Deceptive Shipping Practices and Non-Existent Customer Service
by bookbuyer01 - Written: Jan 10 '06
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| Full Review |
I have ordered regularly from Amazon.com for a number of years. Each year the availability, service and shipping become worse.
Merchandise is typically listed as "Usually Ships in 24 hours". I guess the meaning of usually would be sometimes, if we feel like it, if we aren't too busy, or it we actually have it.
Then shipping which has entries like "1 day, 2 days, 3-5 days, and so on". That should be made a lot clearer now with their new shipping policies. More like: "Sometime after we give the the notice that we have shipped it, which will be much longer since we really have only assigned a shipping number and haven't really shipped it.
On January 7th, I received an e-mail from Amazon.com that the items I had ordered on January 5th had been shipped and they provided an UPS shipping number. The gave me an estimated delivery date of January 18th. Since I PAID for the 3-5 day regular shipping, I wondered how the delivery date would be estimated as January 18th. They must use and different calendar than the rest of us now.
On January 9th, UPS still did not show any evidence of the number Amazon provided in their Jan 7th e-mail. Since you can't send an e-mail directly to Amazon.com anymore regarding your customer service request and they hide their customer service phone number so well, I had to go through the involved process of using their internal customer service message system (which does not allow you to have any record of your request).
I received a response from Amazon advising me that the order that they had notified me had been shipped was being prepared for shipment. (Makes you wonder why they send the notice of shipment 2 days earlier). In their response, they advised that my expected delivery date would be January 18th again. I noted that the response was the typical form letter response with the general apologies.
After receiving their first response, I attempted to send a reply. The reply message was rejected as Amazon does not accept reply e-mails. I again went through the terrible Amazon e-mail system and tried to sent a second message. This time with the same order number, the site just keeps saying there is an error and won't let you send them a second message.
In their first message they sent a customer service contact telephone number. I tried that one and after waiting on hold for an inordinate amount of time I finally gave up.
In my last 3 orders in the past month, I have had terrible service from Amazon. I see that they are taking orders from customers and the items are actually being sent from some other store. My first experience with that I was notified again of a shipping number which never was valid on the shippers site. The result was that the gift I had ordered and PAID a higher shipping cost (the stores shipping cost) was not delivered on time for me to present to the recipient.
Amazon has gone into alliances with some shippers that now just deliver the item to the local U.S. Post Office for them to deliver. This is a very cost effective thing for Amazon as the alliance rates with the U.S. Postal Service is much less than the shipper's cost if they deliver it. The down side is that the package will take at least another day or two sitting in the Post Office and unless you have regular postal carrier that comes to your door, the package will not be given to your door. This requires another trip to get the package. One package sat in my apartment building office over the holidays while they were closed.) Add on another 4 days.
I can't wait until someone begins a class action suit against Amazon for the deceptiveness in their shipping and availability notices. Sending out e-mails of shipment when they later tell you it hasn't been shipped sounds like grounds for some action. They have made themselves immune from customer complaints.
The best I can recommend is to order when possible from other sources, especially the publishers themselves. In the past month, I have given orders to publishers with typically around a $5.00 shipping charge and the items have been sent promptly and delivered to my door.
Service like Amazon is giving definately will allow some competitor to get my future business.
Recommended:
No
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Books
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