Amazon Customer Service has become awful
Amazon Customer Service has become awful
Article and rant detailing my extremely negative experience with business account opening and network gear order on Amazon, covering difficulty in getting customer support, difficulty setting up business account, difficulty reporting potential security issue, shipment of second-hand open-box devices...
Nothing as complicated as business accounts for me, but the failure rate on deliveries has increased for me over the last ~12 months. To where if I need a thing with some urgency, I am back to finding and buying it locally because Amazon next day shipping or whatever x timeframe shipping is not reliable.
Quick shipping with reliable ETA was my main reason for paying for Prime, so I'll let it lapse at the end of the current subscription. I certainly wasn't paying for access to Prime video.
I canceled my sub when they announced that paid Prime memberships would still have to view ads.
I use it exceedingly rarely now, thankfully, and without a sub you have to wait a week for something to arrive anyway, so I just expect it to be shit service.
This almost certainly depends on where you are, I can reliably get normal prime shipping or even same and next day for 99% of non-specialty items
Not that Amazon making service worse for some is acceptable, but that it’s not universal
But will it show up?
In the last 30 days we're 50-50 that something will even arrive -- at the local drop point, at the secure package receipt on the ground floor, at the local post office; 50-50 across the board.
I threw a RAID disk but prime said "4 days" so I bit. 2 weeks later it's still in the wind but "out for delivery". By then I bought one local, but got COVID on the way home from the shops. I've almost recovered.
This. I'd regularly get packages 3-5 days after ordering with prime. No reason to keep paying for a service I'm not getting.
Same here, most delivery service will not even bother performing the delivery about 30% of the time and just leave it in a relay or post office. Last time the logs showed they ensured I wasn't home in the minute they left the dispatch center 🤡
I believe you can actually get a refund for the remaining time if you cancel it now.
So buy it locally then what are you even complaining about? Who gets something they urgently need delivered anyways. Boohoo one of your god knows how many basically free deliveries arrived a day or two late. It costs a burger king whopper meal for a month of free deliveries. Like Amazon should charge entitled ass customers like you more than that. Who even knows why it arrived late? Maybe your delivery driver got mauled by a pitbull and had to go to the hospital? Who gives a fuck though all that matters is your "urgently" needed delivery was late at no fault other than your own for buying something so urgently needed online.
So buy it locally then what are you even complaining about? Who gets something they urgently need delivered anyways. Boohoo one of your god knows how many basically free deliveries arrived a day or two late. It costs a burger king whopper meal for a month of free deliveries. Like Amazon should charge entitled ass customers like you more than that. Who even knows why it arrived late? Maybe your delivery driver got mauled by a pitbull and had to go to the hospital? Who gives a fuck though all that matters is your "urgently" needed delivery was late at no fault other than your own for buying something so urgently needed online.
its 'growth at all costs'. profit first and only, quarter over quarter. 'breaking even' is failure in the batshit insane world of big business and the stock market. even if everyone gets paid for a job well done and the client is perfectly happy, someone needs to get extra paid . cut corners. cut services. at some point youre too big for it to matter. what are people going to do? go somewhere else? hahahahwalmarthahaha
Hell, it's not even "breaking even" - making the same amount of money as last year is considered a failure, even if that number is astronomical.
what are people going to do? go somewhere else?
Amazon fucked up on this part of the enshitification strategy because there are still plenty of other options
I've used Target for groceries and they're routinely cheaper for most things.
I ordered four 2 TB SSDs from them and got two 2 TB and two 1 TB, but all four had an Amazon barcode saying they were 2 TB. I didn't immediately install, was waiting for other parts, then once I realized they defrauded me, Amazon said it was more than 30 days and they couldn't be returned. Trying to get an agent that could help was damn near impossible, and then I had to pay a restocking fee for a mistake that wasn't mine. I am still shocked they didn't detect their mistake mislabeling a bunch of SSDs. I'm not going to shop with a company that connects me to a robot, especially the least sophisticated AI robot on the planet. I thought Amazon was a technology leader?
Assuming you're in the US, I 100% would've done a credit card chargeback. Bank would've taken your side on that one.
I'm sure they'll deactivate your account over that, though, maybe blacklist you. Sucks if you need them for something and cannot risk the chargeback.
In the UK if the goods were over £100 and you paid via credit card, you could raise a Section 75 claim with the card issuer under the Consumer Credit Act.
