Holy Crap #2: Amazon.ca Gift Certificates

It's ok, they're a large, anonymous behemoth*.

Recently ("Recently" was sometime in early 2006, I think), through work, I've come into possession of a number of electronic gift certificates for Amazon.ca, for various reasons. Longevity, for one. Showing up for the other.

For the second batch, it said pretty clearly when I was getting them that they were worth "CAD 25". When I went to redeem them it showed up as a $55 (CAD) value! "Sweet!" I thought to myself and quickly finalized the order. Nothing on my Visa yet.

But wait, it gets better. Checking out my Amazon.ca wishlist today, now I see that they claim "You have a gift certificate balance of CDN$ 655.14" (emphasis mine, duh).

Part of me wants to clear off my wish list, part of me (probably the more rational part) is thinking they'll figure it out eventually and then "somebody's gonna get a hurt, real bad"


*Yes, I know "large" and "behemoth" are basically redundant

Update 2006/6/7 (the neighbour of the beast?):

Much as I suspected, having redeemed some of that superfluous coupon balance, Amazon figured themselves out (sorta) and now I see I have a negative coupon balance (having used the previous balance to pay for a small collection of DVDs). However, the negative balance is still not quite the same amount as what the order was (which I got entirely for free as it was less than the staggering amount above). Still waiting for them to contact me about it officially.

Update 2006/7/5:

Now there is no mention of coupons when I go to the check out. I think I got that one for free! W00t! Now I wish I'd ordered the full $600+ worth.

Update 2006/9/18:

Looks like Amazon wants to make it up for the fact that I didn't get my full $655 out of the mistaken coupons before, because today when I ordered, I had another $59 coupon credit! That's one way to inspire customer loyalty. Either that or someone's been depositing coupon credits into my account. In which case, Thank You Very Much.

Update 2006/12/02:

Ok, now this is just silly. Checked coupon balance: Current Balance: CDN$ 147.97

I'm-a gonna hafta start spendin' this soon, but I may have trouble keeping up.