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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

Hilariously, there's no way anymore to get help from any "real" person over at Amazon anymore, even for Prime members. I've gotten all kinds of weird stuff shipped to me, including a $12,000 server motherboard once, which Amazon told me I was free to keep as they would ship out the $124 SSD I ordered. I insisted that I return it, and after much hassle over several weeks, I was finally able get ahold of a non-chatbot, non-foreign service rep that finally took the time to listen and sent me a return label. Since I finally got ahold of someone real, I remarked this is the last time I go through such a hassle to return their property because of the way they treated me when I was trying to do them a favor.

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By keeping it for free you'd have done everyone a favor as I understand it:

- Amazon would have paid the seller of that motherboard 12k, out of pocket

- the seller of the motherboard would have made money as if you had ordered the motherboard

- Amazon would be out 12k

- You'd have a 12k mobo you can resell

- Amazon would be out 12k

- And also, Amazon would be out 12k

> You'd have a 12k mobo you can resell

I doubt anyone would buy a 12k mobo from someone off the street. In fact, I doubt anyone would accept a _free_ 12k mobo from someone off the street - if you need that kind of hardware, the risk of questionable sourcing is probably higher than the cost the board.

It'd sell in 5 minutes on /r/hardwareswap

Next you'll tell me that there's no market for used cryptocurrency mining GPUs...

> I doubt anyone would buy a 12k mobo from someone off the street. In fact, I doubt anyone would accept a _free_ 12k mobo from someone off the street - if you need that kind of hardware, the risk of questionable sourcing is probably higher than the cost the board.

Well someone just tried to sell one on Amazon... no idea if it stayed there for long, but it was there. Same goes on Ebay. I don't think he could sell it for 12k, but he can certainly sell it for quite a bit.

I use the online chat and it's always a person. Or they have solved the turing test with their customer support.

I get Alexa or an overseas rep that is unable to do anything other than a preset list of choices.

The first few responses are clearly canned (the text equivalent of an IVR, but better implemented), but then I get to a human within just a few seconds of prompts and maybe a minute or so of waiting.

The humans I've gotten have unfailingly been helpful and effective at solving my issue. Every time. I don't care where in the world they're located; I care that my problem gets solved and they've been 100% track record on that (or as close as possible to that; if I needed something today and the package is late, they can't magic one up onto my doorstep tonight, but anything short of that, they've solved).

It's also maybe 1 in 100 orders that give me any cause to contact them in the first place.

The obvious question is what type of issues are you having? Typical shit like returning an item you ordered would have a set process. Returning items you didn't order is probably a lot more confusing.

As a typical online customer, I have typical online customer problems (late delivery, more rarely wrong item). I agree that Amazon has rightly optimized to handle the problems that their customers typically have. I'm not sure how that relates to this thread on local humans vs overseas humans vs text automation of responses though.

I have a very contentious address problem and have gotten humans from Amazon every time, I even had one take gps coordinates so they could re-route a truck in transit to the wrong location. Youd have to be almost intentionally messing the support process up to not get a human.

Maybe it depends on the country? I've never had to (touches wood) deal with Amazon customer support though, I'm completely pulling that out of thin air hah

I've had good luck calling the main Amazon customer support number (USA) and simply asking to speak to someone in the United States of America. I don't know how Amazon's systems work, but they seem to have more options available to them than the foreign call center reps.

Not on a personal note (and maybe there are details missing) but this comment makes me sad: it's like we've internalized the codes of capitalism to the point where we, as individuals, feel obligated to fulfill our marketplace commitments while we accept that corporations such as Amazon will not fulfill theirs. Did you invoice AMZ for your time? Will AMZ do you a "favor" as well? Personally, I see no moral obligation in my transactions with corporations, as they see no obligations towards me, my patronage or my data.

Again, not addressing this personally to you but just responding here.

In addition to that, the constant defending of corporations worth multiple billions of dollars by regular people ("consumers", to use said businesses parlance) always boggles my mind. These companies are not our friends.

Shouldn't they be our friends, since "we" are their workers as well as their customers? Doesn't it seem strange we become our own adversaries when we go to work?

No, because you go to work to fulfill someone else's agenda, not yours. If you do not execute their agenda, you are replaced by someone who is.

As a free-market capitalist, I feel funny having to go back to communism 101, but: management is not your friend. Ever.

I didn't ask for truisms.

I asked a rhetorical question which targets the issue of wasteful exploitation being the default where cooperation would have a lot of upsides.

In the best interest of a whole society, sometimes you have to cooperate to end wasteful competition (e.g. form utilities), and sometimes you have to compete to end wasteful cooperation (e.g. break up monopolies or cartels)

> Hilariously, there's no way anymore to get help from any "real" person over at Amazon anymore, even for Prime members.

