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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

#201
post #106
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…

Believe me, even if you are home 100% of the time, packages will still not get delivered because "nobody was home". IIRC DHL is especially prone to this. I think the drivers try to catch up time or whatever.

This happens every single time with PostNord, the postal service in Sweden and Denmark. Every, single, time.

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because they fuck over their sellers. I tried to sell a modem which I had previously purchased through Amazon. The modem came both as a bundle and by itself. I listed it correctly as purchasing the modem only, listed it "like new" (when really it was basically new, not removed from the box). It was actually the lowest price you could get it used. Someone bought it, shipped it to them faster than necessary. Abo…

Exact same thing happens on eBay, at least here in the UK.

In the US too, and probably everywhere else as well.

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

#203
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon support is absolutely terrible . Amazon seller support is even worse. I mean, the worst. Only matched by health insurance companies. The huge problem with Amazon support is everyone I've ever interacted with (besides that one time I got forwarded to a supervisor) either have a fundamental lack an understanding of the English language or lack reading comprehension (or listening if phone support). They also won'…

Yeah, that's absolutely the problem they have. One time I ordered some road bike tires. Amazon sent mountain bike tires by the same manufacturer. I told Amazon. They sent me two more of the wrong tires. I told Amazon. They sent me two more of the wrong tires. I gave up. They don't read anything you write to them, they just either send you something or give you your money back. I guess most people value money over any…

Very similar thing happened to me about 12 years ago.

I ordered some glassware, very fragile. It was packaged incorrectly, basically shoved in too big of a box with no padding or anything. Or if there was padding it was very, very minimal. It arrived broken, of course. It would have been nothing short of a miracle if glassware survived that packaging.

Told Amazon the item broken due to poor/incorrect packaging. They sent another packaged identically, broken.

Told Amazon, same thing, they sent another packaged identically, broken.

I tried one more time begging them to package it correctly and got another packaged identically, broken.

I just gave up and decided I didn't really need it, got a refund, and continued to drink out of dollar store plastic cups. There was absolutely no getting through to them what they problem was. I ended up feeling defeated with 4 sets of broken glasses.

Another "they don't read anything you write to them" story... Several years ago I sold a memory card via FBA. The buyer returned the card, they said they were returning it because of a defect, they said "card slows down significantly after it gets half full." Amazon's wearhouse receives the return, they mark it as sellable, and then sell it (as new) again!! Clearly its not new, the problem was evident only from using it! The new buyer didn't complain or ask for a refund, thankfully for me, but the card might have been commingled (I don't recall) so another seller might have been dinged if Amazon shipped out the used card to their buyer.

If the return reason is "defective," why would mark as sellable ever be possible?

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

#204

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 do not need signature. Drop at doorstep" Isn't the point of the signature to protect them ? You can't just say "I don't need a signature, I promise not to sue you." and expect them to just be ok with that, or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

Why not? You say that with some authority, as if it's well known that this option doesn't exist. Why, then, do all the delivery companies give you the mechanism to waive the signature?

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

#205
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this kind of thing really does depend on whether you're dealing with a small startup or even an individual human that you're screwing over, or a giant implacable machine like a multinational corporation. There's no obligation to be nice to the machine, it can't recognise it, and it won't be grateful to you.

+1. The machine analogy is excellent. You have moral obligation to humans. You may decide to have moral obligation to society if you like the one your in and want it to grow. But you have zero obligation toward a souless entity. It's a robot. Optimized for profiting from a service it failed to perform adequatly.

Agree on the moral obligation to humans, but think it's best to keep the focus on not having a moral obligation to corporations (beyond T&Cs or contracts you willingly consent to). Not that you're wrong with the "souless robot" concept, but with the advances in AI, I wouldn't the first one to play out like Chappie. "Why you humans do this? Why you all lie?" - Chappie

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree. The day that I became a lifelong Amazon customer was when I mistakenly ordered a mattress to the wrong address via Prime. I noticed the mistake some 28 hours after placing the order. I nearly said that I called them to tell them about my mistake, but that isn't true. I typed in my number online AND THEY CALLED ME when an operator was available. The operator quickly calmed me down and told it was "nothin…

I agree, it's great for the consumer. But amazon didn't take the bullet. The seller of the mattress took the bullet. Amazon didn't lose a penny. Sellers just have to assume a 10% loss of gross margin due to issues like this. It's not the end of the world, but that's where the cost is.

> Sellers just have to assume a 10% loss of gross margin due to issues like this. It's not the end of the world, but that's where the cost is.

This explains why individuals selling individual items, or a small number of items, can get so burned too. You need sufficient volume to cover all the inevitable bullets you have to swallow.

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

#207
post #47
post #28

This is dumb on the part of everyone involved. No, you are not taking the moral high ground by calling Nintendo customer service and initiating a back-and-forth on what to do with the mistakenly-delivered extra product. In fact, you are probably costing Nintendo more money than the second Switch is worth by doing so. There is no reason, ever, unless the cost of the item is extremely high, to initiate a conversation w…

I really had no idea how much the actual "unit cost" of a call to customer service was until I worked on a consumer-facing app for a company that also had a large call center. One of our metrics of how well our app worked was how many call center interactions were avoided because customers could use self-service options in the app. Anytime someone called, the average effective cost to us was on the order of tens of d…

> A Switch is definitely worth less than the cost of having an attorney prepare even the initial legal complaint against you, let alone setting foot into court.

Small claims will be submitted to a collection agency, which will handle the legal posturing in a fully automated manner, i.e. Nintendo sells the claim for, say, 20 per cent of expected return and has nothing to do with it any more, ever (since the collection agency basically gives up if the debtor contests the claim, so they take a calculated risk that at least one fifth of claims will be paid uncontested).

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

#208

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 cancelled my prime account after a string of issues, the worst of which I’ll summarize.

I bought a $1300 camera, received a $500 camera. Easy error, easy fix. I wish.

I had to call twice to initiate the return, call twice more to find out why a moth later I had neither a camera nor my money. Turns out the return was silently rejected. Why? “Wrong item returned.” No kidding! Had to call a fifth time to finally get this resolved, but at the end of that call I realized I was paying amazing $100 annually to fix issues that they caused.

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

#209
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my experience as well. As long as all you want is return faulty/not-needed-after-all articles then Amazon is great. Never ever had a hiccup in 10 years and I order a lot of stuff. However if your request is a little more specific and doesn't fit neatly in whatever scripts they're using then it's a bit of a mess. I mainly use amazon.fr so I've interacted with the french support but like you they had a rather th…

> I've interacted with the french support but like you they had a rather thick accent and seemed to have trouble understanding me at times even though I did my best to speak slowly and clearly. That's the one advantage of living in a tiny country (the Netherlands) that speaks a language hardly anyone else does. It's impossible to outsource customer support to low-wages countries because you simply can't find anyone t…

I suppose the wages in the Dutch Caribbean must be fairly good then.

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

#210

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 do not need signature. Drop at doorstep" Isn't the point of the signature to protect them ? You can't just say "I don't need a signature, I promise not to sue you." and expect them to just be ok with that, or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

Some carriers offer that option but it usually seems to waive the (limited) liability they would have had for stolen packages.
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