Ask HN: Increasing shipment fails on Amazon/Woot sale items: bait and switch?
I use Amazon Locker whenever it's available. But it's never available for Woot orders, and they have odd space constraints even on Amazon orders. But even for small items, there's a mysterious black hole shipments can fall into.
FOUR of my last five orders failed in transit and were refunded without so much as a conversation. I requested Locker for all 3 that were eligible for Amazon Locker shipment
For those, I received "Your Amazon.com order of ... has shipped!" emails, but I never received the corresponding "Amazon.com Locker Pickup Code enclosed" emails, even well after tracking showed them as "delivered". You CAN'T pick them up without the code; there's no staff there. I spent over a half-hour with customer service before they acknowledged that no pickup codes has been issued. Their solution? Just cancel the orders; no explanation. I could repurchase everything all over again, but they REFUSED TO HONOR THE SALE PRICES on replacement orders.
The most important order was on the Woot side for a computer and I ordered a compatible case on Amazon). After waiting over a WEEK, they claimed that it had been DELIVERED(!) to my mailbox business after 10:30PM on a Saturday when nobody is there and noplace to "deliver" besides leaving it in the middle of the street. I sent an email to Woot to that effect, and they promptly just CANCELED the order without explanation. They are out of that item and will not honor similar pricing on anything else.
In all cases, they were special-priced items for which the discounts were not honored for reorder/replacement. In walk-up retail, this is a classic sign of bait-and-switch. Is anybody else having similar experiences with Amazon/Woot in the past 8 weeks? The computer ripoff really hurt because I had already waited almost 2 weeks and have to do something now.