Like most people, I've ordered a lot of packages (hundreds?) on Amazon and almost never had a problem. In the rare case of a problem, Amazon would instantly refund me. But almost all those orders are under $1000. Everything changes when you have a problem with an expensive order. Amazon has a price threshold where the support system is different and the normal CS people are powerless.
During lockdown, I ordered a Sony camera and lens that was in the $5k+ range. The package went "missing" with the shipper with obvious fake tracking data, like multiple "customer not home" delivery attempts timestamped at 12am in the morning. The packages never showed up. Amazon kept saying it was the shipper's fault and the shipper said it was Amazon's responsibility. Lots of tweets, etc, got me nowhere.
In the end Amazon finally refunded me, but it was a nightmare. They wouldn't even talk to me until I waited a number of days after the package was late and even then all they would say is that it had to be escalated to management who would review the issue eventually. Even when they finally agreed the package was lost, I had to wait for another management review to actually get the refund issued. They had my money tied up for weeks with no recourse for a package they never even delivered. I can only imagine how bad it would be if the shipper claimed it was delivered.
My recommendation is to skip Amazon for anything expensive or at high risk of shipper theft/fraud. Your customer experience will not be the same as when they lose a $10 package. They will treat you like a criminal no matter what your past history with Amazon is.
Perfectly believable. The thing I really loved about Amazon is that they had their act together. But that has declined drastically over the decades; now whenever I actually have to deal with them it seems like there's a ton of internal chaos.
In June 2018, I ordered a soccer magazine, "Futbol Total", for my soccer-mad nephew. It said it would arrive in 4-16 weeks, which seemed weird. I waited it out, and no magazine. I contacted them and they said they were on it and it would arrive soon. At 5 months in I just canceled the order, only to get an email saying, "Unfortunately, we weren’t able to cancel the items you requested and these items will soon be shipped." I spent a bunch of time in chat and on the phone getting the runaround, complete with new ticket numbers, promises of personally following up, and even a $20 credit. But they were firm on saying, "Please be assured, we will ship this item very soon."
Occasionally I'd try again, insisting that they either cancel the order or actually ship it. Each time I was told it would be shipped. Long after I'd given up, in late October 2020, they finally canceled it, saying, "We regret to inform you that, due to a technical error, we will not be able to fulfill your order." For all of Amazon's vaunted customer focus, my impression was of a lot of unhappy, fearful customer service staff passing the buck so they could avoid bad metrics.
> The thing I really loved about Amazon is that they had their act together. But that has declined drastically over the decades
This seems to be a problem for all big platforms. When they’re small enough to not change the ecosystem, they can do what they do well. Eg amazon ships more conveniently and google returns better results and uber is less scammy. Then they get massive and become a viable,better understood target for fraud/manipulation, and suddenly their offering begins to suck. It’s frustrating as a consumer.
so, at what point is legitimate to involve the Credit Card company? you don’t even need to actually do it, tell cs you will do it unless it gets here in x days.
To be fair, this is almost certainly an issue with whoever was selling the item on Amazon, rather than Amazon.
Which of course is nothing more than a convenient excuse for them to use when the only ones with the power to regulate what sellers end up on their platform is... Amazon.
I actually had almost the same issue ordering a mattress from Amazon. The seller had created a tracking number so the order was showing as "shipped" even though there hadn't been any movement ever, which meant I couldn't cancel the order without escalating about 5 times to different service reps.
I'm afraid of being downvoted, but the algorithm for an Amazon return looks something like:
Your LTV = Forecasting total revenue
from your transactions so far
Revenue = The sum of your past
transactions
Refund? = LTV - Revenue - Refund Cost > 0
This is a much simpler, much more logical model. It appears everywhere, like with credit card disputes or when you get service discounts to not leave. Because when you don't get the refund for a $7,000 item, the assumption is you will "die" - quit using the service, stop buying, whatever - and your LTV - revenue is now zero.
What is frustrating to people is: it doesn't matter what happened to the package. You feel like you're this good person pursuing this great justice, but the simple facts are it doesn't matter what actually occurred. This is coming from someone who had two $3,500 computer deliveries stolen, probably because they had RTX 3080 written on them, but like, Amazon didn't care, it just refunded me. I didn't have to provide evidence or explain anything. Because my LTV was really high. Same with getting stuff refunded on my credit card. They simply did not care, and it was thousands of dollars of stuff where, obviously I was in the wrong, you can't just refund like airfare and such, but I asked for it and I got it because LTV.
Is this just? Like how else could it work? They investigate everything, spending more money than the cost of the refund? They would just not provide refunds, as was the case historically in e-commerce! And it's not Amazon, it's everyone. Indeed, the real innovation here isn't the strategy, it's that LTV forecasting has gotten really accurate. Otherwise I feel like these threads devolve into, people who don't know anything complain about stuff they keep using, and nobody critically looks into what's really going on.
There's an emotional desire, ironically, for this slow, legalistic, argumentative, plaintiff versus defense world. You know, when it suits you. The algorithmic approach, as soon as you open that Pandora's box, well of course it optimizes all that crap away - the LTV model of "justice" here is, in my opinion, a lot lot better.
It's just so inscrutable to a lay person, such a baffling reorganization of at least two decades of conditioning, I can see how the reaction is, "Oh my god, who is this blowhard, downvote." All I'm trying to do is share the facts of how remedies really work when you interact with giant, growing, successful companies.
This is 100% correct. Even our small business have rules like this: good customers will get refunds, discounts, etc. Bad ones (pathological ones) - we just try to get rid of them ASAP and no refunds. Because we do not want them to use our service anyway.
At the very beginning we were thinking that good vs bad should also include our support costs - not just LTV. But that is amazingly correlated: high LTV means that user has very low support cost (or at least a very nice people to work with).
> Like how else could it work? They investigate everything, spending more money than the cost of the refund?
Is anyone actually arguing for fewer "easy refunds" and more investigation? I though the point was that given the fact that most of their refunds are handled algorithmically, they have plenty of time to handle the rest of the refunds quickly and with care.
If I don't get my order, I want my money back. If the algorith decides I can get that with no investigation required, sure, I'll take it. But if the algorithm thinks they shouldn't take the "shortcut", I still deserve my money back and a human should be dispatched to deal with it ASAP.
Algorithmically adjudicating in favor of the customer is fine - it's their money they're risking. But algorithmically adjudicating against the customer should never be allowed without a human looking things over.
Yep, I think this is exactly how things work. My household buys pretty much anything it can from Amazon unless it's more expensive than we can get elsewhere because our Amazon credit cards automatically give a 5% discount (cash back). Since we pay our balance every month this is basically like having 5% more income proportional to the amount spent on Amazon**
We never have a problem dealing with customer service. A simple chat solves pretty much everything immediately, and when it's Amazon's fault they'll apply a courtesy credit towards our account. (Actually that hasn't happened a lot lately-- maybe something they don't do as much any more, or maybe they've calculated that we're solid enough customers that we're not quiting Amazon just because Amazon didn't give us free money)
*The first time we used Amazon Fresh was a complete epiphany for us. I was sick so couldn't go food shopping. Instead I gave Fresh a shot, and found out that on average their prices were 10% to 15% lower than I paid at the supermarket, and* we still got the same 5% cash back from using our Amazon credit card. Even after a good tip for the driver, we were still saving money. In terms of selection, they probably lack about 10% of the things we normally buy or they're much more expensive (meats especially) so I still do the occasional trip to the local grocery store to stock up.
I think you’re right that is the core of the model. Good customers always get treated better than Joe Rando.
But Amazon has more information and uses that too. They know loss rates by zip code or by block by carrier.
Usually items I order for them that are higher shrink risk don’t go through their Amazon distribution network and come UPS or USPS. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed those returns are easier — they probably dump cost on the 3rd party shipper.
While what you’re saying about how it works sounds extremely plausible, I am rather dubious about the idea that this is how it ought to work (and the inference that this is simple, therefore it’s how it ought to work).
Taken to the extreme (and I don’t see anything in the argument that prevents it being taken to the extreme) and combined with acceptance of utility functions (_i.e._ that the value of anything is comparable to anything else, including human lives) this seems to also reduce any and all rule enforcement to wergild or something radical in that vein. Which—I’m not sure how it worked historically, but it also seems to be the current state of patent law (it doesn’t matter if the patent has merit, the side with the better and more expensive lawyers will starve out the other), and the results look utterly miserable.
Vague generalities aside, the complaints (and hypothetical downvotes) seems to indicate that, however simple and transparent a rule this is from the inside, people don’t want to pay for what is not their fault (cf experiments where people rejected a $1/$99 split in favour of a $0/$0 one to punish the other guy). I’m reminded of people queueing up in droves to the first McDonald’s in Moscow nor for the food or the prices, but for the customer service, because that was literally the first time in their lives they could get that anywhere.
Unless it’s marketed as a luxury good, people will actually pay for decent customer service that, among other things, satisfies their sense of fairness. That a model which does not reflect this can be simple is not a virtue of that model, it’s shoddy model-building. Not providing that service might still be the better economic decision (with caveats), if few enough people end up bitter over it (and complain on HN, etc.), but that’s a much more involved claim than “but it’s so simple!”. It also has very little to do with its moral merit, and if the better economic decision is too far from the moral one, it may well be time to go tune the incentives again and not to give up on your set of morals.
I’m not convinced customer protection regulations are the answer here, but the results of no customer protection regulations also seem completely idiotic from the outside. The third option of piling upon the company online also seems revolting for entirely different reasons.
Interesting. I've bought most of my tech stuff from the same company for 20 years now. Their system actually lets me see all completed orders, and it tallied to about 50k AUD last time I checked (as an individual).
They're not always the cheapest, but the overall experience is great - and I just love that I can see all my orders for such a long time span.
Now, I've always had good customer support experiences with the company, and your model helps explain why I suppose; loyalty has a value of its own.
So what you are saying is instead of getting emotional, we should get even by reverse engineering the LTV algorithm and “lose” packages as often is still profitable for Amazon so we can buy things at near cost from them?
"LTV model of 'justice' here is, in my opinion, a lot lot better"
Sure, it is, when you're rich. If you're some poor bastard who's scrimped up a whole lot of money to buy an expensive item, and Amazon figures you won't spend much money in the future, you get ripped off.
There's a couple of externalities you've left out, too, because your LTV doesn't predict them:
* Reputational costs
* Risk of adverse legal outcomes, where you decline to provide deserved refunds after failing to deliver merchandise.
I believe all of this, but isn't there some aspect where persistence has a different outcome than passivity? In your example where essentially you're saying the profit Amazon made off a customer is less than the refund cost and fallout of indifference. There are escalation paths that cost the company money, like stealing support time via repeatedly escalating, and eventually filing a dispute with the credit card issuer. These, too, cost Amazon money.