That's wrong (from a non-Prime member). I've had certain cases where I had to revert a refund I got for an untracked item that arrived several weeks after the ETA.

Just thinking about what a process managed by Google for that would look like gives me cold sweat.

I'd love to hear the experience of the amazon seller who had their $12000 server mobos disappear from the amazon warehouse.

Is it possible they wouldn't know until someone ordered the last one?

From what we're reading in this thread, I'm imagining that when Amazon makes a mistake, they make the mistake at scale.

It’s been a while, but at least last year I got a real person both times. They even try to push me to let them call me instead of chat/email. But it’s Amazon Germany, we still didn’t adopt many of the North American problems.

Why did you insist on retuning it?

The right thing to do. But my time and sanity is valuable too.

Yeah maybe take the company that does $283,000 in sales per minute at their word when they say don’t bother returning it.

They told you not to do it. You did it. Now you’re pissed that doing it wasn’t a smooth process. Ok.

He’s the customer (or she). If he doesn’t want the wrong item that was shipped, amazon should accept the return. I know this is HN but now this dudes gotta figure out what to do with a 12K server does he use it? Does he toss it? How much does it cost to dispose of a server like that. Maybe he donates it. I don’t know but he didn’t ask for it the trouble. It’s not like he won the lottery for $12K.

The customer asked for one thing but the company delivered something else. Don’t make your customers deal with your mistake.

While I agree with you, they still sent out the correct item.

I think we agree that Amazon should do the thing that makes the least trouble for the consumer. The wrong item is there. Return or disposal or charity or resale. One way or the other your customer is going to deal with your mistake.

You seem to have some concerns that being left with a $12K server to dispose of any way she pleases would be a burden.

I believe and her actual experience suggests that the rerun will be more trouble.

Ok same values, different views on likely outcomes, we disagree.

Pretty wild. I mean if it’s $12K...surely even a completely lackluster listing on eBay or Amazon selling of it for $2K profit after all costs/fees is worth it to virtually anyone?

If it was me I'd make a quick ask about returning. Upon them declining the return I'd eBay it on the spot. They have no right to merchandise they send me according to the FTC.

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

The smart move is list it on Amazon for $10k

Just to clarify, it was a server motherboard, not the whole server. I would assume that the motherboard takes up a lot less volume and weight that a full server box.

Your average server mobo fits in your average kitchen trash can. In this instance, it seems like he made all the trouble for himself.

Yes, Amazon has the responsibility of return and disposal. But where disposal is a completely trivial "drop it in the trash can, forget it exists," let's not pretend that this ia Amazon doing him some kind of massive disservice.

I'd certainly hate for some quarterly audit to trigger a review and a follow-up. "hey we told you to keep it but that was also an error we will come get it." "Oops I sold it." "Okay no prob you only owe us for the inventory cost not the retail cost we will bill you 9.5k"

In the US the law says if someone erroneously mails you something, it's yours. They would have no right to that expensive motherboard.

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

Thought experiment - Amazon sends you the wrong item. Something you have no use for, but is bulky to store, impossible to sell and costly to dispose of.

Should Amazon just take it back?

Of course it is their responsibility to take it back.

Suppose I order a watering can from the garden supply store. When I get home from work, I discover that instead of a watering can, they've delivered 2 tons of mulch in a giant pile in my driveway.

I'm not sure how you could make the argument that it's now my responsibility to get rid of the mulch that I didn't want or ask for?

1 Order watering can

2 Get mulch in erroneous delivery

3 ... [0]

4 Profit!

[0] https://www.craigslist.org/ :-)

p.s. I actually agree with your point. Just occasionally you can turn a wrong into something good.

Agreed, hence nuclearnice’s comment not making a lot of sense.

It shouldn’t be on the customer to get rid of something sent in error even if other people might think it’s complaining over something petty.

The customer will sadly always have to do something about an error... it's sad, but it's now in your property, there's a minimum of effort you'll need to do in every case.

Bare minimum effort:

    1. Contact Amazon
    2. a. Giving it back to a shipping carrier
       b. Dispose of it

In the case of a server mother board, both giving it back to a shipping carrier and disposing of it is essentially the same effort (I would argue that giving it back to the shipping carrier will be more effort actually, but it's not worth the effort to argue that, so I'll say it's equivalent). That means complaining over it is petty.

In the case of "2 tons of mulch", or by definition anything "bulky to store, impossible to sell and costly to dispose of", the amount of effort isn't the same at all between disposing of it and letting a shipping carrier dealing with it. This make it complaining about it, not something petty.

