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Comment by daveFNbuck | Hacker News Reader

Amazon has been messing up most of my deliveries lately and they make it as difficult as possible to talk to someone to find out why. When I do talk to someone, they always pretend to check the status, say that the item has been lost in transit, ship another one, and extend my prime membership by 1 month. Now I've got a hassle, a late shipment, and often a duplicate on the way that I'll have to deal with later.

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What I really want is to the ability to optionally select the shipper... UPS, FedEx, USPS, OnTrac, with different prices as needed. I think a lot of people who have trouble with one particular shipping company in their area (which one varies by area) would enjoy the ability to choose the one that is more reliable, and be willing to pay for it.

So they give you two products and a month of prime... what response did you want on the customer service end?

If the same issues keep showing up they probably want a fix to the actual problem. And really, having two show up at some random date is not going to be helpful if you miss a kids birthday etc.

They didn't intend to give me two products, and the month of prime is worthless if they don't actually have 2-day shipping. The response I want on the customer service end is for them to stop using their shitty AMZL carrier and deliver reliably like they used to for the last 10 years. It would also be nice if Amazon didn't hide their customer service options so I didn't have to waste a bunch of time finding it every time there's a problem.

You can ask them to make a note on your account to not use their in-house delivery.

I've been contacting them a lot lately, and they haven't made me aware of that option. Thanks for letting me know!

The question "what do you want their customer service to do better" misses the point: the person doesn't want to have to call customer service in the first place to get a replacement product that shouldn't have gone missing in the first place.

I'm having so much problems with DHL in Germany that my prime subscription is extended every month. I guess I'll never have to pay again for a service that's getting next to useless. When they use Hermes[1] though, it's always on time.

[1]: https://www.myhermes.de

You are sure it's that way around? Everybody I know is happy when DHL is used (particularly me as a "Packstation" is nearby) and fears for their newly-acquired property when Hermes is the carrier.

I have never once had DHL successfully take a package from one location to another without screwing it up somehow.

I ordered something from Thinkgeek once. It got from New Jersey to Montreal in two days, and it took them a week to actually get it to me. They'd no-show on days customer service told me they'd deliver, then they'd deliver on days customer service told me they wouldn't be showing up. That was the day I learned the value of shipping things to work.

I had a replacement MacBook power adapter shipped out. They left a notice once, and then customer service told me that there'd been three failed attempts and no further attempt would be made. When I asked where the package was, the agent didn't seem to know, but guessed that it was at the depot. When I got to the depot I gave my delivery slip to the guy behind the counter, who came back and said he couldn't find the package. I told him to go look again and this time he actually found it.

I ordered a kit from 23andMe. DHL tried to deliver it once and then returned it to sender. I got them to send me another one (at a $25 fee), which DHL never delivered. I tried a third one, and this one was "at the depot". I went there and waited an hour in a small cement room with nothing but a chair in it while they looked. Eventually they came back and said they'd given up.

Every single encounter I've had with DHL has shown they're completely incapable of performing the core aspect of their business: getting a thing from one person to another. Worse still, they don't really seem to care or even understand that a screw-up is happening.

Email Jeff Bezos (jeff@amazon.com) and see if you get a real answer.

Various articles in the media state that he does read them, and typically forwards to the relevant executive in charge.

last time I had a messed up delivery, not that long ago - i did a report on their site, they emailed within an hour and had another one overnighted to me.

When you make your order, they give a guaranteed delivery date. When they miss that date, they just send another one as fast as possible but still late. What does the guarantee mean?

You can report a problem with your order and get a free month of Prime when they miss their dates (up to 12 per Prime renewal). It's somewhere in the shipping guarantee. If you paid for any accelerated shipping they'll refund those fees.

I used to be able to nearly double my Prime length this way. The shippers in my area have gotten much better though recently and I haven't had a late package in almost a year.

Edit: Hm, they may have quietly discontinued it recently. It used to be listed on this page:

  https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=201117450

And I can find articles up to December 16 stating it still works. Doesn't hurt to try though, they're usually pretty accommodating.

The guarantee means that if the package doesn't arrive after that point it's their responsibility to assume it's not going to arrive and make alternate arrangements.

In other words, if they "guarantee" tomorrow at 5 PM and it doesn't show then it's late, whereas if they "estimate" tomorrow at 5 PM and it doesn't show then it's whatever, call back tomorrow.

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