What the Amazon frick?

I was the happy and grateful recipient of two Visa debit cards, each with different balances.

I finally figured out a few items to use the cards for, went through the effort to activate them, added them to my Amazon account, added the desired items to my cart, selected the card with the lesser amount, knowing that amount would be insufficient to cover the overall cost – but imagining that by 2019 the great and powerful Amazon would note the insufficiency and ask for an additional payment method (for me, the other debit card), and I'd be back to my job licketty split.

BZZZZT!

Instead, the order was accepted. So I knew I had some non-trivial pain and suffering ahead of me attempting to be proactive about rectifying the situation.

I wound up chatting with a customer service rep, who cancelled my order. Great!

Then I got those items back in my cart, but managed to place the order against the wrong card again... (yes, I am an idiot...)

So... I cancelled that (well, it was split into two orders, so I had to cancel both of them).. and started adding items back into the cart.. buuuuuuuuuuut.. when I got to the third item, I was told it was no longer available....... <the sound of gnashing of teeth>

Well, after a few tries it was available again (probably their own less than light-speed accounting due to my having apparently ordered that item twice.. perhaps the cancellations took a while to decrement the “number available” amount on their end...?). And I finally used the debit card that could cover the entire cost.

But that's not what I wanted to do, because now I've stranded $22.74 on that card, meaning my next purchase will need to be for that or less given one apparently cannot combine payment methods to make an Amazon purchase.

So it turns out recycling isn't the only form of rocket science available for immediate frustration in 2019....