Amazon investigates after high-value orders were switched for cheaper products
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
As Amazon is automating via web interface a lot of this sort of thing its also too narrowly defined the refund/replacement service and its bound to cause issues. Not having an easy fall back to a human is also the error which a lot of silicon valley companies seem to fall into. So I tend to use Amazon only for things I can't find elsewhere or relatively cheaper items, anything expensive is usually cheaper and better supported elsewhere.
it is explicitly cheaper and scales, to automate all response. Companies that paid humans to do customer service have been crushed by the scale of the new companies. A dozen hundred-year-old retailers in the USA are closing all their stores, they had hundreds of people making sales and doing customer service, while earning a living for themselves and their families.
My good bank (First Direct) has done really well at this. I can call them about anything 24/7, a human answers about as quickly as a person would answer their own phone, maybe 5-10 seconds, not long enough for one of those stupid "We're very busy" messages. But I rarely talk to them because all routine stuff just works correctly so I don't need to. I called them once to ask what happens if I need a whole lot of cash right soon (since they don't have physical locations, the answer was for very large amounts I need to give a lot of notice but a courier brings me the cash) and decades ago I called them because I wanted my debit card to work in the ATMs for other banks (remember when it didn't? Maybe you're too young). Also I called them to transfer money to buy my current home because that's too much money to be authorised by a web form apparently.
I agree in general, but Amazon is the exception—they've gotten to their dominant positions in online retail and cloud compute with strong support and great customer service. I'd go so far as to say it's their secret sauce. For them to go the route of all other megacorps and banish their paying customers to automation hell seems very "day two."[0]
[0] https://aws.amazon.com/executive-insights/content/how-amazon...
> hey had hundreds of people making sales and doing customer service
Yeah, instead of a website with prices and an easy way to order
And yes I've known "mom and pop" stores that have just that.
They would've also just sent out another hard drive of the same model, so I would've either had to wait for that to get to me in order to rebuild my RAID, or just buy a new drive and get shipped an unnecessary drive. Amazon just returned my money so I got a new drive immediately.
There is no packaging, as far as I could tell; all the stuff that showed up while I was standing there was boxed and labelled and ready to ship.
I meant the amount of work that the UPS store employees were doing for free on amazon's behalf was astounding. Answering phones, telling people where to put things, all for free. Amazon has offloaded the customer service part of the return process on employees of another company who are not reimbursed by anyone for their trouble.
(At least the woman who owns my local UPS store, who was complaining about this to me, seems to think so.)
Visit Contact Us -> Select 'Something Else' -> Select 'I need more help'
This was the only way to get the help I needed, and I cant even be mad since the refund was given to me instantly and I got to keep the Amazon renewed item without having to return it.
Amazon should be happy to credit those returns because you get a free used item, and they take the money back from the fraudulent vendor.
I've actually been surprised with how good Amazon support has been. A notable example was trying to get an answer to "why were you saying 'en route' until 10 minutes before the delivery slot and then cancelled moments later?' where I expected the brush off but actually got a real explanation (the courier had dropped the parcel and damaged it!)
Returns & refunds have been quibble free and prompt. All this via the support chat.
Interesting, I’ve typically found the opposite. I seemed more likely to get financial compensation of some kind for various order issues in the US, whereas Amazon.de seemed more likely to stick to their exact policies which often weren’t as generous.
Doesn’t that make the support way better?
Order X, get Y, get refund, order X, get Z isn’t good support it’s a huge waste of my time.
I found I was getting small compensation payments, which I did not want and had not asked for, where the agent had not understood what was going on, but was actually just pushing that small-compensation button by habit and reflex.
Any high-level support manager who thinks support can be provided by routing each email to an arbitrary support agent is utterly incompetent and should be instantly fired.
As it is, I stopped using Amazon a few years ago, because of how they treat warehouse staff.
For customer service, they seem to be oriented towards 'make the customer happy' rather than 'fix the problem'. So they end up in about the same place as most corporate customer service; the agents have no agency to get problems fixed, although at least they've historically been able to try to make the customer happy.
It is of course entirely straightforward to make customers more happy by making small payments, than it is to create actual meaningful functional customer support.
