No merchandise, but endless spams
by towwang - Written: Dec 19 '03 (Updated Dec 19 '03)
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This was my first order ever with Amazon. I needed a massager for someone who has muscle pains; web search engines kept returning hits of referral pages that always ended up pointing to Amazon's product selection, so I thought Amazon must be the best supplier of this type of product.
Ordering the item was already quite a hassle. They offer free shipping on a total of $25 or more; I was just $2 below that, so I needed some small item to reach that total. The Amazon site kept returning items that were in reality sold by other on-line merchants and "do not qualify towards the $25 total for free shipping". I got sick of wading through endless pages of non-qualifying items and ended up buying a more expensive item that I really didn't need.
The massager I did want badly was listed as "will ship in 1 to 2 weeks" and "estimated delivery of 2 to 3 weeks". After I placed the order, the useless "filler" item was delivered very promptly (3 days later), but the massager remained in "processing". I waited two weeks, asked for some status, was told the massager will ship as scheduled (meaning as late as possible as per original estimated ship date).
After 3 weeks and some days of waiting, the deadline came and still the massager hadn't shipped. Again I asked for status, and the reply was "Sorry, our supplier did not fulfill their promise to stock us with their merchandise".
At this point I wanted to cancel the order, but when I tried to do so through the web site, it kept warning that "cancelling any item in this order may result in additional shipping and handling charges if the order total drops below $25". They actually meant to charge an extra $8 if I cancelled! I had to e-mail Amazon to cancel this order that they clearly were not willing to fulfill. And I was still stuck paying for the useless filler item.
What really infuriates me is that Amazon lists so much merchandise, making it hard to find what you really need, and confuses you about their shipping costs. This is "referral sales" implemented to the worst extremes. Maybe the Amazon staff was honest and didn't charge me for items that had not shipped, but their corporate concept of advertising merchandise they have no control over makes this vendor unreliable.
To make things worse, they started sending me spam ads (straight from Amazon.com) even though I clearly indicated I did not want to receive such messages. When I e-mailed them asking them to stop spamming me, their mail server rejects my messages and direct me to contact them by filling forms on their web site. I do that, and finally the reply comes back saying "As a customer, you WILL receive occasional ads that we think you MAY find useful". And again they direct me to log on to the web site and change my mailing (spamming) preferences. I ALREADY DID THAT AND SAID I DIDN'T WANT SPAM, but they spam me anyway!
By law, spammers are required to provide an e-mail address to let you opt-out. In this case, Amazon does not; all their spams say "if U want to unsubscribe, do these extra steps at our web site". This is quite illegal.
Revision history
2003 12 19 Written by Tow Wang
Recommended:
No
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Conair WM30HS Three Head Stone Wand
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