I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action

I have. Amazon. Over 15 years now and flawless every time.

I ordered some circuit boards from Seeedstudio (good and cheap board fab, btw). I paid extra for DHL to get them quicker.

I submitted my boards to Seeed (Shenzhen) October 10. On Oct 16, said they were shipped to DHL. Awesome. Told DHL via their webapp and text messaging that "I do not need signature. Drop at doorstep". 10 boards were a whopping $5. Guaranteed delivery by 19'th, cause thats what I paid extra for.

So what does the fucknut idiot delivery driver do? "Did not deliver because no signature". I was fucking furious. I called their support line, and "we'll try to deliver tomorrow" ~~~ for WHAT? The idiot to say AGAIN that no signature, did not deliver? Uh huh, tell them to get their ass back right now and drop it off. Their claim was "They can only ask". BTW, their systems noted both my previous "I dont need signature" authorization, along with the text message responses saying the same.

Well, it turns out that Twitter is good for other things, like complaining loudly. So I reached out to the 4 contacts linked to DHL, and included my package#. I got one of their US VP's on there. Wouldn'tya know, they had the authority to tell the idiot driver to get back and deliver.

Who knows when I would have gotten my boards. But I certainly know how to bypass 'consumer firewalls'. I brought Seeed into it as well, by mentioning them with DHL. Evidently, squeezing the B2B may have worked, I really don't know.

Standard Dutch mail often leaves undeliverable packages with neighbours, which is great when you live in a good neighbourhood with good neighbours who are home a lot, and perhaps not so great when you don't.

But skipping work for this is stupid and unreasonable.

I agree with all of the above but wanted to underline this. Because it snowballs so much. First call they explain the problem. Second call they explain how they explained the problem to someone before, how instead they understood X and did Y. Third call... and so on. Add to that long waiting times and it compounds even more.

I did work in customer service and while I loved the people I talked to for the most part, it was really obvious that they were so nice to me because I was simply 100% frank, which was unexpected for them. And it was kinda heartbreaking how many thanked me just for listening, and not deflecting any blame, or just pointing to the EULA or whatever, but treating them like a normal person -- even though I really couldn't fix their problem, just agree that it sucks and wish them a nice day and mean it. I always tried but in many cases there was just nothing I could do except tell them all I know, and how sure I am about it. The bar was so incredibly low. When I offered people to call them back to follow up on a problem, they always were surprised when I actually did. Officially, I would have to ask permission for every outbound call, but I simply decided that that would just make it take even longer in total, so I did that once. I just made sure I was there to solve problems not chit chat, and then did what I considered necessary, not what people who didn't even talk with customers thought might be good. And when calling other departments, I also encountered people who said "you know, officially it would be X, but I think I can fix this", and they did. But it was a total crap shoot, sometimes they just made it worse or said they'd do something end then not do anything.

Once I told a coach that if the bread he eats were made as sloppily as he had suggested to me I should handle a specific problem (that is, hand it off in exactly the same way that happened 3 times before, knowing it would resolve nothing but make it someone else's problem), he would be dead in 3 months. He threw a fit and dragged me to my team leader, who had my back - a month later I hear I have a "solution rate" (some customers were asked after the call to rate friendliness etc. and if their problem was solved) of 66%, twice above the average. You might say I had ignored "orders" because I considered them bad, and my results had proven me correct. It didn't change anything about the process, but it did give me leg room if you will. At the end of the day I did the job the way I did it because I thought, if I'm going to be a drone for shitty pay, at least I want to be able to sleep at night, right? The job simply wasn't worth squirming and lying all day when I could try to make a little difference at least to that one person who had to ask me for assistance after some awfully long waiting period. But it ended up being fun and meaningful I wouldn't have imagined beforehand, and if I had just followed official suggestions and marketing materials, it would have turned out so differently, I would have learned nothing and it would have just been this shitty job I once had.

