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I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

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Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

#131

>I ordered the Switch on October 16th from Nintendo’s UK online store. I wanted to buy direct primarily to support Nintendo This seems like an odd impulse to me. It isn't like Nintendo is some small mom and pop business or even that they are struggling.

Yep. And it's a bad decision too, it's just against your best interest as a customer. With Amazon, I know that if there's absolutely ANY issue with my order they will issue a full refund and/or send a replacement within 5 minutes of talking to them over the phone or using the live chat. It will be bumped up to free allocated time delivery or even delivered with Prime Now if available. I work at a games studio so we have few people ordering from Nintendo UK website all the time - and boy, there's loads of horror stories about deliveries and their customer service, I don't know why you'd order anything directly from them instead of Amazon or Argos or even(gasp!) Game.

Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

#132

I have never, ever dealt with any above mid-sized company that handles customer service and delivery well. There seems to be a set of standardised industry practices that are completely and utterly customer hostile. The moment regular company employees stop dealing with customer issues, delivery, etc., and hands it over to "specialists", it's basically a crap shoot whether you can get any issue resolved at all, becau…

I have never, ever dealt with any above mid-sized company that handles customer service and delivery well. I have. Amazon. Over 15 years now and flawless every time.

Amazon contract deliveries to organisations like Yodel, who you can't contact directly and have exactly the same problems with failing to deliver or chucking parcels over the fence etc.

Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

#133
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is SOO true. I ordered some circuit boards from Seeedstudio (good and cheap board fab, btw). I paid extra for DHL to get them quicker. I submitted my boards to Seeed (Shenzhen) October 10. On Oct 16, said they were shipped to DHL. Awesome. Told DHL via their webapp and text messaging that "I do not need signature. Drop at doorstep". 10 boards were a whopping $5. Guaranteed delivery by 19'th, cause thats what I p…

I live in France and in the working hours of the delivery guys I'm at work in a different city. I ordered a number of things to my personal address, and the story is typically like: "package delivered" with some strange message from the delivery guy where to find it, or no message at all. Out of the last 3 things I ordered, 2 didn't get to me (I made a claim on Amazon and they reimbursed me, no questions asked - at l…

Use a PaketShop, much better. Not sure how they're called in proper english.

Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

#134

I have never, ever dealt with any above mid-sized company that handles customer service and delivery well. There seems to be a set of standardised industry practices that are completely and utterly customer hostile. The moment regular company employees stop dealing with customer issues, delivery, etc., and hands it over to "specialists", it's basically a crap shoot whether you can get any issue resolved at all, becau…

This is SOO true. I ordered some circuit boards from Seeedstudio (good and cheap board fab, btw). I paid extra for DHL to get them quicker. I submitted my boards to Seeed (Shenzhen) October 10. On Oct 16, said they were shipped to DHL. Awesome. Told DHL via their webapp and text messaging that "I do not need signature. Drop at doorstep". 10 boards were a whopping $5. Guaranteed delivery by 19'th, cause thats what I p…

I have had a similar experience once with UPS. To cut a long story short they really messed up, relabelling someone else's package with my address and this package was payment on delivery, which I paid. Trying to get them to come and pick up the package they relabelled in error and refund me for the payment was an absolute nightmare.

Many calls to the call centre and 2 days later I had enough. No amount of asking to speak to a manager or anyone I spoke to managed to resolve the situation. I found the email address of the CEO of UPS on https://www.ceoemail.com/ and proceeded to write him an email explaining the issue, the effort I have made to try to resolve it as well as the incompetence and inability of the staff to resolve the problem. Note this email was very professional and stuck to the facts, the only emotional bit maybe being me highlighting that I honestly expected better from a company such as UPS.

I did not expect anything to happen honestly. However 15 minutes later I received a reply from him saying it will get taken care of. 20 minutes later the manager of the distribution centre that caused the problem gave me a phone call apologising. 2 hours later a driver came to pick up the parcel and refund me the money I paid in error. I received 2 more calls from the distribution manager and that person provided their personal contact number in case I ever have any issues again.

I personally do not like going the social media route by default. I would only consider it if I have exhausted all other options and am honestly left with no other choice which seems to be the situation you were in and that is completely understandable. Maybe give the CEO email option a try next time as I believe your success was due to someone high up being forced to recognise your issue. If that then fails I would hit the social media option for sure.

Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

#135

I have never, ever dealt with any above mid-sized company that handles customer service and delivery well. There seems to be a set of standardised industry practices that are completely and utterly customer hostile. The moment regular company employees stop dealing with customer issues, delivery, etc., and hands it over to "specialists", it's basically a crap shoot whether you can get any issue resolved at all, becau…

I have never, ever dealt with any above mid-sized company that handles customer service and delivery well. I have. Amazon. Over 15 years now and flawless every time.

