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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

#541

Post by blihp »

throwawayboise wrote: post #534
jquery wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. (…

If their refund policy was literally "accepting returns on anything for any reason" how is it "hacking" to return a laptop after a year?

That policy assumed good faith on the part of the consumer. The original thinking was likely 'OK, if they return it after it's because it was a lemon/never worked right/etc' rather than for abusive reasons like 'TV returned right after Superbowl Sunday' (because they had their party and no longer need it) or 'returned laptop after 6 months' (because the school/work project ended and they no longer need it) So the assumption baked into the policy was that buyers wanted to legitimately own the thing they purchased rather than using the refund policy as a way to get a free short/intermediate term lease.

You seem to be saying 'well they did say any reason' and that good faith on the part of the buyer didn't/shouldn't enter into it. Yes they did, and people behaved the way they did. Now the generous refund policy no longer exists. See how that works?

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

#542

Post by yumraj »

This is why I never buy certain kind of stuff at Amazon, or at least check others first.

Camera and so on, check B&H first.

Other electronics, check Best Buy first.

TV, check Costco, they have 7 year warranty and great prices.

Food items, check Walmart first and maybe Target.

Home improvement stuff, check Home Depot.

N95 masks, never buy on Amazon, you never know what you’ll get, check office stores and Home Depot first.

And so on…

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

#543

Post by macintux »

CRConrad wrote: post #536
macintux wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. I don't get it. All the alternative carriers are obviously in their system already, since deliveries obviously get routed via all of them, and (…

Again, without any real knowledge, this is all speculation on my part, but: I’m assuming multiple shipments for different customers are combined at different points en route, so Amazon is optimizing for cost by choosing the shipper that makes the most sense (for them) for all of those customers.

Maybe it’s in fact trivial, but at Amazon’s scale I find it hard to imagine that any changes to their shipping algorithms are that easy, at least compared to the increased revenue that goes along with it, which in this case presumably is zero.

If you’re willing to put up with all of Amazon’s other crap in exchange for convenience, you’re unlikely to drop them because they won’t allow you to pick the shipper, at least until someone else starts taking business away from them.

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

#544

Post by vl »

mlyle wrote: post #530
jquery wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a rich person went onto Amazon and bought something 50 times more expensive than anything else they’d ever purchased and claimed it didn’t arrive, Amazon would drop them like a hot potato. You’re talking like there’s no legal recourse (or even financial, like a chargeback). There simple aren’t enough resources to track down the source of every sob story, the hard truth is this “inhuman” efficiency is a huge boon f…

A bare minimum level of diligence is required before denying a claim. Else you -should- run into bad faith, punitive damages, action from regulators, etc. It's not some super magical extensive investigation to realize that you shipped a box that weighs much less than the item and that there's likely a big problem. There may be very valid reason to shortcut claims and to grant dubious claims of high value customers. B…

It worked as it should have been - situation got resolved and on top of that Amazon got reputational damage.

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

#545

Post by ghaff »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #508
ghaff wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I don't know how this works in general but I assume that there are some heuristics as to whether shippers require delivery signatures or not. Because of where I live and how isolated my house is the only real dangers are misdelivery and damage.

One of the early-on Prime benefits for me was fairly deterministic delivery. At a time when I ordered lot of physical books, CDs, and DVDs, the minimum amount for free shipping wasn't a big deal. But random order arrivals when I was traveling much of the time were.

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

#547

Post by strenholme »

I actually have never had a bad experience with Amazon. Then again, I pay about $300 a year to have my items shipped to a rent-a-mailbox store, mainly so I can have a public mailing address for things like domain registrations and my online resume.

Also: I usually buy the really expensive stuff from B&H, mainly because they have lower prices than Amazon (they have an in-store credit card which pays the tax for you), and have never had a problem with them.

Who I have had issues with is eBay; I have at least twice received counterfeit lower-quality goods from them, such as the time I got an obvious pirated and burned Blu-Ray when ordering a movie.

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

#548

Post by dingosity »

an_opabinia wrote: post #378
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'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…

Meh. I ordered over $6k from amazon in 2017 and in 2018 they stiffed me on a $69 part. I think this algorithm is probably "mostly true," but there are corner-cases where they just mess up and don't refund small lost purchases from people who buy a lot of stuff.

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

#549

Post by mlyle »

vl wrote: post #544
mlyle wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bare minimum level of diligence is required before denying a claim. Else you -should- run into bad faith, punitive damages, action from regulators, etc. It's not some super magical extensive investigation to realize that you shipped a box that weighs much less than the item and that there's likely a big problem. There may be very valid reason to shortcut claims and to grant dubious claims of high value customers. B…

It worked as it should have been - situation got resolved and on top of that Amazon got reputational damage.

Via media intervention? Eh. That concerns me and makes me worry that 99% of the time this happens it silently goes away from a customer who is not able to get media attention.

IMO this should be a flag for regulators to start taking a look, too, to understand how systemic this is.

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

#550

Post by heavyset_go »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #284
heavyset_go wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 retur…

Product Not As Described. (It was described as the actual product, not as a counterfeit.)

At best, this sounds like a euphemism to me, and at worst, it seems like Amazon doesn't want to log such information. If Amazon cared to keep track of counterfeit returns, they'd make it an explicit option.

Honestly, it feels like Amazon is intentionally not keeping explicit records of the counterfeits they sell because of their potential liability and the fact that such records would make Amazon look bad in depositions.

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