I used to work for a large train operating company and the sheer number of people contacting us for historic departure info to support a Section 75 claim because the news came out that someone got a 50% refund on their season ticket was astronomical.
Alternatively... Small Claims Court. Amazon will drag you through the coals if you go the chargeback route.
The chat is almost immediate for me. I would tell them over the chat.
Consumer rights in the EU are pretty strong. They include two-week free returns, no questions asked, on things purchased online/remote.
These rights do not extend to businesses, though. Sounds like Amazon is not interested in being helpful unless legislation is twisting their arm.
Amazon.com has 30 day free returns and no need to chat with anyone. We can just drop it off at a location with no packaging or printed label. Not sure if it’s different for .de or for businesses. I wouldn’t think it’s different for US business accounts in the US.
The article is long and confusing. Why are you creating a US based account from Germany. No company will allow that due to tax purposes, especially for businesses.
You don't even know wtf you are talking about it's hilarious. You just ignorantly hate Amazon lmfao. What I've gathered from your comment is that you've never once shopped on Amazon.
Amazon is way more than helpful when something goes wrong with an order. I had an order say it was delivered but I didn't see it anywhere at my door a few months back and they sent me a reship and the next day the original order had arrived+the reship arrived the day after that. And the original shipment wasn't even Amazon's fault. That shipment was fulfilled by USPS which USPS for some reason marked the order delivered when it wasn't. That's also what people can forget is that sometimes Amazon has USPS or ups deliver the order and sometimes it's not amazons fault it's those carriers. Anyways entitled people don't care about the specifics just that their cat food was delayed.
I don't have a business account with them but have had a Prime subscription since Prime became a thing and have to say that something has changed in regards to the support as of late and not for the better.
Last week, we had 6 orders scheduled to arrive to our house and we got notifications for all that they had been delivered to the office and handed to reception, which we don't have, just a porch and a door. My wife contacted support to tell them and they said they would refund all of the orders without even looking to see where they got delivered to. The support person gave a few different totals, none of which were correct and we ended up having to go through our orders to add up the refund total since he couldn't do it correctly. After all of that a refund was issued..... and then the packages were delivered about 30 minutes later.
We have been trying for days now to let them know that the packages were delivered so we could be billed correctly but so far, every person we've talked to has said they're allowed to refund but not allowed to charge us and that it had to be passed to someone above them.
I don't have a lot of faith that they'll figure it out and worry that some day, they'll just cancel our account because they detected some type of fraud.
They likely can’t even charge you at this point so I’d give up. They’ll do something like ask you to return them, at most. And what will likely happen is they will say “just keep them.”
They already told him just keep them. This same thing happened to me few months back. They literally don't have a way to accept the money for whatever reason it is I'm sure there's some reason to it. Probably because there is some insurance type thing in place where they are getting that money from. I just don't understand why OP can't accept that and move on with their life lmao it's bat shit insane to me.
If you really want to pay them money, order it again and return the old items. There is an option to not request money.
Companies are not allowed to charge for items they already shipped correctly or incorrectly. Even if they could, I can’t imagine it being easy for anyone to just bill you money and mark the order as completed without shipping anything.
From the FTC website - “By law, companies can’t send unordered merchandise to you, then demand payment. That means you never have to pay for things you get but didn’t order. You also don’t need to return unordered merchandise. You’re legally entitled to keep it as a free gift.”
Since they issued the refund, you got unordered items. It’s a business write off as a loss to the seller or Amazon.
Thanks very much, that's what we ended up doing. We just reordered the canceled items and then returned them with the "no refund needed" option chosen.
Holy, this is insane. Your are complaining about the excellent customer service they provided to you? Your making up some delusion that they will claim you frauded them and suspend your account? It's absolutely insane I'm sorry. I can just tell your some know it all who thinks they're better than those trying to help them. Your customer support agent was trying and did successfully help you and you belittle them for having trouble adding up the total. For all you know it could have been there first solo day on the job. You act like you've never made a single mistake.
Amazon lost its way when in started acting as a storefront for others, rather than a bookstore. In other words, a good twenty years ago.
Tech gear in particular is one of the things that's extremely risky to order from there (along with food, meds, and anything for babies/small children), as there are a lot of fraudulent or damaged goods mixed into their supply. Go to a specialist supplier instead. Newegg isn't great, but at least they don't appear to mix inventory from different sellers the way Amazon does.
Or, if possible, order directly from the manufacturer.