In my case this ended at the beginning of the COVID pandemic (so still during Bezos' cadence). I've ordered a frying pan and found it on my doorstep crushed, wrapped in cardboard which seemed to previously be a box. It was literally crushed as if a delivery truck went over it several times.
Contacted Amazon and these assholes told me that I'll be able to return it after the pandemic. Account closed. Their prices at this point were already higher than with other stores, so their loss, not mine.
Bezos has no moral values. No idea about the new guy but I suspect it's no better - Bezos had reasons to jump ship.
Then he built a giant phallic rocket and started to blast off and wave his dong over the entire planet. That for me was the final straw.
Maybe it’s a weird way to make a decision but it was just too much. I get that the billionaires are the movers and shakers and king and queen makers, I hold no resentment. Many of them deserve their prominent place but keep your dong out of my face. Is that too much to ask? \0/
I've used Amazon for 10 years and I'm beyond a 1000 orders with them and everything in OPs post runs counter to my experiences.
And you're right - I have absolutely no good faith nor assumption of honest intentions when it comes to Amazon. The number of your orders is however not impressive to me, as mine was similar. Not sure why you decided to bring it up.
Never had issues returning anything to Target. They just ask the customary questions ("Was there anything wrong with it?").
With Walmart the only issue I had is long lines. And if it was bought online it's pointless to return in person - the folks in the local stores aren't aware of the return policy for online purchases. But returning via mail - no problem. And getting a human on the phone was easy.
Just make sure you know exactly who your counterparty is. If the item is sold by someone else via Amazon then your first target is the seller, not Amazon. HOWEVER there may be the Amazon A-Z guarantee, which is part of their deal with you, and which you can sue them over.
I'm always amazed about how stories like this never seem to talk about "here is how you use the court system when MegaCorp stonewalls you".
Honestly, for anything expensive, I tend to use Amazon as part of the "greater source of reviews", but I order it as close to direct from the manufacturer as possible.
I found a very interesting paradox from doing a fair amount of small claims cases many years ago.
Basically if we were right (we were the company making the claim and should have been paid) the defendant lied and we lost. However if we were wrong (ie the claimant was right had a valid defense to not paying) we typically won (because they were honest and we could exploit and dance around what they were saying.
Even if they don't show up and get a judgement they can then appeal or do many things to stop the enforcement process.
Also nothing to prevent an opponent for whatever reason finding a way to file a counterclaim to which you would then need to defend against and probably pay a lawyer to handle. (Meaning not in small claims court or above your knowledge level). Related note also that LLC's and Inc. must typically be represented by an attorney in court.
Of course, the auction doesn't happen, but when the sherrif comes out, people start doing the things they need to.
Now, if there's no amazon physically in your locality, it would be harder.
For similar reason, I can never issue a charge-back to Steam - they have a policy of blocking your account and that would result in losing access to thousands of dollars linked to my profile.
Rather, journalists covering news stories about companies seem to write in one of two major modes:
1. Business journalism, i.e. "Hello investors, please use this to make decisions on which stocks to buy/sell today. And hello, competitors of this company; please take this as an object lesson."
2. Implicit "let's highlight yet another example of the lousy state of the world today" editorialization, pretending to be journalism. Where the suggested action is "get angry"; but the intended target of your anger isn't the company itself, but rather "society", in some ill-defined way.
Note that mode #2 does literally report on the company's failures, but does so while deflecting blame from the company itself; and so may actually be crafted by the company being reported on as a clever form of "spin" on what would otherwise be bad press if they left it up to the media to report.
My most recent example was box containing six Lego Minifigs before Christmas. Luckily we opened the outer box, to find all six of the Minifig bags had been opened, Minifigs removed, and random plastic put in the box (to make up the weight?), then box carefully resealed.
Amazon did replace it, but ultimately Amazon cannot know if it was us or some previous returnee who committed the return fraud against them because they don't individually track previously returned items. That's the big problem with Amazon's process, when an item is returned, before it is released back into inventory, they need to uniquely track it. If it gets returned twice they need to know (and associate blame correctly).