I don't believe it saves money. Maybe in the short term for the one company or a few execs in it or their shareholders, but in aggregate, it's just a waste. Call centers should simply fulfill some standards for the work and then get paid by the hour, not by call. That's all it would take, people who are in this job would mostly prefer being able to make a good job. During breaks we always used to share stories about customers on some freakish odyssey because of fucking $company. I'm sure there's also people who enjoy what little power they have over helpless callers, but if the incentives were aligned properly, they'd be gone before you can say "welcome to X, my name is Y, how can I help you?" :P

Most complaints I heard from customers, aside long waiting times, unfriendly treatment or outright incompetence, were that they didn't get feedback and had no single point of contact. Like, one person at the company who is assigned with following up on that problem until it's fixed. How would that not be flat out better? It takes 30 seconds to try to reach a customer. Just do that until you reach them, or you see something in their file indicating they called on their own and the issue is solved. Have a mechanism in place for sickness, quitting the job etc, done? Why is that hard? How is the current way better in any shape or form? If I've ever seen anything ripe for disruption, it's call centers. Talk about pain.

They win at ease/speed of delivery and fantastic customer service, and usually price too - which means they own online retail.

The only thing they don't have an edge on is food and used items (although they are trying) and certain things directly from China.

Apple

E.g. when getting warranty repairs for my Thinkpad, dealing with the central Lenovo organisation wasn't great, but once they accepted "customer device has an issue" they pass it off to local service partner, and those (in my experience) deal with issues quite well. And if you don't have on-site support, some repair places take your device and handle the warranty communication for you (and have an established relationship with Lenovo making that easier). Probably not the cheapest possible setup for them though.

Courier services as you mention though seem to have terrible service across the board. It doesn't matter if they are big or small, this seems to be some sort of hard rule almost.

The most annoying part is when I deal with someone who makes it hard to deliver to a different address than my home (looking at you, Verizon) but it's always achievable.

I’ve returned a fair amount of things to amazon. I had previously even received actual incorrect products in the packaging of the product I ordered (someone probably returned them to amazon as a scam) and I was able to return them without question. Easy peasy.

When I tried to return a Kindle Paperwhite that froze up every couple hours however that was a different story. I wasn’t allowed to just return it, I had to talk to support.

First call they had me powercycle it and told me to call back if it froze again. It did. I had done this myself to get it unfrozen many times.

Second call they had me factory reset it and call back if it froze again. It did. I had already done this myself.

Third call they ask “is it frozen right now?” It wasn’t. They tell me to call back when it is frozen.

Fourth call, I have it frozen, they ask me what I see and tell me to tap things to which I explain I cannot, it’s frozen! They then have me power cycle it and try to insist that that fixed the issue. I explain no, I have had this happen like 40 times now. I explain the process I’ve been through with support.

Finally they agree to give me a return authorization!

And can you imagine the logistics nightmare of multiple delivery attempts to the same address on the same day? For every courier that says they called when they didn't, there are people who will go shopping and come back at 3pm to see the slip, then call and complain.

I've had it happen to me where I'm sitting 4 feet away from my front door and I go out to find a slip on the door when they never knocked or rang the bell, but it's unreasonable to expect them to turn around and bring it back, just as it's unreasonable to think that maybe I just didn't hear it even though I was right there.

I think the best CS will call and deal with shipping issues. Crappy companies will have none of that.

(I am not affiliated with Overstock)

In the call center, when you call in, our number one goal is to get you off the phone ASAP. Every major corp I've worked for never had a way to tell the status of the delivery via their in house software. In times like this we check the notes to see when the last time you called and just keep telling you to wait longer, say "it's sent" even though we have no way of knowing this, we are told flatout to lie.

The major reason is that delivery is outsourced to another company, who then themselves outsources it again to other drivers who will work for the least amount of money possible. So there is no direct way of contacting them or even knowing which sub company is doing the delivery.

All the managers are concerned about is you taking the next call. I have gotten in trouble multiple times for going out of my way to make sure the customer got everything completed properly. Soon as the customer hangs up your headset automatically takes another call, so you don't have time to fill out extra paper work to get what the customer actually needs completed cause you are told to do that "On your own time" and since you get paid minimum wage you don't give a shit if things get done or not due to the poisoned environment.

