These days amazon and other e-commerce companies has grown rapidly and there are consequences as well. Many fraud sellers are selling their product on these platforms and amazon is failing to put a check on these, due to which customer has to suffer. You can find countless examples on different blogs, youtube, Quora etc
Recently one of my friend ordered a Dell i7 laptop from amazon (20th April 2019) , first he struggled to get it delivered the same on time by amazon, after many followups he got it delivered at 11PM in the night (23rd April 2019). He opened the box in front of delivery boy and ahhh thank god there was no bricks or stones, actual laptop was inside. After 2 days when he was configuring the laptop suddenly he thought of checking the configuration and found that configuration was different than what he ordered, it was i5 instead of i7, however the sticker on laptop and invoice says i7.
which is a difference of around 3-5 thousand. lets assume that customer did not check it from inside, generally they don’t and they don’t feel the difference while using it, and once the return date is over even if they get to check it, they can’t do anything, amazon is not going to take responsibility and they are not going to help.
However in my friend’s case he checked and tried to cancel the order(25th April 2019), oops, there is no cancellation button at the order, it says you have to contact customer support to get it cancelled. on the other hand amazon being a very innovative company replaced their direct customer support with chat bots and call bots, so he struggled for an hour to get his call connected to their rep but he couldn’t, so tried raising it from twitter but that was no better, after every DM a new rep comes and ask you to fill an online form, next minute another rep comes and ask the same story again an again. it happened countless times.
He kept trying, you cant connect a call for the concerned order, then somehow he manages to get the call connected to rep through other options(28th April 2019), Rep on the call said send all these details on an email address, they will take 5 working days to understand the issue and investigate the same, Okay.., he emailed all the details and waiting for an update. he did not get any update even after 5 working days. once again he started and called them to know the status, they said we have got an update from investigation team (but wont tell you until you call and ask), they said they are arranging a pickup tomorrow, okay ..Thanks 🙂 .
Next day in the morning a rep came and checked everything for half n hour, my friend was getting late for office but still stayed to get this thing done. after checking half n hour, he called his boss and his boss said that we don’t have any email regarding the issue, so we can’t pick it up and he refuse and left (couldn’t digest the reasoning). He again called and status was, we will try to pick the item on next working day (Don’t know when it is?).
Genuine questions from customer:
Questions 1:
when a customer calls on Amazon IVR the options were –
Press 4 – if your problem is resolved.
Press 1 – if you want to listen the status again.
Press 9 – if you want to know about different order.
and what about if your problem is not resolved ?? where is that option?
Question 2:
when a customer is ordering a product on 20th April and spending 26 Thousand on 20th April 3 days before he gets the product. He received the product on 23rd April.
What if he urgently need the laptop on 23rd April and want to start using/working?
What if he doesn’t have enough money to buy another laptop before you refund the amount?
Who is accountable for customer’s losses which he has to bear in 20 days?
How amazon is going to compensate his losses?
For readers information – its 10th May and he is still struggling to get his money refunded.
Advise from an amazon customer – Never trust amazon if your money and Time is critical, their customer support can take months to resolve the issue and refund, that too if you keep pocking. Do not buy any product worth more than thousand bucks from amazon, i have all the invoices, call records and twitter DM Chats.
Author – One of Amazon Customer.