The probably could do it with returned items, though.
Everything I had problems with were marketplace items not sold by Amazon but some nonsense-name "company" from Hong Kong or Shenzhen.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/amazon-returns-liquidation-w...
Most likely your problem is linked to Amazon's "stickerless commingled inventory" program, where inventory from third-party merchants, including crooked ones, is mixed with Amazon's own, so even if you order "sold and shipped by Amazon" you might still get counterfeit goods or worse.
Frankly, Amazon has reached a level of untrustworthiness you really want to shop anywhere else, specially for electricals and other items that potentially pose a safety hazard. I go to B&H Photo for all my electronics.
I'm a little surprised to hear this as Amazon has only ever been a fantastic CX when it came to returns and this was by design from the early days.
That said, I can see a confluence of factors coming together - Amazon is needing to shore up costs as its share price is being hammered. This would lead to customer service being squeezed (or automated) and more stringent returns policies.
Also in the UK the cost of living crisis is def causing a measurable uptick in crime presumably at every node of the logistics pipeline, from picking & packing through to delivery and in the window between delivery and customer receiving the package.
In London package theft is a huge problem atm and wouldn't be surprised if this was a deliberate bait n switch rather than benign accident
The main point is that these companies can waste hours or even days of your time while automating everything on their end. Hence, they are incentivized to make profitable "accidents" and hope you're not stubborn.
Amazon itself, as the seller, is one of "these companies". Shipped me a damaged, obviously repackaged monitor as "new", then misdirected me to (well, semi-automated) chat as "quickest way to return". This was a flat-out lie, what it actually led to was a series of three progressively higher discount offers. After refusing all, half a day later I was told to follow the standard online instructions for a return.
I bought an AC unit on Amazon here in the US and they just send it like any other product in a box, and it’s up to you to figure the rest out.
There are several potential explanations for what’s going on here. These are the most likely (imo):
1. Customers are engaging in return fraud where they “return” an expensive item for a refund, but send back a different, cheaper item. Amazon’s warehouse personnel don’t catch it and then the cheaper item ends up in inventory as the more expensive item, which then gets shipped out to a different customer.
2. 3rd party sellers are engaging in fraud by sending in cheaper inventory and claiming it is actually more expensive items. Customers then receive the cheaper items when they order the more expensive item.
The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from and sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer.
Everyone gives Amazon a hard time, but in our experience, they are usually pretty good about doing the right thing for customers. They’re actually trying to solve a hard problem at scale (be a universal marketplace that delivers in 1-2 days). They make mistakes, but imo actually do a pretty good job.
Thanks to comingling, this is not a cure-all. Amazon will store all the e.g. canon cameras from themselves and third party shippers in a single area in their warehouse, and just deduct 1 from the inventory of the one who made the sale.
"Used by default for eligible products, manufacturer barcodes use virtual tracking to trace the source of the products throughout the fulfillment process. Identical items from different suppliers are not physically stored together in a fulfillment center. However, Virtual tracking allows Amazon to fulfill orders using identical products from different suppliers. This enables us to process a customer order more efficiently and expedite its delivery from the fulfillment center closest to the customer."
So they will use inventory from different sellers/suppliers to fulfill an order, but they can trace counterfeit/incorrect inventory back to the source if there's an issue.
> Nick: Computer monitor, got handbag
> Heather: Graphics card, got face masks
> Phil: iPhone, got cat repellent
> Alex: Earphones, got toilet cleaner
> Leo: Laptop, got Ikea lamp
I've gotten salsa rather than batteries, they simply refunded the batteries and told me to keep the salsa.
The way to avoid this is that Amazon steps up their game and verifies the high ticket items before shipping them. It simply has to fit into the profit margin of selling things with upwards of 500 dollar sticker price.
And the other way to avoid this is simply dropping the “you have signed for the package so it is your fault if we scammed you” bullshit.
> They make mistakes, but imo actually do a pretty good job.
Yeah. No. They don’t do a pretty good job handling the non-happy path. I ordered a second hand book from them. It did not arrive even two months later than it was promised. Their database and interfaces correctly reflected of this fact.
