Topic: No more Amazon refunds :(

[DJ Doena]

The german Amazon stored offered refunds in the form of coupons/vouchers when you could show them a lower price within 14 days. It didn't matter if it was a local store or another internet shop.

Now they stopped this:

Rechtlicher Hinweis: Tiefpreis-Garantie für Media-Produkte

Lieber Amazon.de-Partner,

Amazon.de hat sich dazu entschlossen, die Tiefpreis-Garantie für Media-Produkte nicht weiter anzubieten.

Daher möchten wir Sie bitten, bis spätestens 13. Januar 2009 alle Hinweise auf die Amazon Tiefpreis-Garantie bei Media-Produkten in Ihren Webseiten und Anzeigen zu entfernen.

Zu den Media-Produkten gehören Artikel der Produktkategorien DVD, Blu-ray, Musik, PC- und Video-Games sowie Hörbücher.

Es war immer unser Ziel, attraktive Preise in allen Produktbereichen zu bieten, ohne dass unsere Kunden hierfür die Tiefpreis-Garantie in Anspruch nehmen müssen.

Die Tiefpreis-Garantie für Media-Produkte wurde im Jahr 2004 eingeführt – zu einer Zeit, in der Preisvergleiche online noch schwierig waren. Da das Internet im Bereich Media heutzutage eine große Transparenz bietet, ist eine Tiefpreis-Garantie für Media-Produkte nicht mehr notwendig. Doch Amazon.de-Kunden können sich sicher sein, auch zukünftig attraktive Preise zu erhalten – und dabei von unserem kostenlosen Versand bei Bestellungen für Media-Produkte über 20 EUR zu profitieren. (Bei Bestellungen, die Bücher enthalten, gibt es keine Versandkostenschwelle.)

Unsere Tiefpreis-Garantie gilt weiterhin für Artikel der Kategorien Spielwaren, Babyartikel, Sport, Schuhe, Handtaschen und Uhren. Weitere Informationen zur Amazon Tiefpreis-Garantie finden Sie unter http://www.amazon.de/tiefpreisgarantie

Vielen Dank für Ihr Verständnis.

Ihr Amazon.de Partner-Team

And while I never found an official "price guarantee" on the UK Amazon shop I sometimes contacted them and got a refund to my credit card when the price dropped on their website after I got my order.

But they stopped this, too:

Dear Customer

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk.

The discounts we offer for items on our website do vary from time to time. I've checked your order #026-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxx and found that we now offer a greater discount on "Lost - The Complete Fourth Season [2008]" and "Smallville - The Complete Seventh Season" than at the time you placed your order.

Unfortunately, we cannot extend a refund to you for the difference between the original price and the lower price you saw posted on our website.

While we don't always beat the best available price on every product, we do offer deep discounts on many thousands of items. From time to time, prices on some items will change due to special offers from suppliers and manufacturers or our inventory and sales volumes. When we can offer a lower price for new purchases we will, but we cannot extend these discounts to completed orders.

Please note that only orders placed on or before September 1, 2008 were eligible for a price difference refund under the Post-Order Price Guarantee policy. However, we do continue to offer our Pre-order price guarantee.

[Jimmy]

I can't be sad because of this news, since I didn't even know that Amazon had this offer previously. But most of the time I buy from Amazon.ca and their prices are usually the best one. You have to keep in mind that not many canadian dvd webstore exist, so no DDDVD/Amazon price war here. I do a lot of buying at their marketplace and you usually find some unbeatable price there with no risk at all (never had one problem in 5 years). Evidently this is only if you don't want to buy an OOP dvd since the price aren't that great anymore (ebay is better there, but I don't like the risk¹) : after my review of Schramm yesterday I've checked for Nekromantik 2 and surprisingly it's OOP, so to buy it on marketplace (the US one since no one sell it in Canada) the price is over 80 $CAN and, even if I want to watch it, I will not pay this price. But I've found an european release of Der Todesking for a reasonable price (39.95 $US) that I will order in a couple of weeks.

1. Jon I know that the risk aren't that big, but I'm chicken