stinks.

    I use the Amazon cart as a window shopping thing and often find it somewhere else (Walmart is almost always cheaper!)

    But I keep my cart full just incase – you never know when the spurt to shop will hit!

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