I’ve mostly had good experiences, but once I had a battery charger fail and destroy some batteries. I spent over an hour on the phone while the CSR tried (and failed) to look up how voltage worked so they could blame the failure on me instead of just sending me the $60 order again. Just gave up after ~90 minutes.

Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

#136
I don't know about the UK but in the US it is illegal for a company to sue or threaten you to return a package that they shipped to you if you didn't request it.

This is to prevent mail fraud along the lines of - I send you a widget you never ordered and a bill for $20. You now either have to pay the bill, or spend time/money shipping the package back.

Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

#137
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is SOO true. I ordered some circuit boards from Seeedstudio (good and cheap board fab, btw). I paid extra for DHL to get them quicker. I submitted my boards to Seeed (Shenzhen) October 10. On Oct 16, said they were shipped to DHL. Awesome. Told DHL via their webapp and text messaging that "I do not need signature. Drop at doorstep". 10 boards were a whopping $5. Guaranteed delivery by 19'th, cause thats what I p…

I live in a 130,000 person city. UPS will not drop packages off to your neighbor period, even though that is an option on the "Sorry we missed you slip." UPS will not drop package without signature. UPS took 2 weeks to deliver my replacement part for my vacuum. When I see the UPS driver I tell him UPS policy sucks and is anti-city and his response was maybe there were too many packages taken. "I've lived here for 10…

I would never allow them to leave my package at neighbors house and if they do I would write a note to the support. This is my package and I want it delivered to me. I can't understand what is the problem of rescheduling the delivery for the time that suits me the best. Or scheduling the best time in the first place. Why Japan can do this? Even Japanese Post (not only a courier) allows you to define when you'd like to get your delivery and they deliver even at 21:00. Why other countries can't follow is beyond me.

Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

#138
post #85

I have never, ever dealt with any above mid-sized company that handles customer service and delivery well. There seems to be a set of standardised industry practices that are completely and utterly customer hostile. The moment regular company employees stop dealing with customer issues, delivery, etc., and hands it over to "specialists", it's basically a crap shoot whether you can get any issue resolved at all, becau…

> what that's potentially worth in terms of wasted effort, lost orders and customer hostility. I agree with all of the above but wanted to underline this. Because it snowballs so much. First call they explain the problem. Second call they explain how they explained the problem to someone before, how instead they understood X and did Y. Third call... and so on. Add to that long waiting times and it compounds even more…

Yeah, call centres are especially disastrous. The whole thing is just set up to be bad because the employees are deskilled and disempowered but trying to fix cases where the automation has failed.

See http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-... (three part series)

Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

#139
post #12
post #3

I'm no lawyer, but at least in the US I was under the impression that once something has been mailed to you, it's yours. A company cannot send you something then require payment or for you to return it.

My understanding in the UK is that if someone sends you unsolicited goods and then tries to bill you, it's yours to keep. But this doesn't apply to things sent to you by mistake, which certainly seems to be the case here. You are expected to return the good to the sender at their expense. Although you are expected to facilitate returning it, I doubt any court would look favourably on a company taking you to court for…

Yeah, it's all about good faith though. I've this happen to me with Corsair - their really expensive keyboard had a problem so they shipped out a replacement for me, and then 3 days later....another one arrived. I let them know and A) they were extremely apologetic for the inconvenience B) they arranged a courier to pick up the second keyboard when it suited me. Totally different approach to what Nintendo is doing.

Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

#140
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in France and in the working hours of the delivery guys I'm at work in a different city. I ordered a number of things to my personal address, and the story is typically like: "package delivered" with some strange message from the delivery guy where to find it, or no message at all. Out of the last 3 things I ordered, 2 didn't get to me (I made a claim on Amazon and they reimbursed me, no questions asked - at l…

Amazon lockers are the best thing since sliced bread. They put the ball back in your court to pick it up, when you have time. Removes the stress completely and makes ordering pleasant again. Keep an eye out for them, if you can.

This kinda thing is extremely good and I'm surprised it hasn't caught on in a bigger way. Many (most?) purchases are made online these days, but when you do so you have to make one of a couple of awkward choices:

1. request a delivery at work, let the receptionists at your office sign for the package and very politely thank them each time (and don't do this too often)

2. place the order to be delivered at your home address, knowing that you won't be there and that you'll have to pick up the "you were out..." slip, and duck out of work and cross town later in the week to the post-office sometime during opening hours and suffer the queues there.

The reason I use the word "awkward" is that I feel like I'm misusing some facilities no matter what I do (expecting a receptionist to handle my packages, or making a postman bring a package all the way to my flat and then all the way back home and fill out forms etc).

These temp lockers are such a great idea.

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