In the interest of creating a complete story of the solution of the first item being charged at $0.00 on random orders, here is what happened next. I upgraded to Unlimited Plus. Within 24 hours I got one $0.00 first item (order 12016) but no more $0 items since then and I am at order 12150, 134 orders later. So saying, I may run into another one BUT I think that would be highly unlikely. There was one problem due to the fact that my upgrade had not propagated through the entire system yet when that order 12016 came through. I would say that the lack of memory allotted for my account caused the error (big clue were the many "out of memory" errors). Fingers crossed that the problem is over. Many thanks to you all.