Not sure I follow, if this happens to some customer (who are in the right) they shouldn't get a refund? And this is considered just because it saves investigation spending?
If Amazon chooses to refund without question to save disputes money, that's their choice. But it's not the customer's problem. If you pay for something and you don't receive it, you must get refunded.
At some point Amazon shipped me 5 CPUs in five boxes in a larger branded box instead of just one. I sent four back and didn't even get a "sorry for your trouble".
I wonder if that factors in somehow.
I also wonder - since the box containing five CPUs looked like a "single product" box - how often that must have happened.
I think overall Amazon is making a mistake. When I interviewed with them a few years ago, they were well aware of the risk of short-term best choices being bad in the long term (can't elaborate due to NDAs).
For instance, in the short term it's better to take the loss instead of investigate. But that then makes your platform an easy pick for fraudsters, so you end up with way more fraud and way more costs overall. If you were a bit more thorough and spotted scammers better, you would have a higher cost _per incident_ but lower cost overall in the long term.
This is particularly true if you are such a big player that you are the market in practice (so general equilibrium effects cannot be ignored anymore). And reminds me a bit of what eBay did in the past (sided with buyers almost every time without investigating, and made selling much more difficult).
Of course this is the case. Business give better customers better treatment.
Where people haven’t seemed to have learned their lesson with this is with airlines and to a lesser extent hotels. People will just buy the cheapest ticket, which is completely fine if that’s what you want or need to do, but they then complain that the airlines don’t bend over backwards when things go awry.
Example: you have to check in to international flights 60 minutes or more before the flight leaves (from the US). This is a reasonably strict rule. I once arrived 45 minutes prior and they checked me in anyway. I give that airline a lot of business and they know it.
So I order a lot of packages from Amazon and have had zero problems with returns and cancellations but almost all my purchases are low end.
For, say, new electronics, I’ll just go straight to B&H or Adorama. Or even Best Buy.
Thanks for this, very informative. So LTV is forecasted "lifetime value". So, if I'm 30, they'll estimate ~50 years of revenue going forward from me and use this as LTV?
You have a point, but if the company has a stated refund policy and its actual policy differs from that, then it can not in any way be regarded as just, IHMO.
(I have never bought anything expensive from Amazon, and so I have no idea what its stated policy is.)
I don’t think that’s the case. I spent tens of thousands of dollars on amazon over the years and had a similar bad experience than the author. I doubt they treat customers differently depending on how much they spend on the site.
For expensive stuff I almost never go with Amazon now: too many counterfeit / fly by night sellers.
For "prosumer" items a store that serves professionals is likely to watch their suppliers very carefully and have customer-friendly policies when things hit a snag. For cameras and optics (and flash sticks) B&H is my go-to place. My 2c.
A customer service rep from NYC once called to personally answer some questions I had about a sub-$100 product. This happens often.
This week I ordered a display with free shipping that was scheduled to arrive 5 days later. I received it in 24 hours - 4 days earlier than expected.
Their return policy is also hassle-free.
For music or audio products, I buy from Sweetwater.
Same good points as B&H, but you have an assigned "sales engineer" which some people find annoying, but I really like - whenever I have a problem or question, I get the same person on the phone every time.
I don't order from Amazon if I'm not comfortable outright losing my money, getting it late, or receiving a counterfeit.
Same. After getting clearly-open-box (used? counterfeit? returned?) Makita batteries on Amazon I only buy tools from Home Depot, only buy camera equipment from B&H, etc. No more pricey tools or electronics from Amazon, or food for that matter (years ago, bought box of protein bars, came expired!)
Yes, B&H is always the place to go for things like that. I just bought 15k worth of camera equipment for my dad and with the new store card it's an instant refund on taxes. The 30 day return policy is the cherry on top.
I just generally avoid Amazon Marketplace (third-party sellers) because returns are always a hassle in some way (shipping not covered, out-of-country return center to mail to, no shipping label, need to contact through email, force you to give reason why you want to return even though that is illegal, ...).
I too have had a similar experience, but it was for a series of bad deliveries by the same Amazon Logistics delivery driver. Almost every delivery was fucked up in some way or another: delivered late but marked as delivered, delivered on time but not marked as delivered until it was stolen, delivered to inaccessible locations, delivered to other residents drop boxes, etc.
I called amazon every time it happened. I told them the various things that their driver did, explicitly asking them to replace that specific driver. And after a while it was like they flagged my account as fraudulent (customer service began issuing canned responses with no follow up).
Eventually, after a few egregious cases, my property management company sued Amazon. Overnight, packages started being delivered correctly, and I haven't had to call CS since...but I now refuse to buy anything of value from Amazon anymore due to a combination of fraudulent marketplace items and the lingering fear that if something goes wrong I won't be able to get any compensation for it because my account has been flagged.
Funnily enough, Ali Express is now the more reputable company in my eyes.
I’ve found my credit card company, American Express to be great for getting refunds in cases like this and always use my credit card for larger purchases.
Like others have said - be careful with this option - there are a LOT Of examples in the Google Fi forums about people doing a chargeback with Google because of charges they felt were fair or fraudulent via Google Fi, and next thing they know their Google Account (Photos, Docs, Email, etc.) is disabled.
I would watch the same thing with Amazon (Music, Alexa, Photos, AWS, etc.)
Best thing to do is buy straight from manufacturer if possible require insurance on the shipment—that way the post has to deliver it or they are paying you!
At least where I live it's the shippers (i.e. the manufacturers in your example) problem if the package doesn't arrive, not mine.
If they want to purchase insurance on their package, that's their choice. On the flip side if they want to "self insure" by not doing so, and assuming that on average they would pay more for insurance than insurance would pay them, that's also their choice.
Either way I'm certainly not going to purchase insurance myself, paying extra money to mitigate their risk.
In fact, it seems pretty insane to me that they ship items worth thousands of dollars, but skip the few dollars on insured shipment. It not only protects against missing/"missing" packages, but also against transport damage (at least in Germany).
Amazon is simply not prepared to deal with this. Because of their "shady seller" and "comingled inventory" problem, they can't tell easily if a buyer or seller is trying to scam them.
Electronics I buy from either Best Buy or B&H Photo.
For non-electronic "Name Brand" items where counterfeit is likely, I'll go to Target.com, etc.
Amazon is great for stuff that is neither valuable, critical, subject to counterfeit, or perishable. But if health or a large amount of money is at stake, avoid it like the plague. It's not worth the risk.
In the end, it probably took 3-4 weeks to get my money back for a $5k 1-day delivery package that wasn't ever delivered. I would have gone the bank route next, but since Amazon did eventually give me my money back, it wasn't needed.
I'm sure the shipper was who lost/stole the package. But my point is that you can't take your great support experience with Amazon buying $50 sheets and expect that you get the same experience when they lose something expensive. For expensive or specialist items, you can often get the item faster and cheaper going to a different retailer despite how all your experience buying cheap stuff on Amazon tells you otherwise.
The only problem I've had over the past year or two was with a headset that didn't work properly. I returned it via a UPS will pick up the box and slap on a shipping label option. They never did. But there was eventually a tracking number in the system anyway. UPS basically shrugged and said that the computer says it was picked up. But the refund went through anyway. I assume Amazon decided that UPS had picked it up and lost it.
I'm guessing it's more price-dependent. I'm sure Amazon would refund a headset and not really care if they got it back or not. But try getting a refund on a $5,000 studio microphone and you will probably have an entirely different experience.
Somewhere around $1,000-ish seems to be the magic threshold where their rules change and you get lost in the management void.
They lost my 15$ package and even though they promised refund and a gift card, they never came through.
Now I don't use amazon anymore than I really have to.
I don't know if all shipping companies do this but my experience with Amazon in the UK is that they track and keep records of the whereabouts of their delivery vans.
Once I had an order "delivered" without trace and Amazon asked my to check with neighbours first as, according to their records, the van has stopped at my house. On another occasion I knew that the van never came despite order again listed as "delivered" and they refunded instantly.
Based on some personal experience with "lost" packages, and discussions with delivery drivers, this is also the case in the US. This makes it even more egregious when the carriers quibble because surely they know the package was stolen in transit.
A tiny corollary/anecdote: Every time the person who used to live here forgets and ships a book to my address, I call Amazon, they say “oh sorry”, and they instruct me to recycle/dispose of it and won’t accept a return of the still-unopened envelope. I’m not sure how this ties into LTV on the refunds side, but it feels like a sort of hidden incentive that’s not well known.
Strange I would assume that $5k to them is still nearly nothing. I've never ordered anything over $1k from Amazon and never had an issue with refunds due to issues but I guess they have a cutoff somewhere. I'll keep that in mind if I ever need to order something expensive like that.
I haven't had any issues with orders still in progress, but Amazon has replaced/allowed me to return a $1200 tv that was 6 months old after it randomly stopped working/broke after moving apartments. They sent someone out and picked it up--which I seriously doubt BestBuy or NewEgg would have been willing to do.
I had a similar issue to what you describe ordering a vintage item on Etsy and the tracking info provided was fake and delivered to a different address. That was a huge hassle to prove and get refunded for.
It took me months to get a fraudulent refurb phone refunded. I've also had several purchases where I didn't want to fight just slide. So I stopped using Amazon.
This is basically the reason that I've continued to purchase electronics in-store despite generally being (slightly) cheaper to buy on Amazon: when I buy it from Best Buy/REI/etc., I can pick the box with the factory seal, and if necessary even open it up in store (after paying for it) to confirm that said item is in the box.
I’ve been buying from B&H for many years, and had a wrong item shipped to me once. They made an exchange without any big hassle. The only issue I have now is they’ve switched away from UPS as default shipping—-UPS ground NY to Boston is basically next day, FedEx Ground service is two days. I liked going to the store in NY when I lived there.
I have bought various electronics and camera accessories from B&H with no issues (related to B&H).
However, I buy all my new camera bodies and lenses direct from the manufacturer. I have found the price to be identical (or nearly so) to B&H, shipping to often be free and from time to time, without a local tax. If Nikon, Sigma, etc are selling as 'new' what are returns/refurbs then there is no hope in the system at all.
I buy expensive electronics from B&H Photo Video, when possible.
In the 1980's, B&H was the queen of the "grey market". Now, I trust them to deliver authentic goods with legitimate warranties, and I'm profoundly suspicious of unnecessary transactions with Amazon.
I apply the same policy myself after a similar incident. I ordered a bunch of hard drives, when delivering them to my porter, the (dedicated) amazon delivery guy got an error on his tracking machine and took the parcel back. But then it was marked as delivered, and amazon refused to bulge, despite me receiving multiple emails the days after that delivery attempt, notifying me that the parcel would be delivered the next day (which I interpret as someone scanning the parcel they claimed has been delivered at their warehouse). A few weeks later they finally agreed to reimburse me.
