How To Make Purchases with Your Cell Phone With Amazon TextBuyIt

Yesterday, Amazon debuted a rather swanky new service, Amazon TextBuyIt, which lets e-shoppers who may not have access to a computer, make purchases through their mobile phones. Although many companies have dabbled in the “shop via cell phone” space, Amazon’s offering intrigued me as I’m a frequent customer. So with a spirit of adventure not seen since the days I took the Asus Eee PC for a test drive, I dove right in. My mission? To purchase Preacher Vol 9. Alamo, the last entry in the sweet comic trade-paperback series. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of my experience with Amazon TextBuyIt.

• Using my notebook, I set up an account at Amazon Payments.
• On my cell phone, I created a text message with “Preacher Vol. 9″ in the body (you can also input the ISBN/UPC code if you memorize that sort of thing), and I sent the text message to “262966″ (Amazon).
• Within seconds, I received a text from Amazon TextBuyIt prompting me to reply to with the number “1″ to purchase the graphic novel. Sounded easy enough, so I did.
• Equally fast, I received a second text from Amazon TextBuyIt, which requested that I reply with the e-mail and zip code associated with my Amazon account. Okay.
• I received an automated call from Amazon that gave me a rundown of my what I had planned on purchasing, my shipping address, and the last four digits of my debit card. Satisfied, I pressed “1″ to complete the order.
• Amazon sent yet another text, this time congratulating me on my purchase.

It may seem like quite a number of steps, but the entire process (not counting the Amazon Payment account set up) took maybe a minute, tops. I can foresee it being quite the handy service, especially for bargain hunters who are out shopping and would like to see if Amazon serves up a better deal (or folks like me that can be too lazy to get off their duffs to power on a notebook). Definitely worth a check out. (Bad pun, quite intended.)