A point to remember when being shown a cheaper version of any product by Amazon's "Other Buying Options": The system that links you to the Marketplace alternatives is automated and prone to error.
It appears to be keyed not to a product's unique ID number but to its title, which can result in a different product that's cheaper - because it's a different product - showing up in the list without that being noted.
I discovered this wrinkle when shopping for the Blu-ray of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which has all kinds of extra features on the American release of the disk.
Amazon "helpfully suggested" a much cheaper buying option that drove me batty trying to access the special features, until I realized that what I had bought was the Canadian version, which has no extra features.
The vendor, who had bought a batch of the Canadian disks and didn't know they were different, took it back and gave me a full refund, and I learned not to rely on the brief squibs in the list of options, but to instead to click on the links in the list to the Marketplace merchants' own Amazon storefronts and find the product page there, where you get the full version information.
I buy from Amazon all the time, but I've learned to be careful with the Marketplace system, since that part of Amazon's system is stupid enough that my purchasing history for that disk actually showed it as being bought from a different Marketplace vendor every time I clicked on it!
It appears to be keyed not to a product's unique ID number but to its title, which can result in a different product that's cheaper - because it's a different product - showing up in the list without that being noted.
I discovered this wrinkle when shopping for the Blu-ray of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which has all kinds of extra features on the American release of the disk.
Amazon "helpfully suggested" a much cheaper buying option that drove me batty trying to access the special features, until I realized that what I had bought was the Canadian version, which has no extra features.
The vendor, who had bought a batch of the Canadian disks and didn't know they were different, took it back and gave me a full refund, and I learned not to rely on the brief squibs in the list of options, but to instead to click on the links in the list to the Marketplace merchants' own Amazon storefronts and find the product page there, where you get the full version information.
I buy from Amazon all the time, but I've learned to be careful with the Marketplace system, since that part of Amazon's system is stupid enough that my purchasing history for that disk actually showed it as being bought from a different Marketplace vendor every time I clicked on it!
. I ordered several SACDs recently that had been listed as back ordered but now as "ships in 5-10 days". I emailed importcds asking if these discs were really going to ship in that timeframe or are they out of stock. The response was "Backordered items typically take 1-4 weeks to come back in stock". So in essence they are admitting these SACDs are on back order. The bad part is I paid with Paypal so they have my money for now. I'll give them the 4 weeks then ask for a full refund.