Between this experience and my lack of trust in their supply chain, I now never buy anything expensive on amazon.
I dislike buying from Amazon and I don't doubt you had a frustrating experience here.
That said, how would you have expected this to go? I assume everybody is in agreement that this wasn't going to be sorted out the next day. I think you might be overestimating how smoothly this would go when dealing with another company, although obviously there would be exceptions to that.
Honestly, I would expect it to be sorted quickly and by one person. If I’m paying thousands of dollars for a high end product, especially with a company I’ve (presumably) spent tens of thousands of dollars with, I expect to be taken care of when something goes wrong.
> My recommendation is to skip Amazon for anything expensive or at high risk of shipper theft/fraud.
Based on this, as you say, "rare" experience? That seems unwise when aiming for the best average outcome.
Also what would be a better alternative (provided you still want to shop and pay online)? I suspect that, while the rate of problematic experience might be slightly lower with smaller dealers, the average lost value for the customer is not (since there is no Amazon middleman that has any financial interest in keeping the customer around for future shopping, and hence their money is probably just lost when something goes wrong that the dealer is unable or unwilling to resolve)
I do not trust Amazon to ship anything safely and securely anymore. Almost everything I receive is damaged, late, or mis-delivered. Books are especially abused somewhere in Amazon’s fulfillment. (They’re always bent, creased, or dirty.) Items that are supposed to be 1-day shipping typically take >=3, and Amazon’s tracking mostly says “oops! it’ll come trust us”. (Not verbatim, obviously.)
Amazon’s return process is becoming incrementally more obtuse as time goes on. While they’re still decently good, it’s getting harder to do easy, no-nonsense returns. Typically—if they don’t just tell me to dispose of the item myself—they demand I drive to Amazon lockers or Whole Foods or Kohl’s to drop stuff off at no charge, and pressure me into just getting Amazon credit.
I would never buy a $7,000 item on Amazon under any circumstance.
I'm genuinely surprised that people have such vastly different experiences with Amazon. I made 231 orders with them last year(lockdown....) And haven't had a problem with a single one. Couple times I wanted to return something they just refunded me without asking to send the item back. Everything arrives next day, always(here in UK anyway), and the customer support is stellar compared to literally anywhere else. Anyone who has ever had to contact Currys customer support should know what I'm talking about.
Like, I see all of these comments on HN all the time but I have the exact opposite experience - they just have no competition over here. I'm at a point where even if something is slightly more expensive on Amazon I'd rather buy from them as I know their CS Support won't try to screw me over.
It really is location dependent, since most of the problems are caused by the shipper. Amazon will use multiple shippers, and in some areas will use what ends up being people driving around in their personal cars to deliver packages. If you have unreliable shippers in your area, it’s hard to deal with Amazon when things go wrong. In one place I lived, Amazon would use the US Postal Service, UPS, and Fedex. I had no control over which. The local FedEx team was horrible, they never figured out how to deliver packages to my building. So they would pretend to deliver, say customer wasn’t home and no secure place to leave the package for 2-3 days, then stick a notice on the outside of the building somewhere that I could use to drive to the FedEx warehouse in the next town over to pick it up. Maybe it’s different now, but there was just no way to do anything about this.
Another location and I’d get these local people delivering packages in their personal cars and that was really hit or miss. Seems like anytime they were busy they just report that they tried to deliver but no one was home. They could steal whatever they wanted, it’s a matter of trust. How does Amazon know who is lying? Maybe I’m scamming them, maybe the shippers, maybe someone else is stealing packages off my doorstep.
There was just no way to choose a shipper or report problems with one. Don’t have any problems where I am now, so I don’t know if they’ve fixed that. They should be able to tell, statistically, if packages have more problems with one shipper over the other, but smart shippers who want to steal could probably game the system.
I was in urgent need of a spare part a couple of years ago and paid Amazon UK a lot extra to get it the next day. It was a heavy and bulky thing so I got really surprised when I got a simple envelope in the mail the next day.
It contained a simple SD-card adapter worth less than a dollar.
When calling Amazon about it they said I needed to ship the adapter back before they would send me the part I ordered. I told them it was totally unreasonable for me to have to wait many more days to get the thing I paid for when they obviously made the mistake and adapter wasn't worth anything compared to what I ordered. They could easily see that the weight of what they shipped was less than 1/1000th of what I ordered too but they refused to handle my case before they got their adapter back and they ended up hanging up on me.
Migrated my company off AWS after that and haven't used Amazon since. I value other things higher than saving an occasional dollar here or there.
I wonder if there are regions (or countries) which are worse? Amazon in Germany is also great, so far.
I’m like you - I’ve ordered so many things from Amazon this last year or so (new circumstances plus pandemic lockdown) and literally not one problem of the sort described. I can think of two items out of hundreds which weren’t on time (one, Amazons’s logistics made it a whole day late, and one was the seller’s issue). And the (very rare) returns were dealt with without a hitch.
For other reasons, I actually want to not be so reliant on Amazon, but their combination of Prime delivery, reliability, and customer service is unbeatable for many/most non-specialist items.
Chiming in here as well; I always trust Amazon to refund me if something is missing or broken without any hassle. A lot of other retailers always gives you a hard time even though they are at fault.
They have a huge problem with counterfeit but again always easy to get your money back.
Same with roughly the same package volume annually over 8+ years. Literally the only thing lost was due to a historic weather event and Amazon still took care of it.
Maybe with commodity household goods it’s different than with higher value items or with electronics.
I mostly get what I order, but I don't order much in the way of electronics or things where scams are common, though I did have to be careful when ordering a simple micro SD card as there were many incredibly cheap, off-brand products that were likely to be scams.
I have also seen a few deliveries with pictures that went to what was clearly the wrong address, had a box of chocolates arrive totally melted where the ice pack exploded and left me with a wet, melted box of chocolates, and during early Covid, I did end up getting scam toilet paper rolls shipped in from China. Oh, it was actually toilet paper, but the rolls were incredibly tiny and nothing at all like the pictures.
So... definitely hit or miss and it depends a lot on what you order.
I’m in the same boat as you. I’ve had a couple of misorders, but they were 3rd party sellers.
And I love the ability to take items back to our local Amazon depot without having to box the item. Just give it back to them and they handle all the shipping.
People keep mentioning the price, the real problem is never buy camera equipment on Amazon. Use Adorama or B&H. I've bought tons of stuff on Amazon over the years, and have only had issues with camera equipment. After the last issue I had a few years ago, I realized it's just a waste of time to deal with camera equipment on Amazon.
Why camera equipment? IDK. Even before Amazon was a thing, buying camera equipment online was always a bit shady. I assume those same people just move to Amazon.
I should add that I've never had a problem sending back or replacing the item even when it was over 1k.
For cameras in the UK I usually buy from WEX instead, who have excellent customer service and specifically sell camera equipment. I quite like Scan for computer components too. But for general “stuff” or tech, Amazon are so much better than places like Currys, it’s not even funny any more.
I have had issues with Amazon in the past, but if you do have a poor support experience you just need to persevere until you get someone more flexible. Which is somehow still better than most of our other stores here in the UK.
The same for me. I had one damaged product, a pack of pork rinds that opened up because it was too tightly packed next to 5L of olive oil. Because of my experience with their customer service (and delivery service which is second only to DHL for me), other merchants need to be substantially cheaper.
Yup, my track record with them is excellent, also.
I have received one wrong item (refunded, told to keep) and one item I didn't order. The only hassle I've ever had was a damaged item they were trying to talk me into accepting a discount rather than returning (a very heavy item, I'm sure shipping was an issue.)
There very definitely is an issue with counterfeits and their comingled inventory system needs to be nuked from orbit. I have once seen a product where it was pretty apparent *every* offering was garbage or counterfeit. I even reported one of the counterfeits to Amazon as the image revealed it was one of the garbage things, not the name brand it purported to be.
I think it vastly depends on what you are ordering.
We passed a ton of orders for valuable goods that were processed by small companies who used amazon as an alternative storefront to boost their sales. Communication was finnicky but everything went fine.
Then we also order a ton of cheap, little convenient stuff that we could have ordered on aliexpress but went to amazon for faster delivery. It was a lot more hit or miss, with pure junk coming in from tjmes to times.
We never hit the level of scam described in the article, but we'd also pay a lot more attention on where it’s coming from before forking 7k.
Hedonic adaptation. I love amazon. I probably place 200+ orders a year, and I have plenty of issues. But that doesn’t make it vastly superior to the alternative.
For example, I bought a projector on BestBuy. They had the dimensions wrong and it wouldn’t fit where I needed it. With amazon, that would be a simple return. With BestBuy, a simple return and a 15% restocking fee. Good luck reaching someone at BestBuy to explain why that fee should be waived. With amazon, it would be a simple chat.
Amazon is infinitely better than most other retailers. People just forget how good we have it.
The commingled inventory problem is seriously a United States thing, from what I have heard. It is a frustrating situation here in the US where lots of spoilable goods are available on Amazon but if you purchase them, they are spoiled. Deodorant, cereal, protein bars, tape, everyone has stories.
A Japanese friend said he could Amazon order a particular variety of candy and it would arrive next-day in good condition and I felt jealous. In America there really is no such service for ordering food or spoilable items online.
Yeah, I’m in the U.K. and I don’t think I’ve ever had a real issue with Amazon. Deliveries are on time 99% of the time and returns are simple (they even covered a £60 Post Office return of a heavy product I decided to return, because their only option required a printer and this was mid-pandemic so I had no way to access one).
Based off this thread I might think twice before ordering expensive stuff from them though - however I usually find other places are better value for expensive electronics etc. anyway
I don't know if I'm lucky and some other people are just unlucky. But I also sometimes suspect that some people buy things at prices that are "too good to be true" or that always go for the lowest price. (I admittedly also tend to go elsewhere for certain types of items. For example, I always buy my Apple stuff directly from Apple.)
Someone here half joked about the LTV calculation determining how easily they accept returns. Amazon would be incredibly incompetent not to have an A-list who get priority treatment. If they don’t put people like you who make 200+ orders on it, that would be odd.
You must have a very secure delivery location, and I'm willing to bet that you probably live in a more affluent community, if what you're saying is even true. That and/or you're having stuff delivered to Amazon locations.
Not to mention not everything is shipped from seller / manufacturer to you via Amazon.
Anything over a few hundred bucks is playing with fire. I bought an iphone through them (Amazon sold, not 3rd party) last year and had to do the same thing the couple did: chargeback on credit card. They refused to investigate and flat out accused me of fraud. Gee, maybe it's the low paid disgruntled employees from warehouse worker to contracted out Prime delivery guy stealing shit? Nah, it's the guy who spent tens of thousands at your business and you never had a problem with!
