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Comment by marban | Hacker News Reader

I've placed approx. 15k orders with Amazon Germany in 20 years and have probably had less than 100 issues, mostly with FBA sellers. I get an answer from CS within 10 minutes and 1-day shipments are on time ~98%. Refunds are issued as soon as I drop the package in the return box. Call me a fan.

The best experience is still Amazon JP but returns are a little more complicated (Even within Japan) — Obviously b/c you more or less do not return stuff in JP [Hansei (反省].

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It really does surprise me how many people online claim have trouble with them. My experience has been essentially entirely positive as well.

It also surprises me how triple platinum status customers are in disbelief that some people who don’t make hundred or thousands of orders don’t get the kid-glove experience and are treated less well.

Amazon can both treat a large number of people well and treat other customers badly, there’s enough customers to do both to millions.

I think some of us are just cursed. I have trouble with at least 1/3 of all online orders. It's not my address: These problems have persisted in 5+ countries with different companies.

It'd never occur to me to make online ordering an integral part of my personal logistics and avoid it as much as I can.

Amazon is an easy target. Plus, I think many are referring to Marketplace and non-Amazon shipped orders where buyers lacked some basic common-sense. (E.g. 50% off cameras from a seller who just signed up...)

Maybe the reason for this is more consumer friendly laws? In the EU you can return any* online/telephone ordered purchase within 14 days (among other laws).

*Exceptions are software, digital products, etc.

More a matter of business practice in general — The fact that Amazon makes it easier than any other shop is just one reason why I prefer peace of mind over the cheapest price. And yes, the law is in place but most shops make it way too difficult (Acknowledging the reason, time to refund, "Lost" returns, Direct vs. Marketplace, etc.).

You don't have to have a reason to return online order within 14 days.

It makes a difference as to who's responsible for return fees.

You're right. That doesn't mean that some shops won't ask and expect an answer though. So even though you're legally not required to do so, you'll have to go through an argument about that with the shop, which is annoying and time consuming.

This is not a thing. At least in Germany I never once had anyone ask me why I want to return before I could. 90% of the time you already have a return label in the package. Worse case you don’t and you cannot even request one through the website, you send an email and get the label.

I was only ever asked about my return _after_ it was issued by Charles Tyrwhitt after I ordered and returned a good number of items (due to their fit being all over the place). That was fair IMO.

On the other hand Amazon has numerous times shown that if you return too much (or don’t behave due to some other opaque metric) your account can get suspended. Even my account was suspended once, though I am only a moderate shopper and have returned less than 10 items over my 18 years membership. I raised the issue with support and asked why (there weren’t even any returns around that time) and they could not tell me but reinstated my account. Good demonstration of power and a reminder to move away from using kindles.

Amazon returns may be easy until you cross some threshold and end up on their bad side.

This is a thing, at least in the Netherlands. Especially if you order from smaller shops. I hardly ever do that, but it really does happen.

If the shop is giving you hard time report them to the necessary authority and never shop there again.

I did not mean that EU laws make returning on Amazon easy in general but that these laws may make Amazon less likely to behave the same in a way they do e.g. in the US.

It's not mandated anywhere in US law, but the vast majority of reputable retailers (e.g. Walmart, Amazon, Target etc.) have very generous return policies. They're usually far more generous than 14 days. As you might expect, there are of course reasonable limitations (e.g. customized products, digital products, etc.).

Amazon: 30 days https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

Walmart: 90 days https://www.walmart.com/cp/returns/1231920

Target: 90 days: https://help.target.com/help/subcategoryarticle?childcat=Ret...

Yet very often they charge restocking fees which is unheard of here. And also these policies are up to their discretion. As you can see in e.g. Walmart’s policy they reserve the right to decline the refund. Better to have a guarantee by having it in the law. Again as stated before, Amazon is known to shut down accounts for returning too often.

E.g.: https://www.wsj.com/articles/banned-from-amazon-the-shoppers...

15k orders over 20 years is on average 2 per day or 750 per year. Is that a typo?

