They were already refunded before the story was even published. Yes, Amazon didn't refund them 7K in their first customer support call, that ruffled their feathers but it is not at all surprising. At that $ obviously they need to be be escalated.
I don't know about you, but I've never filed a police report because someone made me call twice to resolve something.
At the same time, I think it is naive to expect a customer support rep in the Philippines to handle this sort of situation. They do not make 7K in a month. If they bought the empty box at a brick and motor store, I wouldn't expect a cashier to be trained in dealing with a 7K fraud issue, and the general manager may not be able to resolve it on the spot either.
My guess is they eventually did a google search, and thats how they found advice telling them to email jeff@amazon.com. They have a large team of people managing that email and advertise it for situations exactly like this. Its hard to interface with a 2 Trillion Dollar entity but I think it's fair to say they do a ok job.
I agree with you about the frontline rep, that's not the person I have a problem with. I don't expect a low-level customer support rep to be able to approve such a thing. I expect Amazon to, in the event that a rep can't handle a complaint, proactively solve it in a different way, not try to fob the claimant off.
It would be just as easy to, say, bump any refund claim over 1k to someone who is paid enough to make such a decision. Amazon have decided they don't want to. And I don't really think that's acceptable. Just look at the comments in this thread of people self-censoring to avoid getting on the wrong side of the algorithm.
This is a situation Amazon has engineered, because it's cheaper to run these things through automated systems, or only frontline workers. I'm not inclined to accept what I think is pretty bare minimum as good enough on account of their size. If anything, I think their size allows them to afford and amortize better systems than a small company.
Edit: cooled it a little
> This is a situation Amazon has engineered
I agree but I disagree with you as to why. I see two distinct issues.
1. Amazon marketplace reliability/integrity.
2. Customer support escalation process.
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1. I think Amazon does an abhorrent job, it's the wild west with regards to quality, fraud. & counterfeits. I personally don't trust it.
2. Unfortunately almost everywhere cuts costs and uses automation & frontline works but I think Amazon has a significantly above average process for a large company. The jeff@amazon.com is a very publicized escalation option/safety valve, which worked in this case & I am not aware of for other large brands. It's unfortunate they had a bad call the first time, but that happens. If this sort of thing happened with another retailer (although it's less likely to), I doubt they would have handled it until they went to twitter or was generating press with the story.