I wonder actually where this stuff happens typically. Clearly some seems to happen before things even get to Amazon, that whole counterfeit commingling thing you hear about, where the 3rd-party stock gets used even if you buy from Amazon directly. (How this could be worth it to do at all vs. the reputational damage is unclear but I guess they're always chasing the small efficiencies... still you'd think it would be easy for Amazon to track the actual source of fake/nonexistent items even when they're mingled like that.)
I'd have to think theft by the warehouse workers is pretty rare, it feels like the kind of thing they'd surveil and police quite zealously.
You can tell they're increasing the scrutiny on drivers as well with them having to take photos of the delivered item, and they've clearly always been closely tracked on time and location.
Amazon arrived in force kinda recently in my country. My parents are amazed by it and started making expensive purchases...
And now are surprised at how shitty their delivery is.
The worst case was when they bought some medicine for their dog and a expensive screen to use in their business.
The dog medicine arrived on a friday, I was present and heard a car horn, went to check, and it was a random normal car, a lady climbed out, said it was a delivery. when I said I was son of the person that made the purchase, she just shoved the package through the gate opening and drove away, didn't even said hi or bye or whatever, didn't check my identity properly, didn't take a signature, didn't even tried to deliver the package safely, she almost threw it at me.
Then saturday my parents had a meeting with someone, and left, but on that day the city hall sent some workers to do some work on the sidewalk.
Seemly Amazon deliverd it to these workers, Amazon claims they delivered, and claims some dude we never heard of accepted the delivery, we believe the dude in question is some random city hall employee that was doing sidewalk maintenance.
Likely to be Amazon Flex (https://flex.amazon.co.uk/). Anyone can download the phone app, go to the Amazon warehouse, and start delivering packages.
As you can imagine, quality of delivery is pretty variable. I had an Amazon Flex worker steal a phone that I'd ordered - Amazon refunded with no questions asked and as far as I know didn't bother to investigate the theft.
I bought a new 32" monitor about 2 years ago that when I unpacked it, it was clearly an open box item. The way it had been packed was extremely unprofessional, tape was haphazardly wrapped and twisted around the stand and cords and things that normally come in plastic bags weren't bagged.
They've been shipping the wrong items lately too, twice in the last year when I order something that has multiple selections like color, scent or flavor etc I'll sometimes get the wrong item sent. I've done more Amazon returns in the last 2 years than my previous 15 combined.
The open box thing is a huge issue. I bought probably 5 things last year >$100 sold as “new” that just weren’t. Returns have always been easy, I live near an Amazon Go and they even have an attendant that helps. But not being able to trust that a new item is actually new is…shitty. I would never buy electronics from Amazon, just get it for the same price at Best Buy and wait a couple more days (plus they often have same-day pickup available, which Amazon can’t compete with). Target is another good option for the same reason. Always keep in mind that everyone will price-match Amazon.
I’m in Europe. Earlier this year, I ordered from Amazon Japan, the package arrived quicker than things I had ordered earlier on a European Amazon and it was insanely well packaged.
Amazon Japan is incredible. I ordered a Japanese book from them and it arrived the next afternoon (to the UK!) Another time I was in Japan and I needed a specific bluetooth keyboard for the tablet I was using, delivered to a convenience store pick-up point in the deep north of the country in the middle of winter, ordered with my UK credit card, and no problem, it was there the next day. I can't imagine the amount of organisation both of these things take.
Amazon Japan even in 2013 was amazing. My host family ordered an out of print trail guide to the hiking trail between Osaka and Tokyo after I had failed to find it in every major book shop in Osaka. If memory serves it was delivered in about 6 hours.
I ordered from Amazon Japan for the first time last week and the delivery speed was excellent. I would say the packaging was sub-par compared to other Japanese retailers though. CDJapan is just as fast and ships me books in better condition than any UK store, and proxy shipping from Buyee.jp redefined what packaging means to me. Seriously, it’s almost worth using them just to get some top quality cardboard!
I guess a lot depends on who and how they pay to deliver. I got an internal x260 battery (that can't configure properly in Linux, if anyone knows about it) a few days ago and has been a disaster.
In the case of Spain their customer support is fine, but it falls flat because delivery is a shitshow.
The winning strategy for Amazon is to segregate by loyalty: Have an absolutely stunning experience until you are addicted, then let you have bad products and focus on newer clients.
In fact, nothing tells us we all see the same prices either. I suspect they only show me more expensive items, because I can find my A4 paper at 6€ elsewhere instead of 10€ on Amazon. And same goes for most other stuff. Maybe after a few years, Amazon profits off us with a hefty margin. Price segmentation by (reverse) customer loyalty.
never thought of this but this is has been my experience exactly, lot of past bought cheap version of item disappear from the amazon own search and I either have to get them from the reorder interface or straight up use google to search the amazon's item page and buy it coming from the direct link.
Maybe we need a service were we can all upload our online merchants screenshots of products and prices, that can then tell us if particular customers have been segmented into the pay more forever bin.
Definitely has not been my experience. I've been an Amazon customer since 1999, and I got Prime pretty much as soon as it started (I think they had a promo for students back then). I've spent tens of thousands of dollars with them, easily. I continue to have very few problems with orders or deliveries, and on the rare occasion when I do, it's resolved quickly and easily.
> Books are especially abused somewhere in Amazon’s fulfillment. (They’re always bent, creased, or dirty.)
Interesting that you bring this up- I have noticed over the past year and a half that all my Amazon books have been showing up with damaged corners and smudge marks all over the covers.
I buy directly from the publisher and have never had any issues. They might take a little longer to arrive, but they're always in perfect condition. Sometimes they even throw a free e-book my way, which I appreciate the hell out of.
I understand purchasing from other categories on Amazon, but with books it's so easy to avoid Amazon all together. Plus you know you won't receive a counterfeit (https://twitter.com/nostarch/status/1183095004258099202) if you order directly from the publisher.
It's genuinely astonishing how bad Amazon is at shipping books now. It used to be their Thing, and now basically any book you buy from them arrives damaged. You can complain and get them to send a replacement and the replacement is damaged too.
In my experience Amazon Japan still knows how to pack books correctly, but I haven't ordered from them since the start of COVID... they properly secure books to a bit of backing cardboard (with shrink-wrap and/or rubber bands, usually) and then mount the backing cardboard inside of the packing box so that the books don't slide around and get damaged. I'm sure it costs like an extra 50 cents per package to do this, but presumably their customers demand quality in other countries where Amazon doesn't have a de-facto monopoly.
Let me emphasize something here: Amazon Japan ships globally. Not just books -- bags too. And that's big because the Japanese bag selection is truly something else. Alas, many are very expensive. However, since I didn't travel for more than a year now (guess why) I have shuffled the travel budget over to the bag budget and bought a bag from Amazon Japan. Here's the most important part, watch just thirty seconds: https://youtu.be/g6uSpuN2uT8?t=346 ideal size for me, incredible flexibility. I combine it with https://youtu.be/oaRyVuLuWOw?t=160 because I like flexibility :)
Previously I was buying electronics and I needed to use proxies which are added cost and hassle.
I order lots of printed musical scores. The higher quality scores are $45+ a pop. Amazon frequently renders them completely useless as a work you’re supposed to be able to sight-read with your instrument. After all the folding, bending, and creasing, the books don’t even stay open properly, and the bent pages make for terrible and distracted reading. It’s depressing and an absolute shame.
> they properly secure books to a bit of backing cardboard (with shrink-wrap and/or rubber bands, usually) and then mount the backing cardboard inside of the packing box so that the books don't slide around and get damaged.
That's how they used to do in France when they started (15-20 years ago): a base cardboard plate at the right size for the box, the stuff stacked on the cardboard, and both united by a shrink wrap. That was both simple and extremely effective, or otherwise said: great.
I don't know why they stopped. And I don't know why nobody else copied that system.
(I used to order from 2000 miles away, now I don't order books from Amazon no more, except second hand foreign language books I couldn't get otherwise.)
I think the competition from local retailers is important in this. I’ve bought books from other Japanese stores, like CDJapan, and the packaging is excellent. In the UK all retailers seem to ship books poorly now. Waterstones is no better than Amazon sadly.
I don't return that much stuff to Amazon, but I've generally found their setup for returns to be about the best and easiest around: typically I have the option to drop off several places or to print a shipping label.
My experience is that books are mostly still OK (US based) but the frequency of getting a new book that is slightly damaged has increased significantly. Even books that are shrink wrapped by the publisher sometimes come with corner or other damage (which may or may not have happened once in Amazon's hands, but I should not have to tolerate).
What I can say with certainty is that the attention to shipping the books has plummeted compared to the early years of Amazon. Back then they would put the book(s) on a piece of cardboard and shrink wrap that and then put some of the bubble stuff in the box.
Now you are lucky if they even put any filler in the box and best hope its not a rainy day and delivery leaves the package outside your door as boxes are flimsier and not always sealed tightly.
Amazon used to be my #1 shopping place (save for groceries), years ago but I rarely use them anymore.
Last hard drive I ordered from them came wrapped in factory issued static plastic bag, and NO padding inside the Amazon issued cardboard box. I of course returned it after confirming it was broken.
That's not the only reason I gave up on them. Searching is getting really hard, reviews are meaningless due to fake ones, counterfeit products, ...
To me it looks like they've decided to run the business to the ground and cash in a monumental amount of money.
Don't forget expired, misleading, or a knock-off. There's so many pitfalls to Amazon orders it reminds me of EBay back in the day.
Lots of brick and mortar stores improved their curbside flows during the pandemic, and this is the sweet spot for me. Same day pickup of items you could have grabbed yourself off the shelf, and humans around to dispute problems with.
Yup, ironically, books coming from Amazon are far more likely to arrive damaged - two decades later, and they still can't get it through their heads that they can't just toss a book in a box and expect it to be not crunch the corners every time. I don't think that it is even smart enough to be a scheme to encourage Kindle and Audible sales...
For returns, I was surprised to see only drop-off options, but I found that they actually just bury the pick up option on another page. I usually find it now under a small faint "more options" link. Good luck.
(And yes, despite being a multi-decade Prime customer, I now avoid Amazon for many categories, including books, & especially batteries)
I would never buy anything expensive from Amazon, the customer service is not adequate when things go wrong. I even stopped buying CD's from them as they would almost always arrived with cracked/broken cases. Specialist sellers, e.g. Prestomusic, actually wrap and pack them properly (and often have much better websites for buying music).
> Almost everything I receive is damaged, late, or mis-delivered. Books are especially abused somewhere in Amazon’s fulfillment. (They’re always bent, creased, or dirty.)
Strangely enough, a company whose employees have to piss in bottles and use crying booths may have staff that are not especially engaged in the highest quality work.