No, it's correct.

Privately or as a business? If privately, I'm very curious what kind of things you order.

Even if I'd replace all my store visits (grocery store, hardware store, electronics store are the main ones) with online orders, I'd probably still not oder more than once every five days (or maybe once every 10 days during covid, now that I go to the grocery store less often).

Or are you talking individual items, like you buy groceries from Amazon and every item is a separate order because they all ship from different sellers?

90% private, 10% business. Literally anything from iPhones to a single duct tape. Food only for shelf-stable stuff since I live next to a grocery store.

It still does not explain the amount of orders, by far.

> Literally anything from iPhones to a single duct tape.

I think this explains it. Cheapest ducktape on Amazon is like $3.48 with free shipping for Prime users. Ordering one such tape every other day only costs $52.20. At some point you stop caring how much externalities it might be causing by clicking "Order Now" in Tuesday 3:40 AM just for a single M4x20 screw you forgot to add earlier in the day.

Amazon JP got a little worse ever since they started having their own delivery, which is not great compared to Yamato or Sagawa, which they were using before (and are still using sometimes, it's not clear under what conditions). But the difference is almost at the level of nitpicking. When you're used to top-notch service, and you suddenly get a subpar experience, that's kind of disappointing.

This is pretty much the same as the US; except our postmaster just obliterated our mail service to try to rig an election so Amazon is actually better than them now.

When did they make the switch? I've mostly had Yamato same-day in Tokyo or remote areas like Okinawa.

I think it was a year or two ago? It was a pretty big deal and in the news for a while.

I get a combination now of Amazon's own service or one of the big third-parties. All of them are great I think. I might prefer Amazon's since they're willing to just leave the package in front of your door.

They didn't switch completely, but started using "Delivery Provider" as baseload bearer and use Japan Post/Yamato when makes sense.

I've done hundreds of orders on Amazon JP. I rarely return products but there are two cases:

Panasonic's microwave is dead on arrival, then Amazon shipped replacement one soon before I sent broken one.

Sony's headphone's bone is broken after a few month, so I sent it to Sony's service center but the shit support said that it's broken due to me, not product's fault even though it never taken out. They tried to charged me repair cost before repairing, so I tried to return the product to Amazon JP because it's faulty product. They accepted refunding with exactly same argument wrote here. I believe it won't happen on other Japanese shops.

From this experience, I sometimes buy from Amazon for products that possibly fragile and manufacturer's support is not reliable. (Or add extended warranty that covers my fault)

My friend often buy Chinese cheap electronics from Amazon JP (a.k.a. AliExpress Japan branch) and often return crap. He said it work flawlessly.

I've never lost my package, thanks to high quality delivery company and secure place.

> Obviously b/c you more or less do not return stuff in JP

Not so obvious to me. Could you elaborate on what you mean here, sounds intriguing.

He appears to reference a Japanese cultural principle called 反省 which means something like "self-reflection". I believe he means that in Japan people do not return things often, they take the blame and learn from their mistake.

Can't back up with data other than with random howto articles, but you just don't return items in Japan without a "valid" cause like product defects.

Bought a 55” tv from Amazon. The UPS driver came a knocked on my door saying, “it’s very large, please help me bring it in.” I went out with them to the truck where the tv was sitting on the pavement. Helped carry it to my house. Driver left. I opened it up, took it out of the packaging, pealed the plastic off the front, plug it in and turned it on. LCD panel was cracked internally. Went to the website and requested a replacement. It arrived the next morning. Was fine. I packed up the broken unit, stuck the UPS label on it, scheduled a pick up. UPS came by and grabbed it. Took a month but eventually the website acknowledge receipt of the return. Zero issues with the return.

Once preordered a Blu-ray from Amazon JP. It arrived on release day. My only complaint is they won’t ship Blu-ray’s from adult video producers even if the title isn’t hardcore porn.

I've never had a problem with returning stuff in JP (granted all of the stuff I returned were DOA so...)

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