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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

#111

Post by willtim »

reikonomusha wrote: post #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 b…

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).

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

#112

Post by KirillPanov »

paxys wrote: post #81
joe_the_user wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USPS shipped weight of the package was less than the weight of the camera. There actually was evidence.

It was in this story, but there have been cases of people shipping rocks or sand to match the product weight.

Dry ice is even better. No evidence.

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

#113

Post by kelnos »

laurent92 wrote: post #24
reikonomusha wrote: post #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 b…

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…

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.

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

#114

Post by wyattpeak »

rkk3 wrote: post #79
cerved wrote: post #52

I always record unboxing anything I buy online, it's a convenient way of proof of something is missing out damaged

At the end of the day most big companies have found its a better strategy to trust/not dispute customers in these situations. If they wanted to I don't think that would hold up, it's not as though you are opening it in a controlled supervised environment.

> At the end of the day most big companies have found its a better strategy to trust/not dispute customers in these situations.

The article we're responding to, not to mention the comments, is evidence that that is at minimum an unreliable assumption.

Re your second point, the seemingly standard way of resolving these issues after the company refuses to comply is to make it a PR problem for the company. Videos are going to help for that.

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

#115

Post by gnicholas »

alpaca128 wrote: post #54
gnicholas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV? This was an order for a mirrorless digital camera.

To be fair to the person above, the article is really confusing by always referring to the product as a "Sony A1" as if it was completely obvious to everyone what it is. I thought it's a weird super expensive smartphone until I read the author's bio.

Fair enough, though TVs don’t weight 3 lbs!

The thing that confirmed for me that this was a camera was the domain of the article, which relates to photography. As others have noted, Sony’s naming scheme is confusing.

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

#116

Post by yoz-y »

matsemann wrote: post #55
cbmuser wrote: post #17

> 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.

Seems to me that this would be true mostly the other way. $7k is a gigantic amount of money, most people would not let that slide.

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

#117

Post by dalbasal »

suifbwish wrote: post #83
matsemann wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Hell would be full before you got very far. Intentionally or unintentionally, this is how most such systems work... even ostensibly noncommercial ones... at least to some extent.

Business systems are a chain of events. Every event has x% chance of happening and leading to the next one. If the next event makes money, it's optimized up. If it costs money, it's optimised down. Efforts to pay unclaimed rebates are never as enthusiastic as efforts to claim unpaid receivables. Thus is life.

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

#118

Post by sneak »

dawnerd wrote: post #39

This is what chargebacks are for and even if you get banned over it for this much money I’d say it’s worth it, heck for 7k I’d take it to court. Would be an easy judgement based on the label weights alone.

Bringing a civil suit against Amazon will cost you several multiples of $7k in legal fees.

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

#119

Post by Closi »

texasbigdata wrote: post #87
gambiting wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Anyo…

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.

Electronics is certainly more of an issue - Nobody is shipping empty boxes of toilet paper.

The main issues you get are when returns are put back into stock but haven’t been sufficiently checked.

I used to work for an online retailer who sold things like games consoles and the amount of return scams we got was absolutely shocking. If you sold a games console with a free game (usually a code inside the console) people would take the game code out, or copy it, and then return the console and have the game. Other times they would take an iPad out, put a brick in the box and then shrink wrap it. Or buy counterfeit AirPod pro’s and swap them for the real ones and return the fakes.

The problem is compounded because people want to buy “new” items with shrink wrap around them, so it’s harder to check returns aren’t scams when the scammers have shrink-wrap machines.

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

#120

Post by crooked-v »

paxys wrote: post #76
dstaley wrote: post #35

This is certainly one of those instances where I'd raise hell, but I actually avoid trying to file lost item claims with Amazon for smaller ticket items. I know they have automated systems in place to prevent fraud, and I'm terrified that reporting for smaller ticket items will get my Amazon account banned. I've had a friend have this happen with his Doordash account; the sushi place he orders from a lot was pretty b…

While I get the frustration, I also don't understand the logic of continuing to order from a restaurant when you have frequent bad experiences with them. Is it really surprising that after a while Doordash just doesn't want to be in the middle of that relationship?

Given that they banned the customer, not the restaurant, they obviously do want to be in the middle of that relationship, but only with the customers who won't rightly complain about it.
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