Ironically I do not buy books from Amazon due to the atrocious quality of their 'print on demand' titles. These look like they are printed with a 5 year old heavily abused inkjet.
Part of the appeal of reading deadtree is the paper feel, smell and type quality. Majority of paper backs from amazon are nigh unreadable.
I always seem to get a boot prints on the books I buy on Amazon. I don’t really buy from Amazon any more but the amount of boot prints I’ve received over the years is a lot!
The latest book I ordered came unbelievably spotless. It was about $4 AUD including shipping for a book that would usually cost me $50+ shipping from USA (it was sheet music) so I was very happy. The original delivery date they gave me was delusional so I paid it no mind when it passed. Two days after it, I get an email saying they’re refunding me $3 for the inconvenience, and my spotless book arrived the next day. Three days late is a rounding error in postage delivery timelines where I live. I’m still bewildered by the whole experience to be honest, but hey, almost free expensive sheet music book. Definitely low risk for that purchase.
> This was despite the fact that when boxed the Sony a1 weighs 3.22 lb (1.46 kg), and the Chiles’ package was listed by UPS as weighing only 2 lb (900 g).
Not sure why Amazon was still arguing at this point. If UPS confirms the package was basically empty, then Amazon has no reason to believe the customer was lying.
Probably like in "The Rainmaker". Automatically deny every claim above $X. If there's a complaint on the denial, automatically approve or deny based on a new number $Y. Most people give up before you finally get a real human to actually check the case.
This is what Tesla is doing with their solar roof product. They raised prices by 50% even though people already had signed contracts. All their communication is incredibly insidious, telling people that they need to sign the new contract, when in fact that’s false, in hopes of convincing customers to cancel their order. I can’t wait until a class action lawsuit rips them a new asshole at this point.
I once ordered a DSLR camera kit from Amazon for around $750. It had a bunch of lenses but the lens adapter it was suppose to come with was missing. The adapter cost about $15 so I reported it was missing the adapter and asked if they could either send me one or refund me $15 so I could buy one off Amazon. They gave me 2 choices instead of reading my request, return it or accept a partial refund of 30%. I accepted the partial refund because I didn't want to return/re-order the camera kit and hope that it doesn't happen again. I felt kind of bad accepting such a large refund for a small problem.
If I was a god I would never send anyone to hell to burn forever in fiery torment. For this situation I would be very very tempted to make an exception. Anyone who sets up an automated system designed specifically to hassle people for seeking recourse for being wronged, deserves every form of torture they get.
That doesn't seem to prove anything at all? It's a 1.6 lb camera. Weighing in at 1.2 lbs short is either a bad scale or a lot of accessories missing, but it definitely does not corroborate a missing camera.
Scales used for commercial purposes in the US are required to meet accuracy standards and to be calibrated by law. While it’s not impossible for them to break, they’re a heck of a lot more rigorous in design and regulation than Amazon’s notoriously problematic inventory management.
This this a clear cut case and amazon should process the refund, however, in general refunding is a hard problem for Amazon to solve due to the sheer volume fraud that occurs.
For anyone unaware, go to telegram and do a public search for 'refunding'. There are hundreds of channels where you can pay someone to refund >£10,000 of stuff for you for a 10% fee. Afaik, the main method that 'refunders' use to defraud amazon is to (1) initiate a return (2) modify the return label so UPS accepts it into their system but (3) deliver it to the wrong address. So it looks to amazon as being successfully delivered to the return warehouse, but what actually got delivered was a brick, to some random house.
I wouldn't be surprised if >1% of macbook and iPhone refunds are fraudulent in this way. Someone in a cybercrime lab they should write a paper about this whole ecosystem because it is a huge black market.
What you described is not a hard problem, it is an expensive problem because Amazon does not want to hire human labor to deal with returns. Almost all other retailers do it, and they all have 3% profit margins.
> So it looks to amazon as being successfully delivered to the return warehouse, but what actually got delivered was a brick, to some random house
but how amazon does not check the quality of the return?
I mean, even if UPS confirms that the package arrived to right address, wouldn't someone from amazon warehouse check if the package is valid?
Well there is nothing for them to check. From what I've read, they wait two weeks then mark the package as 'lost in transit'.
I think for the last-mile of delivery, couriers rely on the actual address written on the package, not the address that the barcode scans to. I might be wrong though.
For returns you have to print a barcode and put it in the box. You don't get your refund until they physically scan the code in the box. Maybe it's not standard everywhere, but this process has been around for some years now. If the package never gets to the return center, no refund would be processed…
Hmm, maybe I'm wrong then. Though I could imagine that if this happened to you legitimately that you would have some legal recourse to get your money back; you fulfilled your end of the return by posting it, its not your fault the courier screwed up.
Happened to me as well. I got a Asus ROG Strix G15 laptop on 13 May(this month) and upon clearance from Sri Lankan customs (where I live) the UPS agents discovered that the contents was missing. UPS notified me this and report this to Amazon. They(UPS) held the package with them and didn’t deliver it to me as it was empty.
Even in the commercial invoice the gross weight of the laptop package was just 1.81KG! The laptop itself weighs about 2.3KG!
When I connected Amazon support they basically said that the package was delivered and they did an investigation the the weights are correct as well.
The UPS has filed a claim with Amazon and Amazon is not responding to UPS even and insists I obtain a police report. I didn’t even receive the package. Shouldn’t UPS and Amazon sort this out?
We are under lock down due to COVID and I can’t go to a police station to make the complaint.
Now I don’t have the laptop or a refund…
This costed me about 1700 usd with shipping. It’s not a cost I can afford to just write off.
Chargeback time! Hope you don’t have any Audible/Kindle/etc accounts, you’ll probably lose access to content you’ve bought, errm, licensed-with-no-binding-arbitration-clauses
I've placed approx. 15k orders with Amazon Germany in 20 years and have probably had less than 100 issues, mostly with FBA sellers. I get an answer from CS within 10 minutes and 1-day shipments are on time ~98%. Refunds are issued as soon as I drop the package in the return box. Call me a fan.
The best experience is still Amazon JP but returns are a little more complicated (Even within Japan) — Obviously b/c you more or less do not return stuff in JP [Hansei (反省].
It also surprises me how triple platinum status customers are in disbelief that some people who don’t make hundred or thousands of orders don’t get the kid-glove experience and are treated less well.
Amazon can both treat a large number of people well and treat other customers badly, there’s enough customers to do both to millions.
I think some of us are just cursed. I have trouble with at least 1/3 of all online orders. It's not my address: These problems have persisted in 5+ countries with different companies.
It'd never occur to me to make online ordering an integral part of my personal logistics and avoid it as much as I can.
Amazon is an easy target. Plus, I think many are referring to Marketplace and non-Amazon shipped orders where buyers lacked some basic common-sense. (E.g. 50% off cameras from a seller who just signed up...)
Maybe the reason for this is more consumer friendly laws? In the EU you can return any* online/telephone ordered purchase within 14 days (among other laws).
More a matter of business practice in general — The fact that Amazon makes it easier than any other shop is just one reason why I prefer peace of mind over the cheapest price. And yes, the law is in place but most shops make it way too difficult (Acknowledging the reason, time to refund, "Lost" returns, Direct vs. Marketplace, etc.).
It's not mandated anywhere in US law, but the vast majority of reputable retailers (e.g. Walmart, Amazon, Target etc.) have very generous return policies. They're usually far more generous than 14 days. As you might expect, there are of course reasonable limitations (e.g. customized products, digital products, etc.).
Amazon JP got a little worse ever since they started having their own delivery, which is not great compared to Yamato or Sagawa, which they were using before (and are still using sometimes, it's not clear under what conditions). But the difference is almost at the level of nitpicking. When you're used to top-notch service, and you suddenly get a subpar experience, that's kind of disappointing.
This is pretty much the same as the US; except our postmaster just obliterated our mail service to try to rig an election so Amazon is actually better than them now.
I've done hundreds of orders on Amazon JP. I rarely return products but there are two cases:
Panasonic's microwave is dead on arrival, then Amazon shipped replacement one soon before I sent broken one.
Sony's headphone's bone is broken after a few month, so I sent it to Sony's service center but the shit support said that it's broken due to me, not product's fault even though it never taken out. They tried to charged me repair cost before repairing, so I tried to return the product to Amazon JP because it's faulty product. They accepted refunding with exactly same argument wrote here. I believe it won't happen on other Japanese shops.
From this experience, I sometimes buy from Amazon for products that possibly fragile and manufacturer's support is not reliable. (Or add extended warranty that covers my fault)
My friend often buy Chinese cheap electronics from Amazon JP (a.k.a. AliExpress Japan branch) and often return crap. He said it work flawlessly.
I've never lost my package, thanks to high quality delivery company and secure place.
He appears to reference a Japanese cultural principle called 反省 which means something like "self-reflection". I believe he means that in Japan people do not return things often, they take the blame and learn from their mistake.
Bought a 55” tv from Amazon. The UPS driver came a knocked on my door saying, “it’s very large, please help me bring it in.” I went out with them to the truck where the tv was sitting on the pavement. Helped carry it to my house. Driver left. I opened it up, took it out of the packaging, pealed the plastic off the front, plug it in and turned it on. LCD panel was cracked internally. Went to the website and requested a replacement. It arrived the next morning. Was fine. I packed up the broken unit, stuck the UPS label on it, scheduled a pick up. UPS came by and grabbed it. Took a month but eventually the website acknowledge receipt of the return. Zero issues with the return.
Once preordered a Blu-ray from Amazon JP. It arrived on release day. My only complaint is they won’t ship Blu-ray’s from adult video producers even if the title isn’t hardcore porn.
This sounds like what should happen, irrespective of the seller?
You can claim you got an empty box, but everyone's on the internet here, and pictures of an empty box with indignation as guide text gets you fake internet points on every social media site.
That alone isn't enough for any seller to take your claim as true until you take the necessary steps that come with "I've been defrauded", like filing that credit card dispute and police report. Which they did, after which Amazon accepted the dispute, so... where's the news angle here? "Store honours a $7k claim without questioning it" would almost be more newsworthy.
>The Chiles filed a credit card dispute and made a crime report, and after The Denver Channel made its own inquiries and the Chiles tried emailing Amazon owner Jeff Bezos directly, Amazon relented and said that the $7,000 will be refunded once the credit card dispute had been resolved.
It sounds like Amazon refused to refund their money until the media got involved.
Also, even if that were not the case, a big part of what Amazon sells is convenience and (supposedly) great customer service. If you pay $7,000 only to receive an empty box, and you provide Amazon with evidence from UPS that the box's weight was less than the weight of the actual product, that should be all it takes to get your money back.