Now say a real incident happens where you must call the delivery driver, it CAN be done, just that they never tell the employees that because it takes "too long". Basically you call the 3rd party delivery company and tell them what's up and then it's their job to relay the message (if they even know who is doing the delivery!) So only under special circumstances can that be done.

No one cares about wasted effort or customer satisfaction, as long the hold times are low and they can employ the minimal amount of workers then they are doing there jobs...

Another thing, when you cancel your account and the company owes you money, you tell the customer 6-8 weeks to receive the refund. Now if the customer gets really angry and makes a big deal about it, then there is a little button we click on the screen that mails out the refund to the customer the next day! So why do they do that? because of all the interest they make with your money sitting longer in their bank account. This company had 3 internal accounts that had ~2 Million dollars in each of them, filled with customers money just waiting around to be sent out when the automated timer printed out a batch...

All the corporations I've worked for all operated like this, whether I was paid minimum wage or a decent 20$ an hour. I've only worked at one place where they genuinely cared about the customer, but it was small enough in that you had direct communication to everyone, but that place closed cause customer service costs too much money...

My mom ordered something for me off Amazon, but typed in the wrong address. I walked to that address and they denied receiving any packages. From their support page, they'll call you and you'll be speaking to someone within 20seconds. They sent a replacement without question and without charging (the item was less than $50). Other times, with other issues, they'll ship you a replacement and ask you to keep the original.

I bought an Apple laptop recently. It shipped with Sierra, but I wanted to start with a clean install of High Sierra. After installing stuff I had a suspicion something wasn't compatible with High Sierra and wanted to downgrade. Frustratingly, they removed the download in the App Store. The first person I talked to on the phone walked me through an Internet Recovery--and knew the difference between installing from the Recovery Partition (which is the OS installed, High Sierra) and Internet Recovery (which installs the OS the hardware shipped with, Sierra). That, and the ability to talk me through a series of screens (including partitioning) over the phone is no easy task. The same person called me back 2 hours later to confirm everything finished installing.

I think for most other larger companies, support is a huge expense with little upside. It's cheaper to waste your time then their's. The most cost effective thing to do is hire a small number of very polite people and give them the power to do nothing.

Do you really want to live in a world where everyone does this?

Imagine you are a small start-up where every penny counts and make the odd mistake here and there and people take advantage of that, destroying you.

Or imagine people are kind and help point out your mistake and give back your ~$500 device.

You get to decide which world you live in, because you are creating it.

I'm not convinced this is true (well it may be true morally but I don't think it's true legally). IIRC duplicate shipments are not considered Unsolicited Goods and in the UK you are legally required to inform the sender and return them if the sender requests.

Edit: This article[0] seems to suggest the same, but the Citizen's Advice link is broken.

Edit 2: This article[1] is better and includes a proper source[2].

[0]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/30294748/can-you-keep-...

[1]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25330615

[2] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2000/2334/pdfs/uksi_20002...

How wasteful that would be to throw it out. Personally I do feel like it's a moral obligation to make an attempt to send it back.

He was under no legal obligation. But it was the moral thing to do.

What he really should have done was get it delivered or picked up at his workplace so he wouldn't have to stay home waiting for the courier.

It's really not the same as threatening your neighbor with a "We'll see each other in court", for a parking lot dispute.

The writer ought to be compensated for his wasted time thanks to their incompetence.

I've never done it, but I observed that contacting customer service on Twitter is usually very effective.

Have you tried this? What were the results?

In the situation you describe, how would I go about finding a lawyer to receive communication and how much would it cost me out of pocket to simply be allowed to use their name and address when telling nintendo "talk with these guys, their my lawyers"

Mistakenly delivered goods are not unsolicited.

>Q. Am I obligated to return or pay for merchandise I never ordered?

>A. No. If you receive merchandise that you didn’t order, you have a legal right to keep it as a free gift.