In a way, I'm glad people are slowing starting to come around and pay attention to this. For years, any time I would publicly complain about Amazon customer service online, it was very common for people to be completely dismissive or even blame me. I'd hear statements like "sure Amazon sucks, but they have great customer service" and I'd think to myself, just wait until it's your time to find out that the customer service isn't what you think it is.
Long story short, the item came with a broken part. Should have been quick and easy to rectify (send a replacement part, send a replacement unit, or refund the purchase). The seller was completely unhelpful. Amazon customer service would not intervene and insisted that I continue fruitlessly corresponding with the vendor, even though they had an "A-to-Z" money back guarantee if something goes wrong. It literally took months of back and forth between me, the vendor, and Amazon customer service before things were finally refunded in full.
So, basically I gave them another chance and they showed that things hadn't improved a bit.
I was transferred between 16 different reps on an amazon chat trying to return a busted chair. I refused to log off, was polite, and started asking what the record for transfers was and of wed best it. I refused to explain the pr9boem again after the third transfer.
I wanted to return the chair and get the same model but not broken. I refused to take it to the post office.
They ended up refunding me the money and I kept the chair. Which kind of works. You can sit in it. Just can't lock it when you Kean back.
Same thing happened with a vacuum that worked but kind of shot.out dust when you first turned it on.
Easy solution; don't use Amazon.
I've been boycotting amazon for the past 6 or so years, and it's gone well. But I moved to a remote place a while ago and they're close to the only shop shipping there. I chose them over other shops for my recent hardware upgrades because the cost of shipping plus the customs' 20% (applied on the cost of the item plus shipping, of course) make it unbearable unless I go for the lowest bidder. That doesn't make me happy though
I think there's a lot to be said for "soft boycotting." If we could get more people to just check a few other retailers before they go to Amazon, that would actually hit their bottom line a lot harder than a small number of people cutting them out entirely.
The problem with boycotts is that people get told to treat it as an all or nothing thing. It's a lot better, to my mind, to just reduce our reliance on large monopolies where possible, and accept them as an unfortunate necessity when not.
Not that easy seriously. I boycott them most of the time, but there has been a product that I didn't have a choice to order through them in the last year. I don't mind paying a bit more elsewhere if it means they don't get any of my money, but they've literally destroyed some of their competition to the point where no alternative exists for certain products.
Just don't used the world's largest retailer and hope the next largest retailer isn't mirroring their business practices.
Many corporations simply see customer support as a department that generates 0 revenue and costs them money.
They try to bring those costs down by off-shoring support, using AI, simply not having support, etc. These companies trade the good will of customers, the livelihoods of their employees, and the larger economy all for their short term greed. Line must go up this quarter.
This is long and I got bored but skimming it, it sounds like he was being stubborn about returning the items because he felt aggrieved. I can't really feel much sympathy for his situation.
Amazon has definitely declined but this isn't the shinning example I was hoping it to be.
A lot of these small blogs are like that. Just authors being Karens while trying to sound like they're the victim.
I’ve also been saying this for a long time, only to be dismissed by most who are apathetic to what’s going on. So now, if I do have to deal with them, I only ever make purchases on my credit card, and if there is a problem, they get 1 chance to fix it before I dispute. In the last year, I’ve had to dispute 3 separate times. On the latest one, the item was never delivered. I asked for a refund or replacement, customer service was useless, so I sent in documents to my bank and disputed. What does Amazon do? They sent their “counter of my claim” to the bank from the shipping SHOWING THE ITEM TO BE UNDELIVERABLE as reason why the charge should not be reversed. My bank sided with me luckily. But they are truly awful now, and have been for a while.
Willing to give 10:1 odds that they've turned a bunch of their processes over to LLMs.
I'm a little surprised they successfully reached your bank with a rebuttal, rather than just firing mail into the ether.
“Has become”?
oh, sweet, summer child…
Nah, this is a stupid internet shit-take.
Amazon support was actually great when they first started, and has just slowly slid downhill ever since. They had to start strong, because nobody really trusted online shopping yet. People forget that before Amazon was a handful of sketchy one-off websites and mail-in orders.
I've had a lot of shitty experiences with their customer service lately. They were at least somewhat decent a few years back.
I've had Amazon delay refunding items I have returned for months for no reason. I have had to show them the tracking number shows delivered before customer service will issue the refund.
I don't use it anymore because of the terrible service and the sneaking of prime at every opportunity. It's like going to a store where the staff refuses to talk to you and you always have to check if they took some money out of you wallet before you leave.