Jumping through hoops with your credit card company and filing a police report should be the last resort for dealing with shitty companies that won't listen to anything but threats. There is no reason that the buyer should have to do that when dealing with a reputable company, especially when they have evidence from the shipper that the box did not contain the product they ordered.
Let's be clear: emailing the CEO and pretending that was a smart move is just idiotic. The article reads like they followed the standard resolution process, and got nowhere. Which makes sense, because at $7000 this needs a police report. The CC dispute can help a little, but that police report is what allows a seller to go "okay, you've committed to claiming to tell the truth, with jail time if it turns out you lied. We can now proceed in good faith".
Because remember: the refund process for products that have vanished isn't "you complain, then you get money", it's "you complain, the seller files an insurance claim with their insurance company, they get the (promise of) insurance compensation, THEN they pay you". You get paid with that insurance money, so: no insurance compensation, no refund.
And that's the only thing the police report does: it lets the seller go to their insurance company and go "here's the paperwork you need so you can justify honouring our claim", and then the insurance company will pay the seller, and if the amount is large enough, and its worth their time, the insurance company will do an investigation.
(and note that this is specifically the process when it comes to fraud or theft, where the law has been broken. It has, obviously, nothing to do with the refund process for a defective product)
Yes, and without a case file that evidence counts for exactly nothing. When it's this much money, you get to go to the police, report fraud, and back it up with the UPS shipping information. Now you now have case number and legally recognized evidence that you can take to the seller, so that they can be reasonably sure you're not just trying to get free money.
Because again, it's the internet, just doctoring a UPS web page and printing your own shipping label is trivial for anyone who stands to me $7000 if they get away with it.
Around here, the police just shrug at theft saying there’s nothing they can do and that they have higher priorities. They’ve taught us that filling a police report is worthless.
They don't have to do a single thing other than open a case, so that you have proof that you are willing to stake legal repercussions (fines, jail, possible even prison) on the validity of your claim.
The sellers don't care whether the police is going to investigate, they only care that you have the legal paperwork that they can give to their insurer so that THEY can get that money back, too. Because you don't get paid "by the seller", you get paid with dollars that the seller gets from their insurer.
Until they have the evidence that the insurer will accept, you're not getting paid.
I don't know how we ever got to the point of accepting that shipping is some equal third party in the transaction.
Shipping is a subcontractor to the company that sold the product. It is 100% the responsibility of the company to make right.
Imagine if you bought a TV at a store and they said, "want us to bring it out to your car?" And they did. And it got destroyed in the parking lot. And the company said, "you'll have to take it up with the parking lot parcel company. They don't technically work for us."
Especially when the retailer is the one choosing the shipper. On some sites you can at least choose UPS vs FedEx, then it would be a slightly different story.
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During lockdown, I ordered a Sony camera and lens that was in the $5k+ range. The package went "missing" with the shipper with obvious fake tracking data, like multiple "customer not home" delivery attempts timestamped at 12am in the morning. The packages never showed up. Amazon kept saying it was the shipper's fault and the shipper said it was Amazon's responsibility. Lots of tweets, etc, got me nowhere.
In the end Amazon finally refunded me, but it was a nightmare. They wouldn't even talk to me until I waited a number of days after the package was late and even then all they would say is that it had to be escalated to management who would review the issue eventually. Even when they finally agreed the package was lost, I had to wait for another management review to actually get the refund issued. They had my money tied up for weeks with no recourse for a package they never even delivered. I can only imagine how bad it would be if the shipper claimed it was delivered.
My recommendation is to skip Amazon for anything expensive or at high risk of shipper theft/fraud. Your customer experience will not be the same as when they lose a $10 package. They will treat you like a criminal no matter what your past history with Amazon is.
In June 2018, I ordered a soccer magazine, "Futbol Total", for my soccer-mad nephew. It said it would arrive in 4-16 weeks, which seemed weird. I waited it out, and no magazine. I contacted them and they said they were on it and it would arrive soon. At 5 months in I just canceled the order, only to get an email saying, "Unfortunately, we weren’t able to cancel the items you requested and these items will soon be shipped." I spent a bunch of time in chat and on the phone getting the runaround, complete with new ticket numbers, promises of personally following up, and even a $20 credit. But they were firm on saying, "Please be assured, we will ship this item very soon."
Occasionally I'd try again, insisting that they either cancel the order or actually ship it. Each time I was told it would be shipped. Long after I'd given up, in late October 2020, they finally canceled it, saying, "We regret to inform you that, due to a technical error, we will not be able to fulfill your order." For all of Amazon's vaunted customer focus, my impression was of a lot of unhappy, fearful customer service staff passing the buck so they could avoid bad metrics.
This seems to be a problem for all big platforms. When they’re small enough to not change the ecosystem, they can do what they do well. Eg amazon ships more conveniently and google returns better results and uber is less scammy. Then they get massive and become a viable,better understood target for fraud/manipulation, and suddenly their offering begins to suck. It’s frustrating as a consumer.
issue a chargeback and move on.
Which of course is nothing more than a convenient excuse for them to use when the only ones with the power to regulate what sellers end up on their platform is... Amazon.
What is frustrating to people is: it doesn't matter what happened to the package. You feel like you're this good person pursuing this great justice, but the simple facts are it doesn't matter what actually occurred. This is coming from someone who had two $3,500 computer deliveries stolen, probably because they had RTX 3080 written on them, but like, Amazon didn't care, it just refunded me. I didn't have to provide evidence or explain anything. Because my LTV was really high. Same with getting stuff refunded on my credit card. They simply did not care, and it was thousands of dollars of stuff where, obviously I was in the wrong, you can't just refund like airfare and such, but I asked for it and I got it because LTV.
Is this just? Like how else could it work? They investigate everything, spending more money than the cost of the refund? They would just not provide refunds, as was the case historically in e-commerce! And it's not Amazon, it's everyone. Indeed, the real innovation here isn't the strategy, it's that LTV forecasting has gotten really accurate. Otherwise I feel like these threads devolve into, people who don't know anything complain about stuff they keep using, and nobody critically looks into what's really going on.
There's an emotional desire, ironically, for this slow, legalistic, argumentative, plaintiff versus defense world. You know, when it suits you. The algorithmic approach, as soon as you open that Pandora's box, well of course it optimizes all that crap away - the LTV model of "justice" here is, in my opinion, a lot lot better.
It's just so inscrutable to a lay person, such a baffling reorganization of at least two decades of conditioning, I can see how the reaction is, "Oh my god, who is this blowhard, downvote." All I'm trying to do is share the facts of how remedies really work when you interact with giant, growing, successful companies.
At the very beginning we were thinking that good vs bad should also include our support costs - not just LTV. But that is amazingly correlated: high LTV means that user has very low support cost (or at least a very nice people to work with).
It is very simple.
Is anyone actually arguing for fewer "easy refunds" and more investigation? I though the point was that given the fact that most of their refunds are handled algorithmically, they have plenty of time to handle the rest of the refunds quickly and with care.
If I don't get my order, I want my money back. If the algorith decides I can get that with no investigation required, sure, I'll take it. But if the algorithm thinks they shouldn't take the "shortcut", I still deserve my money back and a human should be dispatched to deal with it ASAP.
Algorithmically adjudicating in favor of the customer is fine - it's their money they're risking. But algorithmically adjudicating against the customer should never be allowed without a human looking things over.
Yep, I think this is exactly how things work. My household buys pretty much anything it can from Amazon unless it's more expensive than we can get elsewhere because our Amazon credit cards automatically give a 5% discount (cash back). Since we pay our balance every month this is basically like having 5% more income proportional to the amount spent on Amazon**
We never have a problem dealing with customer service. A simple chat solves pretty much everything immediately, and when it's Amazon's fault they'll apply a courtesy credit towards our account. (Actually that hasn't happened a lot lately-- maybe something they don't do as much any more, or maybe they've calculated that we're solid enough customers that we're not quiting Amazon just because Amazon didn't give us free money)
*The first time we used Amazon Fresh was a complete epiphany for us. I was sick so couldn't go food shopping. Instead I gave Fresh a shot, and found out that on average their prices were 10% to 15% lower than I paid at the supermarket, and* we still got the same 5% cash back from using our Amazon credit card. Even after a good tip for the driver, we were still saving money. In terms of selection, they probably lack about 10% of the things we normally buy or they're much more expensive (meats especially) so I still do the occasional trip to the local grocery store to stock up.
But Amazon has more information and uses that too. They know loss rates by zip code or by block by carrier.
Usually items I order for them that are higher shrink risk don’t go through their Amazon distribution network and come UPS or USPS. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed those returns are easier — they probably dump cost on the 3rd party shipper.
Taken to the extreme (and I don’t see anything in the argument that prevents it being taken to the extreme) and combined with acceptance of utility functions (_i.e._ that the value of anything is comparable to anything else, including human lives) this seems to also reduce any and all rule enforcement to wergild or something radical in that vein. Which—I’m not sure how it worked historically, but it also seems to be the current state of patent law (it doesn’t matter if the patent has merit, the side with the better and more expensive lawyers will starve out the other), and the results look utterly miserable.
Vague generalities aside, the complaints (and hypothetical downvotes) seems to indicate that, however simple and transparent a rule this is from the inside, people don’t want to pay for what is not their fault (cf experiments where people rejected a $1/$99 split in favour of a $0/$0 one to punish the other guy). I’m reminded of people queueing up in droves to the first McDonald’s in Moscow nor for the food or the prices, but for the customer service, because that was literally the first time in their lives they could get that anywhere.
Unless it’s marketed as a luxury good, people will actually pay for decent customer service that, among other things, satisfies their sense of fairness. That a model which does not reflect this can be simple is not a virtue of that model, it’s shoddy model-building. Not providing that service might still be the better economic decision (with caveats), if few enough people end up bitter over it (and complain on HN, etc.), but that’s a much more involved claim than “but it’s so simple!”. It also has very little to do with its moral merit, and if the better economic decision is too far from the moral one, it may well be time to go tune the incentives again and not to give up on your set of morals.
I’m not convinced customer protection regulations are the answer here, but the results of no customer protection regulations also seem completely idiotic from the outside. The third option of piling upon the company online also seems revolting for entirely different reasons.
They're not always the cheapest, but the overall experience is great - and I just love that I can see all my orders for such a long time span.
Now, I've always had good customer support experiences with the company, and your model helps explain why I suppose; loyalty has a value of its own.
Sure, it is, when you're rich. If you're some poor bastard who's scrimped up a whole lot of money to buy an expensive item, and Amazon figures you won't spend much money in the future, you get ripped off.
There's a couple of externalities you've left out, too, because your LTV doesn't predict them:
* Reputational costs
* Risk of adverse legal outcomes, where you decline to provide deserved refunds after failing to deliver merchandise.
