Nobody EVER Goes To Jail

January 3, 2025 by Karl Denninger

and the crimes come in many forms.

Amazon has been accused of many shady acts in the past but I've now caught them on more than one occasion doing something quite sneaky (they didn't get me, however) and just had them try something even more-blatant.

All of this falls into the category of "bait and switch" and is a criminal offense. That is, offering something you have no intention of delivering and then either delivering less or nothing of value for the money collected at all.

This applies to people who are not "Prime" customers, of course.

Yes, I avoid Amazon in many cases but sometimes they have what you want and others don't. For me Prime is a crappy value; it used to be reasonable at about $100 a year but now is about twice that -- and at that price it isn't especially when their "2 day" guarantee isn't actually any good (and it isn't; they meet it a good part of the time but not all the time and if you're going to advertise it then it has to be all the time or to me its worthless.)

There's two parts to this little game of theirs.

The first one is when you order more than $35 you get "slow" delivery included. Ok, fine. So you do that, and then the system comes back with an email saying "Forget anything? For the next 24 hours anything else you order ships at no charge no matter how big or small the order."

This is "free" for them on the shipping side for small stuff because they haven't actually dispatched anything and your card hasn't been charged yet -- they actually sit on the order for the 24 hours, and until they charge it and dispatch it through their fulfilment chain it costs them nothing to add more to it. If you get alerts when your card is charged you'll see this; a "slow" order does not hit the card until the 24 hours expires.

Fine. That's a win-win, right? Well, it would be if Amazon was honest about it but they're not.

Let's say you add some more things to your cart and then don't check out, or abandon it part way through (let's say it says you have 12 hours left before that expires, which you can't see until you start the checkout, you close the app or window) and then come back you'll find the cart is still there but "free shipping" has disappeared. Even if you come back to it 5 minutes later it will quite-reliably happen even though there are hours left before the original 24 hour period would expire.

If you're not paying attention (which is really easy to have happen on the mobile app) you're going to get banged in the ass for the shipping charge even though you were told anything you ordered in the next 24 hours shipped free.

I'm sure that's exactly what they're counting on happening a good percentage of the time.

But the new thing that I just had happen is even worse.

Let's say the first happens. You then add another item and now its more than $35 worth of stuff in your cart which does qualify for a second instance of "slow" shipping (it should be free and combined with the first order, but they already fucked you out of that.)

But -- you want it faster. There are presented three paid options: Medium speed, basically what Prime would be on a one-off ($6.99), Right now (tomorrow) for $10.99 and of course "resume prime" for $14.99/mo and get it at medium speed.

You choose to pay the $7.00 for the one-off. Why? Because you really want it in 2 days and can't find it locally, that's why.

You click "Place Order" and the system comes back and tells you it will be delivered slow speed but you paid for the shipping upgrade!

They just did this to me and I instantly canceled the entire order -- that's really sneaky shit and in a just society there would be a cop at their office door with an indictment in hand for deliberate and systematic consumer fraud.

Don't tell me this sort of shit is an "error" either folks -- how come errors are never in the customer's favor? Errors are normally distributed -- half the time it screws you, the other half the time it gives you something.

These "errors" are all one direction; they fuck you in the ass every single time.

Now yes, individually this was an attempt to screw me out of $7.00 or so but that's not the point. Times how many people per day and how often does Amazon get away with this unnoticed?

This only continues to happen because nobody ever goes to jail and worse, nobody ever has to fork it back up at a penalty rate sufficient to convince them its a bad idea to try it in the future (say, 3x the amount stolen refunded in cash to everyone they did it to over the last five years) even though Amazon knows exactly how many people they've tried this with and gotten away with it too over the last.... how many years?

If we had an Attorney General either in a State or at the Federal level that actually enforced laws then there would be a fucking perp walk out of the offices in every state of the Union and/or this company would be shut down for systemic, programmed-in consumer fraud.

You want to find a company screwing people with impunity because nobody ever goes to jail from a big company when they do it?

Just grab any stock symbol and the odds are high you found one, whether its peddling worthless drugs, promising "free" add-on shipping to an existing order for 24 hours and then silently removing it and hoping the customer doesn't notice, collecting an upcharge for expedited shipping and then just pocketing the money while not shipping via faster means, laying off American tech workers while soliciting H-1s and said paperwork contains a statement you didn't lay anyone off in the previous or next 90 days -- and by the way it is a FELONY to lie on said paperwork and more.

I'm so goddamn tired of this shit and we as a nation should absolutely not tolerate any of it from any firm, ever, PERIOD.

How much of the so-called S&P 500's "profit" is actually stolen via schemes of all sorts rather than earned by honest dealing?

PROBABLY MOST OF IT.

Indeed the only place I believe I can get a fair shake is at the local bar and grill and that's probably only because they would have to look me in the face if they decided to screw me.

"Make America Great Again" eh Mr. tRUMP?

I'll believe you're not one of the fuck-headed thieves and in league with all the rest of them when I see some of these motherfuckers frog-marched in handcuffs -- and not one second before.