What should have happened? They should have noticed that they dropped the ball all the way to china and sent me a refund automatically with an email where they apologise about it.
What would have been also acceptable, but shitty? A big button on the order where they were saying that it is two months late which refunds me instantly. Because of course.
What happened instead? Super hard to get an agent to talk with. I’m quite handy with computers, and I had to use all my web-fu to figure out how to do it. Then after much waiting, the agent scolded me that my order is with a third party. As if I care. I ordered something from amazon’s website, amazon shows up in my bank statement, I clearly have a business relationship here with Amazon. And only after that did they refund me.
None of this is a mistake. It is intentionally designed like this in the hopes that you forgot about your order, or find it too hard to jump through hoops.
Doesn't Amazon make it easy to cancel items that have not been dispatched? I've noticed language highlighting this ability in the past.
They are operating at the extremes of scale and have to build systems that work even though there are adversarial actors at all levels (customers, sellers, employees). Literally no one has done what they are doing before. Not excusing it, but we don’t actually have a benchmark to compare to. Having better visibility into it than your typical consumer, I actually think they do a decent job. They need to be better, but I can assure you that they are constantly iterating and improving. I would encourage you to consider that this is realistically the best that any company could be at building the type of system that Amazon is building.
As a customer, I don’t care. I really don’t. All of these are excuses. Either they did right by me or not. They are not yet in the “never buy from them again” bucket, but they are in the “maximum caution potentially scammy” bucket.
These have all kind of negative consequences to them. I would never buy a high ticket item from them. I wouldn’t buy anything which goes into a person’s body or stays in prolonged contact with it. I wouldn’t buy safety critical equipment from them. And I am advising my friends about these too when the topic comes up. These are whole market segments Amazon lost in my eye. And trust is hard to build back. It is possible that two months from now they will launch a brand new way of validating things which will fix 90% of these issues, yet i will never hear about it, and die as an old man 50 years from now still not trusting them.
> I actually think they do a decent job
By the results they are not. Companies who are doing a decent job don’t get BBC articles written about them. Companies who are doing a decent job don’t get long HN comments where someone explains what arcane things you need to be aware of to safely use their services. (Just see the one in this thread a bit higher.)
> I would encourage you to consider that this is realistically the best that any company could be at building the type of system that Amazon is building.
Perhaps. But as a customer I don’t care. I just move my cursor to the address bar and go somewhere else to service my needs. I go to apple to buy my computer directly, I buy my diy tools from screwfix, I buy my precious metals from cooksongold, I buy my electronic parts from digikey, and I buy food items from the local grocery stores or order it from hello fresh.
These are all purchases I have made recently and these are all transactions where Amazon could have got my money, but they were not even considered because of their well known failings. I don’t mind, maybe they do.
Shouldn't any returned items go into the "used" stock and not be intermingled with new items?
Unless Amazon has given up the logistical economy of commingling “shipped and sold by Amazon” products with “fulfilled by Amazon”, and FBA products across sellers, this doesn't actually help.
(And, of course, choosing a reliable seller doesn’t protect you from “customer returned a different product and Amazon warehouse workers didn’t identify the problem when handling the return”, either.)
So, in regard to the suggestion of using the right seller on Amazon’s platform to avoid the bad experience of getting the wrong thing delivered, for either of the suggested sources of the problem, (1) there is no meaningful difference from commingling in what they actually do, and (2) the solution doesn’t solve anything.
Former Amazon seller here. Comingling happens, so this is not much of a guarantee. Yes, Amazon will track which seller sent the item that you got, and can penalize them, but I still have to put up with a return process.
Simply not an issue with places like Target and Walmart. Ever. If I order something new and Walmart is the seller, I will get a new, unadulterated item.
And while we're at it, I've never had a problem with eBay either. You'd expect this to be a bigger problem there.
To give them credit, they are quite responsive, when it comes to refunds (I have even had to use the Amazon guarantee, once, because the seller ghosted me).
To give them shame: When you do something quite often, you get good at it.
That understanding may be old or incorrect, but that's the story I've heard from others before.
From reading [1] it looks like they've tightened up the requirements for it, and put some mitigations in place around counterfeits.