If Amazon chooses to refund without question to save disputes money, that's their choice. But it's not the customer's problem. If you pay for something and you don't receive it, you must get refunded.
I wonder if that factors in somehow.
I also wonder - since the box containing five CPUs looked like a "single product" box - how often that must have happened.
For instance, in the short term it's better to take the loss instead of investigate. But that then makes your platform an easy pick for fraudsters, so you end up with way more fraud and way more costs overall. If you were a bit more thorough and spotted scammers better, you would have a higher cost _per incident_ but lower cost overall in the long term.
This is particularly true if you are such a big player that you are the market in practice (so general equilibrium effects cannot be ignored anymore). And reminds me a bit of what eBay did in the past (sided with buyers almost every time without investigating, and made selling much more difficult).
Where people haven’t seemed to have learned their lesson with this is with airlines and to a lesser extent hotels. People will just buy the cheapest ticket, which is completely fine if that’s what you want or need to do, but they then complain that the airlines don’t bend over backwards when things go awry.
Example: you have to check in to international flights 60 minutes or more before the flight leaves (from the US). This is a reasonably strict rule. I once arrived 45 minutes prior and they checked me in anyway. I give that airline a lot of business and they know it.
So I order a lot of packages from Amazon and have had zero problems with returns and cancellations but almost all my purchases are low end.
For, say, new electronics, I’ll just go straight to B&H or Adorama. Or even Best Buy.
(I have never bought anything expensive from Amazon, and so I have no idea what its stated policy is.)
I'd say three centuries, but who's counting ...
(or whenever printing got cheap enough to use for advertising)
Dead Comment
For "prosumer" items a store that serves professionals is likely to watch their suppliers very carefully and have customer-friendly policies when things hit a snag. For cameras and optics (and flash sticks) B&H is my go-to place. My 2c.
I will also throw in a vote for B&H.
A customer service rep from NYC once called to personally answer some questions I had about a sub-$100 product. This happens often.
This week I ordered a display with free shipping that was scheduled to arrive 5 days later. I received it in 24 hours - 4 days earlier than expected.
Their return policy is also hassle-free.
For music or audio products, I buy from Sweetwater.
Same good points as B&H, but you have an assigned "sales engineer" which some people find annoying, but I really like - whenever I have a problem or question, I get the same person on the phone every time.
I don't order from Amazon if I'm not comfortable outright losing my money, getting it late, or receiving a counterfeit.
I called amazon every time it happened. I told them the various things that their driver did, explicitly asking them to replace that specific driver. And after a while it was like they flagged my account as fraudulent (customer service began issuing canned responses with no follow up).
Eventually, after a few egregious cases, my property management company sued Amazon. Overnight, packages started being delivered correctly, and I haven't had to call CS since...but I now refuse to buy anything of value from Amazon anymore due to a combination of fraudulent marketplace items and the lingering fear that if something goes wrong I won't be able to get any compensation for it because my account has been flagged.
Funnily enough, Ali Express is now the more reputable company in my eyes.
I would watch the same thing with Amazon (Music, Alexa, Photos, AWS, etc.)
If they want to purchase insurance on their package, that's their choice. On the flip side if they want to "self insure" by not doing so, and assuming that on average they would pay more for insurance than insurance would pay them, that's also their choice.
Either way I'm certainly not going to purchase insurance myself, paying extra money to mitigate their risk.
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Electronics I buy from either Best Buy or B&H Photo.
For non-electronic "Name Brand" items where counterfeit is likely, I'll go to Target.com, etc.
Or were you afraid of getting banned from Amazon?
I'm sure the shipper was who lost/stole the package. But my point is that you can't take your great support experience with Amazon buying $50 sheets and expect that you get the same experience when they lose something expensive. For expensive or specialist items, you can often get the item faster and cheaper going to a different retailer despite how all your experience buying cheap stuff on Amazon tells you otherwise.
The only problem I've had over the past year or two was with a headset that didn't work properly. I returned it via a UPS will pick up the box and slap on a shipping label option. They never did. But there was eventually a tracking number in the system anyway. UPS basically shrugged and said that the computer says it was picked up. But the refund went through anyway. I assume Amazon decided that UPS had picked it up and lost it.
Somewhere around $1,000-ish seems to be the magic threshold where their rules change and you get lost in the management void.
Once I had an order "delivered" without trace and Amazon asked my to check with neighbours first as, according to their records, the van has stopped at my house. On another occasion I knew that the van never came despite order again listed as "delivered" and they refunded instantly.
(not expensive items, though)
I had a similar issue to what you describe ordering a vintage item on Etsy and the tracking info provided was fake and delivered to a different address. That was a huge hassle to prove and get refunded for.
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However, I buy all my new camera bodies and lenses direct from the manufacturer. I have found the price to be identical (or nearly so) to B&H, shipping to often be free and from time to time, without a local tax. If Nikon, Sigma, etc are selling as 'new' what are returns/refurbs then there is no hope in the system at all.
edit: grammar
In the 1980's, B&H was the queen of the "grey market". Now, I trust them to deliver authentic goods with legitimate warranties, and I'm profoundly suspicious of unnecessary transactions with Amazon.
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Between this experience and my lack of trust in their supply chain, I now never buy anything expensive on amazon.
That said, how would you have expected this to go? I assume everybody is in agreement that this wasn't going to be sorted out the next day. I think you might be overestimating how smoothly this would go when dealing with another company, although obviously there would be exceptions to that.
Based on this, as you say, "rare" experience? That seems unwise when aiming for the best average outcome.
Also what would be a better alternative (provided you still want to shop and pay online)? I suspect that, while the rate of problematic experience might be slightly lower with smaller dealers, the average lost value for the customer is not (since there is no Amazon middleman that has any financial interest in keeping the customer around for future shopping, and hence their money is probably just lost when something goes wrong that the dealer is unable or unwilling to resolve)
Amazon’s return process is becoming incrementally more obtuse as time goes on. While they’re still decently good, it’s getting harder to do easy, no-nonsense returns. Typically—if they don’t just tell me to dispose of the item myself—they demand I drive to Amazon lockers or Whole Foods or Kohl’s to drop stuff off at no charge, and pressure me into just getting Amazon credit.
I would never buy a $7,000 item on Amazon under any circumstance.
Like, I see all of these comments on HN all the time but I have the exact opposite experience - they just have no competition over here. I'm at a point where even if something is slightly more expensive on Amazon I'd rather buy from them as I know their CS Support won't try to screw me over.
Another location and I’d get these local people delivering packages in their personal cars and that was really hit or miss. Seems like anytime they were busy they just report that they tried to deliver but no one was home. They could steal whatever they wanted, it’s a matter of trust. How does Amazon know who is lying? Maybe I’m scamming them, maybe the shippers, maybe someone else is stealing packages off my doorstep.
There was just no way to choose a shipper or report problems with one. Don’t have any problems where I am now, so I don’t know if they’ve fixed that. They should be able to tell, statistically, if packages have more problems with one shipper over the other, but smart shippers who want to steal could probably game the system.
When calling Amazon about it they said I needed to ship the adapter back before they would send me the part I ordered. I told them it was totally unreasonable for me to have to wait many more days to get the thing I paid for when they obviously made the mistake and adapter wasn't worth anything compared to what I ordered. They could easily see that the weight of what they shipped was less than 1/1000th of what I ordered too but they refused to handle my case before they got their adapter back and they ended up hanging up on me.
Migrated my company off AWS after that and haven't used Amazon since. I value other things higher than saving an occasional dollar here or there.
I’m like you - I’ve ordered so many things from Amazon this last year or so (new circumstances plus pandemic lockdown) and literally not one problem of the sort described. I can think of two items out of hundreds which weren’t on time (one, Amazons’s logistics made it a whole day late, and one was the seller’s issue). And the (very rare) returns were dealt with without a hitch.
For other reasons, I actually want to not be so reliant on Amazon, but their combination of Prime delivery, reliability, and customer service is unbeatable for many/most non-specialist items.
https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/nm1mm1/i_got...
Maybe with commodity household goods it’s different than with higher value items or with electronics.
I have also seen a few deliveries with pictures that went to what was clearly the wrong address, had a box of chocolates arrive totally melted where the ice pack exploded and left me with a wet, melted box of chocolates, and during early Covid, I did end up getting scam toilet paper rolls shipped in from China. Oh, it was actually toilet paper, but the rolls were incredibly tiny and nothing at all like the pictures.
So... definitely hit or miss and it depends a lot on what you order.
And I love the ability to take items back to our local Amazon depot without having to box the item. Just give it back to them and they handle all the shipping.
Why camera equipment? IDK. Even before Amazon was a thing, buying camera equipment online was always a bit shady. I assume those same people just move to Amazon.
I should add that I've never had a problem sending back or replacing the item even when it was over 1k.
I have had issues with Amazon in the past, but if you do have a poor support experience you just need to persevere until you get someone more flexible. Which is somehow still better than most of our other stores here in the UK.
I have received one wrong item (refunded, told to keep) and one item I didn't order. The only hassle I've ever had was a damaged item they were trying to talk me into accepting a discount rather than returning (a very heavy item, I'm sure shipping was an issue.)
There very definitely is an issue with counterfeits and their comingled inventory system needs to be nuked from orbit. I have once seen a product where it was pretty apparent *every* offering was garbage or counterfeit. I even reported one of the counterfeits to Amazon as the image revealed it was one of the garbage things, not the name brand it purported to be.
We passed a ton of orders for valuable goods that were processed by small companies who used amazon as an alternative storefront to boost their sales. Communication was finnicky but everything went fine.
Then we also order a ton of cheap, little convenient stuff that we could have ordered on aliexpress but went to amazon for faster delivery. It was a lot more hit or miss, with pure junk coming in from tjmes to times.
We never hit the level of scam described in the article, but we'd also pay a lot more attention on where it’s coming from before forking 7k.
For example, I bought a projector on BestBuy. They had the dimensions wrong and it wouldn’t fit where I needed it. With amazon, that would be a simple return. With BestBuy, a simple return and a 15% restocking fee. Good luck reaching someone at BestBuy to explain why that fee should be waived. With amazon, it would be a simple chat.
Amazon is infinitely better than most other retailers. People just forget how good we have it.
A Japanese friend said he could Amazon order a particular variety of candy and it would arrive next-day in good condition and I felt jealous. In America there really is no such service for ordering food or spoilable items online.
Based off this thread I might think twice before ordering expensive stuff from them though - however I usually find other places are better value for expensive electronics etc. anyway
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Not to mention not everything is shipped from seller / manufacturer to you via Amazon.
I'd have to think theft by the warehouse workers is pretty rare, it feels like the kind of thing they'd surveil and police quite zealously.
You can tell they're increasing the scrutiny on drivers as well with them having to take photos of the delivered item, and they've clearly always been closely tracked on time and location.
