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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

#501

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #417

This sounds like what should happen, irrespective of the seller? You can claim you got an empty box, but everyone's on the internet here, and pictures of an empty box with indignation as guide text gets you fake internet points on every social media site. That alone isn't enough for any seller to take your claim as true until you take the necessary steps that come with "I've been defrauded", like filing that credit c…

Around here, the police just shrug at theft saying there’s nothing they can do and that they have higher priorities. They’ve taught us that filling a police report is worthless.

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

#502

Post by an_opabinia »

mancerayder wrote: post #453
an_opabinia wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid of being downvoted, but the algorithm for an Amazon return looks something like: Your LTV = Forecasting total revenue from your transactions so far Revenue = The sum of your past transactions Refund? = LTV - Revenue - Refund Cost > 0 This is a much simpler, much more logical model. It appears everywhere, like with credit card disputes or when you get service discounts to not leave. Because when you don't g…

I believe all of this, but isn't there some aspect where persistence has a different outcome than passivity? In your example where essentially you're saying the profit Amazon made off a customer is less than the refund cost and fallout of indifference. There are escalation paths that cost the company money, like stealing support time via repeatedly escalating, and eventually filing a dispute with the credit card issu…

You're right, I just wanted to emphasize the innovative part of this system is forecasting LTV accurately. Specifically by forecasting LTV as a function of your personal and population wide transaction history alone, without any other secular considerations. Whereas it's pretty straightforward to enumerate your costs.

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

#503

Post by macintux »

felixfbecker wrote: post #468
aristophenes wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is location dependent, since most of the problems are caused by the shipper. Amazon will use multiple shippers, and in some areas will use what ends up being people driving around in their personal cars to deliver packages. If you have unreliable shippers in your area, it’s hard to deal with Amazon when things go wrong. In one place I lived, Amazon would use the US Postal Service, UPS, and Fedex. I had no c…

I don't get why Amazon doesn't allow the customer to chose between multiple available shipping carriers. They do for returns, which is fantastic and one of the reasons I love buying on Amazon, because I can always chose to pick the carrier that has the office 1 minute walk away from my home that is never busy, instead of being forced to drive to some remote store and stand in line. If Amazon gave these choices to cus…

> I don't get why Amazon doesn't allow the customer to chose between multiple available shipping carriers. They do for returns...

I assume because the volume of returns is much lower than the volume of sales, plus Amazon isn't responsible for coordinating the return.

In essence, my suspicion is that at Amazon's scale they literally can't afford to let customers pick their own shipper. That's one variable too many to manage for their massive logistics problem, and the expense of building out the support for that would never be recouped.

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

#504

Post by diogenescynic »

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…

I haven't had any issues with orders still in progress, but Amazon has replaced/allowed me to return a $1200 tv that was 6 months old after it randomly stopped working/broke after moving apartments. They sent someone out and picked it up--which I seriously doubt BestBuy or NewEgg would have been willing to do.

I had a similar issue to what you describe ordering a vintage item on Etsy and the tracking info provided was fake and delivered to a different address. That was a huge hassle to prove and get refunded for.

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

#505

Post by jquery »

eeegnu wrote: post #488
TacticalCoder wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bad ones (pathological ones) - we just try to get rid of them ASAP and no refunds. A customer "not buying much" is not "bad". If you accept his money for cheap stuff, he is your customer. There's a difference between an honest customer who usually doesn't buy much and then buys something expensive and is getting sadly scammed and a customer trying to rob you. If you accept the customer for cheap stuff but refuse to…

> If you accept the customer for cheap stuff but refuse to help him when he gets scammed on an expensive item, you are the bad, pathological, person/business. For every refund system you will unfortunately get people who attempt to game that system. They'll buy many negligible cost items without issue, then a single high cost item that they'll claim never arrived hoping they've outsmarted the store or algorithm. Thes…

There’s probably a lot of money for the first person who figures out how to solve this problem instead of complaining about evil uncaring business owners.

Costco kinda figured it out, by charging a membership fee they got rid of most low LTV customers from the get-go. Unfortunately, their generous refund policy still got hacked by bad actors which is why they have a lot of restrictions around returning electronics. (People were returning laptops after a year of use just to upgrade). This is why we can’t have nice things.

source: I worked at Costco before they had restrictions on their electronics return policy, when they bragged about accepting returns on anything for any reason… before the cost of doing so became prohibitively high.

LTV refunding like Amazon is doing is a huge leap forward that lets every business kind of act like Costco.

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

#506

Post by diogenescynic »

wpietri wrote: post #428
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…

Perfectly believable. The thing I really loved about Amazon is that they had their act together. But that has declined drastically over the decades; now whenever I actually have to deal with them it seems like there's a ton of internal chaos. In June 2018, I ordered a soccer magazine, "Futbol Total", for my soccer-mad nephew. It said it would arrive in 4-16 weeks, which seemed weird. I waited it out, and no magazine.…

I actually had almost the same issue ordering a mattress from Amazon. The seller had created a tracking number so the order was showing as "shipped" even though there hadn't been any movement ever, which meant I couldn't cancel the order without escalating about 5 times to different service reps.

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

#507

Post by jquery »

franga2000 wrote: post #493
cortesoft wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that by investigating you will determine the truth. Often times, even if they spent a ton of time investigating, they aren’t going to be able to determine who was at fault.

Idk, if the tracking doesn't say "picked up by recipient", a refund should be given no questions asked. It's then up to the seller and shipping company to figure out who screwed up amongst themselves.

You can purchase package insurance if you’re willing to go that far.

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

#508

Post by LorenPechtel »

ghaff wrote: post #391
Sebb767 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, it seems pretty insane to me that they ship items worth thousands of dollars, but skip the few dollars on insured shipment. It not only protects against missing/"missing" packages, but also against transport damage (at least in Germany).

Someone makes money on insurance. So, for a large company, self-insuring basically lets them save on what would otherwise be someone else's profit.

And a place like Amazon that sends out lots of orders will get a good idea of where the risks are high and where they are low. They know that of the hundreds of packages they have shipped us none have gone missing, it would be a waste of money to insure things they are sending us.

They even screwed up and shipped a cancelled order, I was on the other side of the world when I saw the e-mail and by the time they were satisfied I really was me their attempt to intercept the package failed. $500 worth of stuff sat on our front porch for 10 days and was still there when we got back. (We live in a low-crime area and our front porch makes it basically impossible to see a package from the street unless it's large. A porch pirate would have to come to within 10' of the door to see most things, they'll go elsewhere where they don't have to be so obvious.)

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

#509

Post by gamblor956 »

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…

This is basically the reason that I've continued to purchase electronics in-store despite generally being (slightly) cheaper to buy on Amazon: when I buy it from Best Buy/REI/etc., I can pick the box with the factory seal, and if necessary even open it up in store (after paying for it) to confirm that said item is in the box.

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

#510

Post by pinkfairy10 »

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…

That is why you buy things with a credit card. I would have disputed the charged right away. Did you try this?
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