Hacker News Reader

Comment by mft_ | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if there are regions (or countries) which are worse? Amazon in Germany is also great, so far.

I’m like you - I’ve ordered so many things from Amazon this last year or so (new circumstances plus pandemic lockdown) and literally not one problem of the sort described. I can think of two items out of hundreds which weren’t on time (one, Amazons’s logistics made it a whole day late, and one was the seller’s issue). And the (very rare) returns were dealt with without a hitch.

For other reasons, I actually want to not be so reliant on Amazon, but their combination of Prime delivery, reliability, and customer service is unbeatable for many/most non-specialist items.

View on HN

Amazon in Germany can also go very wrong. This is why I stopped ordering there:

I ordered a bunch of small electronics stuff, about 100€. In the order process Amazon selected an expired credit card (which I'm sure I had replaced in the settings already). They then split the order in parts and for each order part demanded an additional late pay fee, because the card was expired. This is despite me calling them to stop the order or to correct the payment method, before the package had arrived.

They couldn't help, I was promised a call back, never arrived. The chat support deleted the expired credit card from their system, only to cut the connection as soon as I asked for a solution for the fees and to know why the wrong card was selected. Later, that expired credit card turned up in my settings again.

In the electronics stuff that arrived, a converter I bought was evidently fake. It was also a converter, but it had different markings than the one on the product photo (including a missing CE symbol). I sent that back. A short while later, Amazon accused me of not having sent it back and wanted me to pay again! I still had the proof of having sent a package, which made them shut up.

Never again.

Why would an order go through with an expired credit card? Is this something like cash-on-delivery or card-on-delivery?

Valid question. I was switching bank accounts at that time, so it's possible the card was not expired but linked to an account that did not exist anymore. Might also have been the account itself and not the card that was listed (Lastschriftverfahren, where they take money directly from the account). I'm fuzzy about the details, not really because it was particularly long ago (~2 years), but because it was confusing back then.

Edit: Had a look at my writeup in my blog [0], Lastschrift it was. Amazon picked a bank account that did not exist anymore to pay for the order. When that bounced came the fees - and while one fee for that would have been normal if I had given the wrong bank account (which I'm pretty sure I only did, if I did, because their system did not save when I changed the bank account before), to take multiple fees for one order was in no way okay.

[0]: https://www.onli-blogging.de/1832/Meine-richtig-schlechte-Su... (in german)

This has happened to me. In some circumstances banks will still honour a charge even though the card is expired.

You'll have to ask the banks why. In my case it wasn't a problem, but technically it shouldn't happen and it's strange that it did.

That actually could have been a problem. If the bank had accepted the charge, the fee for that would have been high, as far as I read when closing the account. This way - by Amazon just getting a bounce - my annoyment was just about the unreasonableness of the fee (to pay 3x3€ instead of 1x3€ just because Amazon decided to split the order), if the bank would have charged me instead it could have become a money problem.

That added to my concern with Amazon just using the wrong bank account, and that old account occuring again and again in my profile. Even if I wanted to order something at Amazon it would be too risky now.

Amazon doesn't charge your card until it's about to ship your order. Thus an order with an invalid card will go through but won't ship.

Fulfilled by Amazon.de screwed up my last micro-order. I ordered an 8-pack of something and got a 5-pack.

Trivial for small items, but doesn't bode well for high value orders.

It's a confidence issue. Amazon has become a logistics giant but is steadily losing customer confidence.

A combination of fake reviews, fake items, high-friction or just plain missing consumer support on high-value items, and a hopelessly confused mess of a shop front all add up to a mediocre and untrustworthy experience.

It's enough that they screw up 0.01 - 0.1% of orders. They are big enough, those people will be loud and not those without issues.

On HN I put comment below because I had some issue - if I had not, such comment would have too little value to post.

I did receive many things without issues and have also received books that looked way worse than if you gave them to a toddler. It's bizarre - they started with books and books are items that are trivial to pack securely.

3 out of 5 books I ordered there were what a regular bookstore would have called a "Mängelexemplar": folded in pages, accidentally cut corners, missing pages

Those are books damaged in printing that the printer is supposed to destroy, some enterprising employee grabs them from the scrap to be recycled and Amazon stands ready. Publishers and authors lose the entire amount. I have seen books like this at weekend swap meets (flea markets) near major printing ecyclers where the recycler employee does the diversion when they see good books(to their eyes) in the scrap.

I cannot remember when I have last received a pristine book from Amazon in Germany. There is always at least one minor damage that I wouldn't get from a store book.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com