I recently added a pair of boots to my Amazon cart, size 11, but I wasn't quite ready to buy. Then my daughter asked me to order a clothes drying rack, so I had to click "Save for later" on the boots to move them temporarily out of the cart. A few days later, I had read enough reviews on the boots, and decided it was time to place the order. I found the boots in the "Saved for later" section of my Amazon cart, and clicked "Move to Cart" (no idea why "Cart" is capitalized but "later" is not, but semantic inconsistencies were not related to the issue anyway).
I placed the order, assuming that if I selected size 11 when I added the boots to the cart, the item I was ordering would still be size 11 after "Saving for later" and "Moving to Cart." A few days later, I received a pair of size 10 boots. My first thought was, "bummer, how could I have messed that up?" The more I thought about it, the more I convinced I became that it wasn't my mistake at all. I haven't been able to cram my size 10.5-11 foot into a size 10 shoe since it was still actually a size 10, which was maybe my sophomore year of high-school (i.e. a REALLY long time ago). I would never, ever select a size 10 shoe, under any circumstances.
So, out of curiosity, I started looking for the reason I ended up with size 10 boots, and another chore on my list to return/exchange the boots with Amazon. I opened a new browser window, where I wasn't even logged into Amazon, and navigated to the product page for the boots. The screen starts with a drop down box pre-set to "Select" which forces a choice from the other options (7, 8, 9, 10, 11, etc.). If I chose anything from that list, it would have been 11, not 10. So, maybe I mistakenly clicked the wrong option. Maybe I'm also blind and couldn't see what I had clicked. Maybe I also didn't notice the incorrect size after clicking "Add to Cart" (which becomes part of the item title). By the way, now I'm starting to think Amazon's interpretation of the word "Cart" characterizes it as a formal noun. Perhaps the website designer has a friend who is also named "Cart."
I really wish there were a way to tell Amazon they have a bug in their website, but the reality is, they could not care any less, unless it is a security vulnerability. So, how do I know it's a bug? I have this (maybe bad) habit of leaving dozens, perhaps sometimes hundreds, of browser tabs open. I get interrupted by family members, random thoughts, reminders on my phone, barking dogs, overheard nearby conversations, and probably all sorts of other things. So I open a new tab, leaving the current one open, whenever I decide the interruption requires some info I might find on the web. I happen to have left the tab open on my Amazon.com cart, from when I first added those boots (before "Saving for later" or "Moving to Cart"). The size, 11, was clearly shown at the end of the cart-item's title. Now I'm reasonably sure I did what I thought I would have done... picked my own correct shoe size.
If you spent the time to read this, I hope you get the time back someday soon when/if something you added to your Amazon cart... sorry "Cart"..., then moved to "Saved for later" and then moved back to your cart, gets resized, color-changed, or some other selection shifts without notice. If you're paying just a bit closer attention, and get things corrected before placing the order, maybe it'll save you the hassle of shipping something back. At the very least, maybe this confirms that you might not have made a mistake, or you might not actually be losing your memory (yet).
I haven't been able to get Amazon's "Cart" + "Save for later" feature to fail in the same way again, and I don't intend to spend any more time on it. If you notice this happening, and have a set of steps to make it happen, leave a comment. I'd like to know if anyone else has tripped over this annoying little quirk.