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0181-unordered-merchan...

But this doesn't apply to things sent to you by mistake, which certainly seems to be the case here. You are expected to return the good to the sender at their expense. Although you are expected to facilitate returning it, I doubt any court would look favourably on a company taking you to court for failing to jump through their hoops.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25330615

Hard to say really to what extent there is overlap here.

Honestly I'm now starting to wonder if I should pull the article - getting it read is good, but this is more attention than I expected and I'm getting a little nervous of what'll happen next now. :-S

You wouldn't open it and keep it?

That's so wasteful. Why not give it to a friend? Or to GoodWill?

Should Nintendo be selling this direct at all? Is it really still worth the cost of whatever systems need to be in place to achieve it?

Anecdotally, I received my Switch in the post in perfect condition, via Amazon.

There are Ethical reasons

But I've heard of people contacting support for a vendor to hear "thanks for letting us know, you can keep the item" which should have probably been Nintendo's stance in this issue

Nintendo is the one in the wrong here.

The customer wouldn't have been wrong to do nothing and keep it, but calling them and admitting the mistake is definitely the moral high-road here. It may not be the smartest thing, but that's different.

Why does it suddenly matter if the cost was arbitrarily high?

He received something he hadn't paid for in error. Seems like the decent thing to do is at least make an attempt to correct the issue. Maybe the error-sent package was meant for someone else. Maybe they say don't worry about it.

But to make an attempt is dumb, and you deserve the thing sent in error? Good grief.

What if someone erroneously deposits $1000 into your bank account? Is that yours to keep? Is it dumb to try to rectify the situation?

Yes it matters in one case, yes it matters in 10 cases.

Yes you have a ethical/moral responsibility to tell them. Why? Because if you expect any company or someone else to tell you when you fucked up, you have to do this as well.

I go back to a store to tell them, that they forgot to give me 1$. I go back to a store and give them 1$ when i realise that they gave me 1$ more than expected.

It may be a cultural difference. For some people it's dumb, for others it's a fundamental question of ethics.

This is doubly true when it comes to this threat of suing you for mistakenly receiving the second device, notwithstanding the customer support costs leading up to this.

A Switch is definitely worth less than the cost of having an attorney prepare even the initial legal complaint against you, let alone setting foot into court.

That said, if the seller makes a mistake then they need to rectify it entirely, they can't demand you wait around for a courier at an inconvenient time or get you to pay for postage.

US seems to just have a more broad term for goods delivered that you didn't order and refers to it as "unordered merchandise"[1]. You're pretty much free to keep it, it seems.

The UK is more specific for what is classified as "unsolicited" and what is considered goods delivered to someone else by mistake[2]. Companies have a right to get their product back if it's the latter. Since the author did order a switch, a duplicate delivery would very likely be considered a mistake. If the author never ordered a Switch (and never paid for it) in the first place, they'd definitely be able to keep it.

Regardless, if this is the way Nintendo asked for the second Switch back, they were completely out of line.

[1] https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0181-unordered-merchan...

[2] https://www.saga.co.uk/magazine/money/spending/consumer-righ...

If the law is similar in the UK, Nintendo is mostly in the right. However, I don't think they have the right to ask the guy to be at home at a time of their choice.

Most countries have laws regarding that practice, but the details can be very different.

Although yes, in retrospect I'll default back to Amazon in future.

  > can imagine the prices are the suggested retail prices,
  > which no retailer will actually end up charging.

I can't imagine mainstream retailers either price-gouging or discounting, unless a product's reaching its end of life or about to be superceded.

So I'm down another day's income, and honestly starting to feel like a bit of a mug given the responses here.

Do normal people actually have lawyers? That they know well enough to hang out socially with?

It doesn't. He is probably even by law obligated to tell.

And yeah there is still something called moral/ethics.

So inform them to arrange a courier to come pick up the item at a specific time convenient to you (Saturday from 10am to 5pm or Mon-Thu 7pm-10pm) and it's their headache now. They have to work around your schedule without inconveniencing you.