And now are surprised at how shitty their delivery is.
The worst case was when they bought some medicine for their dog and a expensive screen to use in their business.
The dog medicine arrived on a friday, I was present and heard a car horn, went to check, and it was a random normal car, a lady climbed out, said it was a delivery. when I said I was son of the person that made the purchase, she just shoved the package through the gate opening and drove away, didn't even said hi or bye or whatever, didn't check my identity properly, didn't take a signature, didn't even tried to deliver the package safely, she almost threw it at me.
Then saturday my parents had a meeting with someone, and left, but on that day the city hall sent some workers to do some work on the sidewalk.
Seemly Amazon deliverd it to these workers, Amazon claims they delivered, and claims some dude we never heard of accepted the delivery, we believe the dude in question is some random city hall employee that was doing sidewalk maintenance.
I would definitely not buy dog medicine.
As you can imagine, quality of delivery is pretty variable. I had an Amazon Flex worker steal a phone that I'd ordered - Amazon refunded with no questions asked and as far as I know didn't bother to investigate the theft.
They've been shipping the wrong items lately too, twice in the last year when I order something that has multiple selections like color, scent or flavor etc I'll sometimes get the wrong item sent. I've done more Amazon returns in the last 2 years than my previous 15 combined.
In the case of Spain their customer support is fine, but it falls flat because delivery is a shitshow.
In fact, nothing tells us we all see the same prices either. I suspect they only show me more expensive items, because I can find my A4 paper at 6€ elsewhere instead of 10€ on Amazon. And same goes for most other stuff. Maybe after a few years, Amazon profits off us with a hefty margin. Price segmentation by (reverse) customer loyalty.
Interesting that you bring this up- I have noticed over the past year and a half that all my Amazon books have been showing up with damaged corners and smudge marks all over the covers.
I understand purchasing from other categories on Amazon, but with books it's so easy to avoid Amazon all together. Plus you know you won't receive a counterfeit (https://twitter.com/nostarch/status/1183095004258099202) if you order directly from the publisher.
In my experience Amazon Japan still knows how to pack books correctly, but I haven't ordered from them since the start of COVID... they properly secure books to a bit of backing cardboard (with shrink-wrap and/or rubber bands, usually) and then mount the backing cardboard inside of the packing box so that the books don't slide around and get damaged. I'm sure it costs like an extra 50 cents per package to do this, but presumably their customers demand quality in other countries where Amazon doesn't have a de-facto monopoly.
Previously I was buying electronics and I needed to use proxies which are added cost and hassle.
As for Amazon Japan, their packaging is most often top-notch although that’s more related to Japanese mentality than to Amazon‘s policy.
But you end up with smudgy pages from a bad printer, pages missing, and a book binding not lasting more than a day.
That's how they used to do in France when they started (15-20 years ago): a base cardboard plate at the right size for the box, the stuff stacked on the cardboard, and both united by a shrink wrap. That was both simple and extremely effective, or otherwise said: great.
I don't know why they stopped. And I don't know why nobody else copied that system.
(I used to order from 2000 miles away, now I don't order books from Amazon no more, except second hand foreign language books I couldn't get otherwise.)
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What I can say with certainty is that the attention to shipping the books has plummeted compared to the early years of Amazon. Back then they would put the book(s) on a piece of cardboard and shrink wrap that and then put some of the bubble stuff in the box.
Now you are lucky if they even put any filler in the box and best hope its not a rainy day and delivery leaves the package outside your door as boxes are flimsier and not always sealed tightly.
Last hard drive I ordered from them came wrapped in factory issued static plastic bag, and NO padding inside the Amazon issued cardboard box. I of course returned it after confirming it was broken.
That's not the only reason I gave up on them. Searching is getting really hard, reviews are meaningless due to fake ones, counterfeit products, ...
To me it looks like they've decided to run the business to the ground and cash in a monumental amount of money.
Lots of brick and mortar stores improved their curbside flows during the pandemic, and this is the sweet spot for me. Same day pickup of items you could have grabbed yourself off the shelf, and humans around to dispute problems with.
For returns, I was surprised to see only drop-off options, but I found that they actually just bury the pick up option on another page. I usually find it now under a small faint "more options" link. Good luck.
(And yes, despite being a multi-decade Prime customer, I now avoid Amazon for many categories, including books, & especially batteries)
Strangely enough, a company whose employees have to piss in bottles and use crying booths may have staff that are not especially engaged in the highest quality work.
Part of the appeal of reading deadtree is the paper feel, smell and type quality. Majority of paper backs from amazon are nigh unreadable.
The latest book I ordered came unbelievably spotless. It was about $4 AUD including shipping for a book that would usually cost me $50+ shipping from USA (it was sheet music) so I was very happy. The original delivery date they gave me was delusional so I paid it no mind when it passed. Two days after it, I get an email saying they’re refunding me $3 for the inconvenience, and my spotless book arrived the next day. Three days late is a rounding error in postage delivery timelines where I live. I’m still bewildered by the whole experience to be honest, but hey, almost free expensive sheet music book. Definitely low risk for that purchase.
Not sure why Amazon was still arguing at this point. If UPS confirms the package was basically empty, then Amazon has no reason to believe the customer was lying.
For anyone unaware, go to telegram and do a public search for 'refunding'. There are hundreds of channels where you can pay someone to refund >£10,000 of stuff for you for a 10% fee. Afaik, the main method that 'refunders' use to defraud amazon is to (1) initiate a return (2) modify the return label so UPS accepts it into their system but (3) deliver it to the wrong address. So it looks to amazon as being successfully delivered to the return warehouse, but what actually got delivered was a brick, to some random house.
I wouldn't be surprised if >1% of macbook and iPhone refunds are fraudulent in this way. Someone in a cybercrime lab they should write a paper about this whole ecosystem because it is a huge black market.
but how amazon does not check the quality of the return? I mean, even if UPS confirms that the package arrived to right address, wouldn't someone from amazon warehouse check if the package is valid?
I think for the last-mile of delivery, couriers rely on the actual address written on the package, not the address that the barcode scans to. I might be wrong though.
This is also true for Amazon business purchases. I have returned items around $600 and have never been asked to put a code in the box.
But I’ve never returned anything over $1,000.
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Even in the commercial invoice the gross weight of the laptop package was just 1.81KG! The laptop itself weighs about 2.3KG!
When I connected Amazon support they basically said that the package was delivered and they did an investigation the the weights are correct as well.
The UPS has filed a claim with Amazon and Amazon is not responding to UPS even and insists I obtain a police report. I didn’t even receive the package. Shouldn’t UPS and Amazon sort this out?
We are under lock down due to COVID and I can’t go to a police station to make the complaint.
Now I don’t have the laptop or a refund…
This costed me about 1700 usd with shipping. It’s not a cost I can afford to just write off.
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The best experience is still Amazon JP but returns are a little more complicated (Even within Japan) — Obviously b/c you more or less do not return stuff in JP [Hansei (反省].
Amazon can both treat a large number of people well and treat other customers badly, there’s enough customers to do both to millions.
It'd never occur to me to make online ordering an integral part of my personal logistics and avoid it as much as I can.
*Exceptions are software, digital products, etc.
Amazon: 30 days https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
Walmart: 90 days https://www.walmart.com/cp/returns/1231920
Target: 90 days: https://help.target.com/help/subcategoryarticle?childcat=Ret...
Panasonic's microwave is dead on arrival, then Amazon shipped replacement one soon before I sent broken one.
Sony's headphone's bone is broken after a few month, so I sent it to Sony's service center but the shit support said that it's broken due to me, not product's fault even though it never taken out. They tried to charged me repair cost before repairing, so I tried to return the product to Amazon JP because it's faulty product. They accepted refunding with exactly same argument wrote here. I believe it won't happen on other Japanese shops.
From this experience, I sometimes buy from Amazon for products that possibly fragile and manufacturer's support is not reliable. (Or add extended warranty that covers my fault)
My friend often buy Chinese cheap electronics from Amazon JP (a.k.a. AliExpress Japan branch) and often return crap. He said it work flawlessly.
I've never lost my package, thanks to high quality delivery company and secure place.
Not so obvious to me. Could you elaborate on what you mean here, sounds intriguing.
Once preordered a Blu-ray from Amazon JP. It arrived on release day. My only complaint is they won’t ship Blu-ray’s from adult video producers even if the title isn’t hardcore porn.
You can claim you got an empty box, but everyone's on the internet here, and pictures of an empty box with indignation as guide text gets you fake internet points on every social media site.
That alone isn't enough for any seller to take your claim as true until you take the necessary steps that come with "I've been defrauded", like filing that credit card dispute and police report. Which they did, after which Amazon accepted the dispute, so... where's the news angle here? "Store honours a $7k claim without questioning it" would almost be more newsworthy.
It sounds like Amazon refused to refund their money until the media got involved.
Also, even if that were not the case, a big part of what Amazon sells is convenience and (supposedly) great customer service. If you pay $7,000 only to receive an empty box, and you provide Amazon with evidence from UPS that the box's weight was less than the weight of the actual product, that should be all it takes to get your money back.
Jumping through hoops with your credit card company and filing a police report should be the last resort for dealing with shitty companies that won't listen to anything but threats. There is no reason that the buyer should have to do that when dealing with a reputable company, especially when they have evidence from the shipper that the box did not contain the product they ordered.
Because remember: the refund process for products that have vanished isn't "you complain, then you get money", it's "you complain, the seller files an insurance claim with their insurance company, they get the (promise of) insurance compensation, THEN they pay you". You get paid with that insurance money, so: no insurance compensation, no refund.
And that's the only thing the police report does: it lets the seller go to their insurance company and go "here's the paperwork you need so you can justify honouring our claim", and then the insurance company will pay the seller, and if the amount is large enough, and its worth their time, the insurance company will do an investigation.
(and note that this is specifically the process when it comes to fraud or theft, where the law has been broken. It has, obviously, nothing to do with the refund process for a defective product)
Because again, it's the internet, just doctoring a UPS web page and printing your own shipping label is trivial for anyone who stands to me $7000 if they get away with it.
There will always be a generic and broad policy first. Then it will - and did - get resolved on further investigation.
The sellers don't care whether the police is going to investigate, they only care that you have the legal paperwork that they can give to their insurer so that THEY can get that money back, too. Because you don't get paid "by the seller", you get paid with dollars that the seller gets from their insurer.
Until they have the evidence that the insurer will accept, you're not getting paid.
Shipping is a subcontractor to the company that sold the product. It is 100% the responsibility of the company to make right.
Imagine if you bought a TV at a store and they said, "want us to bring it out to your car?" And they did. And it got destroyed in the parking lot. And the company said, "you'll have to take it up with the parking lot parcel company. They don't technically work for us."