Metropol

In a fascinating oversight on Amazon's part, I have found that if I attempt to purchase a book using a credit card on file that I have reported as stolen (I have such a card), the book is delivered to my Ipad and then Amazon complain about nonpayment. Basically Amazon deliver the product without bothering to validate my card details.

My question to the legal knowitalls around here is: do I now have to pay for the item? If they were physical goods (and it is conclusively Amazon's fault that they delivered the product before validating a card), then I guess I'd be required to return the goods but this isn't possible with a digital kindle book purchase because it ends up stored on an iPad (presumably 'delete the goods', but even that is flawed as I have had some use from them plus they have no way of knowing if I have deleted it or not).

Basically I'm just wanting to know where I will stand when Amazon cut up rough about the £100 book I have bought and not exactly paid for! My view is it's their fault, they can sing for their money and I'll happily attest to them that I deleted the book if they ask, but I am wondering what the likely consequences are (I can live with my account being closed - that's happened to me a few times and you can just set up another), plus what the court would be likely to decide if Amazon decided to take it that far!

Yours in criminality........

Two issues arise,

1. I believe when I reported a card lost sometime ago, one of the clauses in the signed declaration was that I would not attempt to use it, if I found it, but would inform the bank and subsequently destroy it. Have you not broken such a clause if you signed (or verbally agreed to) one?

2. Not knowing the ins and outs of the Kindle but when a subsequent purchase was made, couldn't Amazon simply disable/delete the 'purchased' e-book on the reader using the payment issue as the reason?

Intriguing - actually the thoughts presented aren't ones I'd considered, I was more thinking about whether I'd actually agreed a contract with amazon to purchase the item etc...

1 - no I Never agreed to any contract and transactions on credit cards made after they have been reported stolen don't go through - a stolen card used at tesco, for example, is not accepted.

2 - Well I think I have fallen down a crack their system because they sent me an email this morning positively crowing about how the book has been deleted etc etc... it's possibly because I use an iPad rather than a Kindle.

As it happens I didn't know the credit card to be invalid - Amazon just lists your cards and I chose one at random.

Ho hum...we shall see

nodnirG kraM wrote:

cdd wrote:1 - no I Never agreed to any contract and transactions on credit cards made after they have been reported stolen don't go through - a stolen card used at tesco, for example, is not accepted.

What about the Ts&Cs when you opened the credit card account? Did you thoroughly read every clause?

Indeed, you may not have sat down and put your signature on a specific document marked "CONTRACT", but when you applied for the card - whether online, on the phone, in branch or by pigeon - the terms and conditions will have been presented in some form. Your acceptance of these terms and conditions is implicit in each transaction that you carried out using the card; to put this another way, if you use the card, you accept the terms and conditions of the contract between you, the customer, and them, the credit card issuing company.

That contract includes shared responsibility between both parties - for the credit card company, this will include obligations such as providing credit to the pre-agreed limit and providing monthly statements to show payments and charges; for the customer, this will include obligations such as spending only within the agreed limit, under pain of penalty charges; and a duty of care, which includes not sharing the card with unauthorised parties, reporting it lost or stolen when it goes AWOL, and not using a card or a card's details after it has been lost or stolen.

Now, I'm sure that, in reality, there'll be quite limited consequences, and the credit card company may simply query the transaction with you and you can explain the error, but this almost certainly - if only technically - qualifies as a breach of contract, and by the very strictest interpretations may even constitute fraud...but as I say, I can't imagine that your credit card issuer will take things anywhere near that far.

As for the contract with Amazon, technically you have initiated a contract for them to supply you with goods, and you failed to provide a valid payment method. This isn't particularly serious; the default response for a company is to chase the payment and to cancel the order - the 'contract' - after a certain period of time if an alternative valid payment method is not provided. The credit card usage is the more serious here, but I believe both will be treated fairly trivially.

Wow, armchair law is fun!