But it's also an opt-in process, so would be nice if they made it visible when you are or aren't purchasing from a seller utilizing it so you can decide yourself on a given purchase whether to go with the cheapest option or potentially opt for a more expensive listing but knowing that a product isn't commingled and was provided by the seller you're purchasing from.
[1] https://www.sourcing-monster.com/amazon-commingled-inventory...
Now I just try to buy from the big non Amazon retailers, or other very reputable brands.
Probably the most expensive thing I ever bought from Amazon but I'm very happy with it. Despite being one of the lower "grades" of refurb, it looks brand new, has 100% battery health, and is still under Apple warranty until October. Saved hundreds of £ compared to buying new!
I have had a couple of instances in the past of "wrong product sent" (eg: ordered toothbrush heads, got a phone case?!) with Amazon but it certainly didn't happen on this occasion.
Better than my brand new laptop that came at around 90%.
I ended up on live chat with someone who did not understand what a warranty was - telling me "You have used it, so the warranty is void." 2 hours later he passed me onto someone else who immediately came across as 'not inside an Indian support centre megabuilding in Dheli'. Sorted it out in 2 minutes.
In one case, at Best Buy, I purchased a camera and at home I discovered a less expensive camera in the box than the one I paid for. Best Buy took care of it even though I brought it back around an hour after I purchased it.
My other experience was much worse. A local computer parts store sold me a tape drive and the box contained a cheaper model. They simply wouldn’t let me return or exchange it.
In general, my experience has been that the big box stores like Home Depot or Best Buy will take returns for something that doesn’t function properly without question while a small local store will sometime refuse. I’ve lived in the same city for decades and there is a ceiling fan store that I will not shop at because of an experience I had there twenty five years ago —- maybe I should drop the grudge at this point.
Am outside on mobile, so I have to be brief.
During covid, there was this mercy period for delayed deliveries, as it wasnt really amazon causing the delay, but rather the last mile service or the whole supply chain.
They used to absolutelly always refund no questions asked and depending on the service they would send return labels.
If you have worked at amazon, then you will know this can only happen due to comingling(usa issue mostly) or malicious sellers in for a quick buck.
To make money with bad products its pretty hard on amazon, they will simply refund the orders the buyers request a refund for and additionally hold the sellers fund in reserve until account health metrics are sorted out.
That, or amazon has changed their overall strategies making refunds now harder, but all their internal rules speak against that.
Their first level support is so so, their second level and seller support is sonething of the best in the world.
Keep in mind, the final buyer is not their customer, the seller is. But brand pr comes before sellers, make no mistake.
So people complained to the BBC instead of involving lawyers or reporting Amazon's fraud to the police?
I get it that media coverage can help but refusal to replace fraudulent deliveries calls for law-related actions, not asking if Amazon can graciously inspect things on their end. WTF.
Lawyers aren’t free and police aren’t going to do anything (the right government consumer protection authorities might, but the timeline is likely to be longer than if you happen to attract useful media attention.)
A tip to HN readers: With the Internet, a nearly free, global, wide-area network, you can connect to any business in the world and buy there.
Seriously, you may be accustomed to using Amazon and so it's immediately easier. But imagine Amazon went out of business. You will quickly become accustomed to other retailers and forget all about Amazon.
"We are sorry that these customer experiences did not meet the high standards we expect."
I somehow read this as - the customer is guilty ;)
It was sorted relatively quickly. I do wonder what happened along the chain and whether it was investigatwd.
Instead, I received a full length mirror weighing about 60+lb, normally sold for about $200. It was clearly in the correct box, but had the wrong shipping label on it. Seems unlikely to be caused by theft.
Unfortunately it was a huge hassle to deal with -- I didn't want the item, didn't have the strength to be able to easily move it around myself, and Amazon's return policy simply didn't acknowledge the possibility that I was sent the wrong package!
I ended up simply leaving it by the trash.
It’s sad what became to this company. Myriad of cheap Chinese knockoffs, counterfeit items even when sold by “Amazon”, delivery times in weeks now, and always the possibility of getting scammed if you are not careful enough, aka “third party sellers”