I received a refund from Amazon.com today, based on their pre-order price guarantee policy. It works like this:
- Before something is widely available for sale, you pre-order a book, CD, DVD, video game or software on Amazon.com.
- If the price drops before your pre-order item ships, Amazon.com charges you the lower price.
- Your order ships and the price drops just before or on the release date, Amazon.com refunds you the difference automatically.
Looking for more detail on this policy, I was surprised that Amazon.com has dropped a different guarantee: the post-order price policy. As of September 1, 2008, Amazon.com will no longer refund you the difference if Amazon.com's price drops within 30 days after shipping. Of course, Amazon.com has removed the old post-order price policy, but the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine saved a copy from October 24, 2007, reproduced below:
Post-Order Price Guarantee
Amazon.com's prices for released items will change from time to time based on a variety of factors. If Amazon.com's price for an already-released item decreases within 30 days after we ship the item to you, we'll be glad to refund the difference in price if you contact us. Please... be sure to have your order number handy so we can assist you.
This Post-Order Price Guarantee is subject to the following restrictions:
- Applies only to products that have already been released. Products that have not yet been released but that are available for pre-order from Amazon.com are not covered by this guarantee, but do benefit from our Pre-Order Price Protection program....
- Applies only to items sold by Amazon.com, and not to items (or prices) offered by other sellers on our site.
- Item prices that are affected by a promotion such as "Buy one, get one free" are not eligible.
- The price of an item after rebate is not considered to be the Amazon.com price.
It's unfortunate that Amazon.com eliminated this 30-day-post-order price guarantee. For me, this decision means I may be less likely to buy big-ticket gifts, like home electronics, from Amazon.com. I see that Best Buy and Circuit City still offer a post-order price guarantee.