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Amazon refused to refund $7k after shipping an empty box instead of a Sony A1

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Re: Amazon refused to refund $7k after shipping an empty box instead of a Sony A1

#3
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.

Re: Amazon refused to refund $7k after shipping an empty box instead of a Sony A1

#5
post #2

My shock here is that someone would order something that costs $7k from amazon! Buy that from BH, newegg, some specialty retailer, etc. Not American alibaba.

+1 BH. I've ordered entire palettes of camera gear, and every filter and end cap was accounted for.

Re: Amazon refused to refund $7k after shipping an empty box instead of a Sony A1

#7
post #2

My shock here is that someone would order something that costs $7k from amazon! Buy that from BH, newegg, some specialty retailer, etc. Not American alibaba.

I'd argue the opposite -- why not order from Amazon?

Lots of folks have come to trust Amazon's reliability and customer service over the years, so it does make sense for customers to order expensive things from Amazon or any other online store, especially with a pandemic going around.

This incident in particular does seem to be an outlier, and we'll have to see how Amazon resolves it.

Re: Amazon refused to refund $7k after shipping an empty box instead of a Sony A1

#9

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 b…

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.

Re: Amazon refused to refund $7k after shipping an empty box instead of a Sony A1

#10
It's good news for them that the box was empty instead of filled with sand - that way the weight in the USPS shipping data made it obvious they weren't shipped the camera. I wonder if this was a Fulfilled By Amazon purchase or whether Amazon directly bought this empty box from a wholesaler to stock in their warehouse?
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