Recently bought a number of items from Amazon.com and paid for them using a single-use Secure Online Account number from Discover. I got a notice from Amazon a bit later that there was a problem processing my credit card number. After several retries, I called Discover to find out the scoop.
They told me Amazon was attempting to process the order with a number that had already been used.
OK.
So, I removed all the credit card numbers Amazon had on file for my account, and tried again. It worked.
Sort of.
Two items in my shopping cart went through. The rest were in limbo again.
After thinking it through, I realized that Amazon doesn’t charge your card until an item ships. Since I had so many items in my cart, they were very likely going to ship at different times. So, my single-use credit card number won’t ever reliably work.
The moral, then, is to pay for each item separately when using single use numbers if you think that the items you’re buying are likely to ship at different times.
