If you wonder what happened to your Amazon.com order history after a security glitch with a credit card that meant an order never processed or shipped, keep wondering. Amazon can see your order but the company won't give its customers that courtesy of any order history on things that don't go through. The online retailer makes it seem like that order attempt simply never happened. And that 'never happened' includes not even putting those items back into your account's Cart--so a customer could place the order again.
It was a security glitch for an infrequently-used credit card -- and that's not necessarily Amazon's fault. It's really not clear what triggered the order to be kicked back, and isn't relevant. The aftermath is what's aggravating. Amazon's method of dealing with orders it doesn't process is aggravating, and completely unprofessional.
After spending thirty minutes on the phone with Amazon.com, the following was revealed:
#1) Yes, Amazon will make an order that it never processed disappear from the customer's account. In other words,there's no order number to be able to provide an agent, and no way to see that the order was even originally placed -- period. Choosing orders from the last 30 days won't work. There's no way to trace the order -- or what was in that order.
#1B) Yes, Amazon is aware that it deletes the order view from customers' accounts. Apparently it's "policy".
#2 If there's a problem with the order's payment processing, Amazon.com doesn't even have the decency to put those items that never had an opportunity to ship back into the customer's waiting 'Cart' area. Spent an hour shopping and choosing items? Customers can look forward to doing it all again. No order history, and no waiting items if you need to place that order again after it didn't ship the first time. And if you think the problem can be solved through e-mail notifications of the payment processing issue, think again. Amazon doesn't bother listing the item numbers in e-mails either.
#2B) Yes, Amazon is aware that it doesn't put items from an unprocessed order back into the customer's Cart. Since customers need to place an order again, because it didn't go through, it would seem common sense. Or simply courteous to your customers who have spent all that time shopping. But apparently that, too, is "policy".
If customers think Amazon.com is unaware of these problems, it's not the case. Reps are aware of both of these issue with unprocessed orders. It seems the online retailer itself doesn't view the lack of order history as a problem. Customer service dubs both the missing order history, that's not viewable by the customer, and the lack of returning those unprocessed items to a Cart "policy".
Amazon reps can see the attempted order via the company's own computer system -- and knows customers cannot -- but refuses to provide any reason for making the previous order attempt invisible for customers.
Problem #3: This is the additional gem, for customers who happen to have used a gift card or Amazon code and are having a problem using it after Amazon.com canceled the order. Prepare for an additional issue, particularly if you have more than one member in your household with separate Amazon.com accounts.
When a security issue causes the order not to process or go through, Amazon.com kindly sends an e-mail notification telling the customer that any gift card or code amount used for that order has basically also been canceled out with the order -- simply refunded back. In other words, just use the code again on your next order. The entire number must be re-entered by the customer on a future order. The code isn't already applied to a customer's online account, waiting for next time, which is why the following is weird: Gift cards are not issued in any one specific name and should therefore be eligible for use on any Amazon account or order. That's true -- the FIRST time. After repeated problems in trying to use the gift card amount just several days after the company had claimed it was refunded, the Amazon code still wouldn't work. Calling Amazon yielded the response that the only problem could be if the item I was ordering wasn't being fulfilled by Amazon itself, but rather from a separate seller. After dumbly accepting this reasoning (who knew an Amazon gift code wasn't usable for anything on the site -- only for items actually fulfilled by Amazon itself?) I got off the phone, to find the item I was attempting to order actually WAS in fact fulfilled directly by the company.
After round two of troubleshooting with a rep, I finally caught on to the strangest of 'policies' from Amazon: If a gift card or code has been entered into any customer account, and the order canceled by Amazon for any reason, Amazon.com actually links that gift card or code only to that account that was used. From that point forward -- and even though the code must be re-entered at the future date when it's used -- the retailer will not allow the gift card code to be used on any other Amazon customer's account, at least not automatically. A rep can manually transfer allowance of the code to another customer's account, if you're willing to sit on the phone for roughly 15 minutes. Ask Amazon why that code is unusable on any other account, when it technically shouldn't be because it isn't issued in any one specific person's name, and the company has no answer -- except, again, that it's "policy". Hazarding a guess, that "policy" helps increase the likelihood of a gift card never getting used. Whatever the reason, it's irritating. All said and done, by the time things were sorted out with the telephone rep placing the previously-ordered items back into the cart, three items were out of stock for Amazon fulfillment -- and had to be ordered from Amazon sellers instead. Amazon loss: $55. It may not be much from one customer, but multiplied times millions of orders, a large chunk of change.