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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

#231

Post by thebruce87m »

speeder wrote: post #96
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…

Amazon arrived in force kinda recently in my country. My parents are amazed by it and started making expensive purchases... And now are surprised at how shitty their delivery is. The worst case was when they bought some medicine for their dog and a expensive screen to use in their business. The dog medicine arrived on a friday, I was present and heard a car horn, went to check, and it was a random normal car, a lady…

My general rule is: Do not buy anything electrical (plug in or battery) or anything that goes in to your body from Amazon.

I would definitely not buy dog medicine.

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

#232

Post by heavyset_go »

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #159
klintcho wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chiming in here as well; I always trust Amazon to refund me if something is missing or broken without any hassle. A lot of other retailers always gives you a hard time even though they are at fault. They have a huge problem with counterfeit but again always easy to get your money back.

I never had a problem with counterfeit goods until I received a fake board game - took me a while to realise it was fake (horrible quality) - when I did they refunded and I got another one that was real - fine. Since then though I won’t use Amazon for anything remotely safety related, think child car seat - nope, some equipment for rewiring house, nope. This also makes me think about higher end purchases, whereas bef…

> It seems if customers report fakes, customers who potentially also received fakes are not alerted and that is a real problem for me.

Amazon doesn't even bother to collect that data. If you want to make a return because you received a counterfeit, you need to lie about the reason for your return, because "I received/believe I received a counterfeit product" isn't a choice they let you choose from when filing a return.

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

#233

Post by onli »

inapis wrote: post #229
onli wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon in Germany can also go very wrong. This is why I stopped ordering there: I ordered a bunch of small electronics stuff, about 100€. In the order process Amazon selected an expired credit card (which I'm sure I had replaced in the settings already). They then split the order in parts and for each order part demanded an additional late pay fee, because the card was expired. This is despite me calling them to stop…

Why would an order go through with an expired credit card? Is this something like cash-on-delivery or card-on-delivery?

Valid question. I was switching bank accounts at that time, so it's possible the card was not expired but linked to an account that did not exist anymore. Might also have been the account itself and not the card that was listed (Lastschriftverfahren, where they take money directly from the account). I'm fuzzy about the details, not really because it was particularly long ago (~2 years), but because it was confusing back then.

Edit: Had a look at my writeup in my blog [0], Lastschrift it was. Amazon picked a bank account that did not exist anymore to pay for the order. When that bounced came the fees - and while one fee for that would have been normal if I had given the wrong bank account (which I'm pretty sure I only did, if I did, because their system did not save when I changed the bank account before), to take multiple fees for one order was in no way okay.

[0]: https://www.onli-blogging.de/1832/Meine-richtig-schlechte-Su... (in german)

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

#234

Post by marban »

Aachen wrote: post #221
marban wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's correct.

Privately or as a business? If privately, I'm very curious what kind of things you order. Even if I'd replace all my store visits (grocery store, hardware store, electronics store are the main ones) with online orders, I'd probably still not oder more than once every five days (or maybe once every 10 days during covid, now that I go to the grocery store less often). Or are you talking individual items, like you buy g…

90% private, 10% business. Literally anything from iPhones to a single duct tape. Food only for shelf-stable stuff since I live next to a grocery store.

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

#235

Post by jacquesm »

Freestyler_3 wrote: post #226
ageitgey wrote: post #215

Like most people, I've ordered a lot of packages (hundreds?) on Amazon and almost never had a problem. In the rare case of a problem, Amazon would instantly refund me. But almost all those orders are under $1000. Everything changes when you have a problem with an expensive order. Amazon has a price threshold where the support system is different and the normal CS people are powerless. During lockdown, I ordered a Son…

They lost my 15$ package and even though they promised refund and a gift card, they never came through. Now I don't use amazon anymore than I really have to.

I don't understand that. The 'than I really have to' bit, is Amazon now so entrenched that you can't get around them anymore?

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

#236

Post by rkachowski »

dalai wrote: post #190
neiman wrote: post #168

I used to live for many years in a "bad" area of Berlin, where my packages were constantly disappearing, not arriving, taken by neighbors (who put an X as a signature), or left by the delivery people outside our building door. After a few such accidents, each of it super tiring on its own to get things reshipped or reimbursed (and often I failed), I decided all this modernity is not for me. Nowadays I rather buy what…

In Germany you can also have them ship to a Packstation or directly to the post office - at least most of the time. This has worked well so far. The only problem I had was that sometimes they drop them off at a neighbor even when I am at home. At least nowadays the name of the neighbor is printed on the notice they leave in the mailbox (and is also included in the email notification) so X instead of signature doesn't…

This doesn't work consistently (in Berlin at least), especially with Amazon and DHL. There is no guarantee over that the package will be shipped via DHL / Deutsche Post, and I am at this moment dealing with Hermes and DPD refusing to deliver Amazon packages to a DHL Packstation.

On top of that, DHL refuses to deliver to their own Postfiliale locations at times, DHL express even explicitly say they cannot do this.

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

#237

Post by emerged »

hughrr wrote: post #141
texasbigdata wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also depends on your reputation as a buyer on Amazon I think. If you order lots of high value items and one goes missing they treat you differently than if you made one high value purchase. I’ve run a huge pile of apple kit through them in the last two years and when a Mac mini disappeared from my doorstep they refunded without question. The Mac mini did make a reappearance a week later as it was dumped in someone’s…

yea I’ve spent an absurd amount on Amazon and now they don’t bat an eye on returns. I reported that my expensive ultra wide monitor hadn’t arrived, they sent another and then the first arrived. I had to contact support and tell them I got two because they had already refunded me. They won’t risk losing their whales.

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

#238

Post by lower100 »

I have the best online shopping experiences with merchants that are primarily B2B but also allow private customers on the side.

Bonus points if they have a proven billing system that still runs on AS/400 and produces nice invoices in Courier font sent by physical mail.

I either buy at these merchants or offline.

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

#239

Post by atoav »

mft_ wrote: post #180
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…

I wonder if there are regions (or countries) which are worse? Amazon in Germany is also great, so far. I’m like you - I’ve ordered so many things from Amazon this last year or so (new circumstances plus pandemic lockdown) and literally not one problem of the sort described. I can think of two items out of hundreds which weren’t on time (one, Amazons’s logistics made it a whole day late, and one was the seller’s issue…

3 out of 5 books I ordered there were what a regular bookstore would have called a "Mängelexemplar": folded in pages, accidentally cut corners, missing pages

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

#240

Post by tomduncalf »

gambiting wrote: post #66
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'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…

Yeah, I’m in the U.K. and I don’t think I’ve ever had a real issue with Amazon. Deliveries are on time 99% of the time and returns are simple (they even covered a £60 Post Office return of a heavy product I decided to return, because their only option required a printer and this was mid-pandemic so I had no way to access one).

Based off this thread I might think twice before ordering expensive stuff from them though - however I usually find other places are better value for expensive electronics etc. anyway

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