I agree, but the argument is also bullshit. You've changed the [noun] specifically to create an example where disposal is onerous. If disposal is not onerous, it looks quite a bit different. Are we so inflexible in our thought that we require a strict rule to be applied all cases, without the bit of common sense that says: "If you created a massive burden on me, it's your responsibility. If you created a negligible burden on me, who gives a shit?"

If they delivered, instead of two tons of mulch, a single unit of scotch tape, would you still give a shit about whose responsibility disposal is?

We can go ahead and treat these cases as distinct, because they're distinct. You recognize that implicitly, which is why you made your example two tons of mulch, and not 2 ounces of plastic.

A balance beam, perhaps?

Yes they should.

Thought experiment.

A billionaire sends you $12K in cash. You call her and offer to return it. She tells you sorry and to just keep it.

Should you be angry?

This is a little worse than cash, but not quite as bad a two tons of mulch.

IMO. You’re of course welcome to see the burden of throwing out a motherboard as higher than I do.

It is not the right thing in a big picture. The cost of implementing (and understanding, in case of abuses, legal issues etc) of the returning process may be higher than apparent losses due to wrong shipments. There is no one harmed, except Amazon who already accepted this chance, evaluated it and said will not care.

It seems that if you made this mistake, it would ruin your own business, but it is not the case with them.

If you want to help Amazon get more money, let’s all order subj boxes, because for mass-enough wrong shipments they’ll take care and fix it. Someone could do a small short-lived business even, receiving these boxes, relabelling them correctly and reselling under the right markings. It is called arbitrage and there is nothing wrong with it. You take advantage of some inconsistency and make it so explicit that it either is fixed or left to you as a reward for fixing it.

Unless they pass on the cost to the sellers...

Do they? It’s pretty pointless to speculate about something so easily verifiable.

Not the OP but amazon screwed up and sent someone else's(i.e. not amazon's) server mb to the wrong person. Does the seller get refunded for the cost of the mb? Who absorbs the cost of the mis-delivered item?

It's not the customer who actually bought it because amazon will always refund them or reship (as we see in the article) and I bet you amazon has some EULA or TOS that absolves them of responsibility. so now some random seller has to absorb the lost revenue/profit of amazon's mistake.

> Hilariously, there's no way anymore to get help from any "real" person over at Amazon anymore, even for Prime members

That's not been my experience at all. I've had occasion to call them 3 times in the last 6 months or so, and in all cases I've had no trouble getting to someone who quickly resolved my problem.

1. I ordered an Echo Dot on Prime Day last year. The two colors I liked best were listed as out of stock, with no estimate of when they would be available, so I ordered my third choice.

That one then was delayed and the other two became available so I called to see if they could change my order to one of those colors. I went to "Help"/"Need More Help"/"Contact Us" and on that page selected "We can call you", and filled out the form.

In less than 10 seconds, my phone was ringing and when I answered I was talking to a person. (It turned out that she couldn't update my order, though, so I did end up with my third choice color. Turned out OK, though, because it also turned out that the place I had thought I'd put the Dot was not very good. The ideal spot, it turned out, was a spot where that third color fit much better).

2. I ordered some pants and shirts about three weeks before Christmas. I got a notice on a Friday that USPS had delivered them, saying that they had been left in the garage or some other outbuilding. I could not find them. Amazon's site says that sometimes you can get a notice notice up to 48 hours before actual delivery, so I waited until Monday. Then I went to the USPS office, and they told me that it had actually been left at my neighbor's and that USPS would retrieve it from the neighbor and bring it to me.

I went and checked with the neighbor and they had not seen it. We even checked her garage, since the delivery notice mentioned a garage, but nothing.

So I called Amazon. Again, less than 10 seconds after submitting the form I received a call from them. I explained what happened, and the person offered to send replacements. I requested a refund instead, since I didn't actually need this stuff for Christmas. It was just coincidence that I ordered near Christmas. I'd rather have a refund, and then just re-order the items myself later after the Christmas shipping madness ended. He immediately granted the refund which was processed within a day.

3. A week after that, the missing package showed up in my mailbox! So I again called Amazon. Yet again, less than 10 seconds from form submission requesting a callback to getting that callback.

I explained what happened and asked them if they could re-charge me for the order, or if they wanted me to ship the items back, or what. I was put on hold for maybe 30 seconds, and then told that they couldn't really re-charge, so just keep the items for free.

Anymore? I don't think there was ever a time where you could actual human help from Amazon other than pressing the "refund" or "resend package" buttons. I recall back in 2005 I went through 4-5 improperly packaged boxes of glass items that arrived smashed. Each time Amazon claimed that the issue was fixed and the next one would be property packaged, yet they always arrived improperly packaged and smashed. I eventually just gave up.

This sorta thing has been a problem for a long time.

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