Today I ordered my first round of Christmas presents from Amazon.com. Still more to achieve, which I need to get taken care of soon, but I feel better getting at least part of them ordered. I also tried out this "Payphrase" business that Amazon is promoting. I just realized you get 5% "cashback" when using it, information that I wish I would have seen earlier!
Except I'm not really sure what the point is? So you have this phrase setup that's connected to your shipping and billing information. You put in the phrase, and a pin number, and that's all you have to enter. They appear to be positioning it between the 1-click ordering and traditional shopping cart style ordering.
With the traditional method, you add stuff to the cart, review your cart, then click through all the various screens checking your billing info, shipping info, etc etc etc. With 1-click, once you have your default stuff setup, it's literally one click (well, two clicks if you want to order more than one of a given item). This is somewhere in the middle - after entering your phrase and PIN, you are given a basic screen where you can pick your shipping speed, and that may be about it. Hit submit, and you're good to go.
So...is that really necessary? I mean, really. How hard is it to put in your whole email address and password, that you already know?
In my case too, it caused me a lot of confusion ordering with shipping when I was more than one different thing. The way it works is you have a half hour to order additional items, and they will be shipped together to save on shipping costs. So the first item I ordered, I made sure it qualified for free shipping (I don't think that was strictly necessary, but I wanted to do it that way). Then the next item I ordered, when I hit "checkout", I didn't have a free shipping option because the item wasn't over $25. I confirmed actually paying for shipping, but then when I looked in "My Orders", it had combined it with the previous item's free shipping shipment.
All in all, that's a rather intelligent feature. Obviously yes I want the free shipping, and it's really cool that it's hooking me up like that. However, the price that I confirmed was WITH shipping, and that wasn't the price that I actually paid. That part is a little sketchy if you ask me. I want to know EXACTLY what price I paid for the item, shipping and all. And what if I had chosen a more expensive shipping option for the first one? Who knows what would have happened. I assume they wouldn't/couldn't charge me MORE than I agreed to, right?
So Payphrase, really I'm not sure what your purpose is. I did read briefly that you could see the payphrase featured on non-Amazon sites somehow. That seems like a feature that might make it at least somewhat reasonable to exist, although I still don't see the benefit in making me learn another set of credentials. But as long as you're giving me 5% cashback (through the end of the year they claim, FYI), I'll be playing your game Amazon. Still a sucker for deals.
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