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Comment by PaulKeeble | Hacker News Reader

I found Amazon historically has been very good about refunds and replacements, better than almost anywhere else. However nowadays its getting harder and their chat service has been replaced with automation as has the phone service and while they exist you have to search quite hard to find them. The automation unfortunately isn't dealing well with this sort of problem.

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.

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I found when you actually talk to Support, to try and get something done or to actually fix a problem, it's the usual level of large company support; what you say is ignored, the questions you ask are ignored, the boilerplate replies do not in fact relate to the actual situation, you get a different person every time, and no one ever reads the prior conversation, so it's impossible to build up any understanding and every support agent makes the same mistakes and misunderstandings, again and again and again.

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.

As with many things Amazon, it seems like they're very good at optimizing, but they don't optimize for what I would want to be optimized.

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.

Exactly.

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.

They also used to send a UPS pickup for free, but lately I've been having to take the return to the local UPS store. It definitely pushes me past the convenience threshold for impulse purchases where I'd rather not take the risk of having to unbox, find out something is broken or incorrect or a scam, repackage it, drive to the store, then purchase the product again elsewhere. Might as well just find the product literally anywhere else if possible.

We definitely have to take the packages to our local DHL pickup location, but at least Amazon.de pays for the shipping. Seagate would've wanted me to send a broken hard drive with valid warranty to the Netherlands on my own dime.

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.

I find myself in the local UPS store from time to time and the amount of work the people have to do in there in order to deal with amazon returns is off the charts. One interesting tidbit I can convey is that when a person goes into a UPS store to return an amazon package, the UPS store is not compensated in any way (according to the owner of my local one). The UPS store employees are the customer service for the return part of the amazon customer lifecycle.

If you are lucky enough to live near a kohls it’s still easy as hell. You literally just take the unwrapped item, walk in there, scan the QR code on your phone, and done. 10 second transaction.

This seems to be the case for UPS store returns as well. It was faster than any Kohl’s return due to the size of the store (and not positioning it near the back like multiple Kohl’s locations I’ve visited). I assume the GP comment was describing the work done by the UPS store employees behind the scenes to package and ship returns?

Just the work that the UPS store employees have to undertake to answer the phone, say hello, field a question from a "customer" (who will never pay anything) and answer "yes you can just bring it down to my store and put it in the box and it will magically get back to UPS" is absolutely mind-boggling to me, considering that it happens absolutely gratis and amazon is an enormous company. These UPS shops are, as far as I can tell (through knowledge gained from conversations with the owner of my local one) individually owned.

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 was not saying it is challenging to make an amazon return. It is not.

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.)

I just had an issue where I needed a human to talk to this weekend after purchasing a New Condition item and receiving a Renewed item. I spent 10 minutes trying to find it on my own, eventually just having to use Google to find the magic spell to talk to a human.

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.

Are there not automated prompts to "I received a different item from what I ordered"?

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.

Isn't the issue here that the vendor is not committing the fraud?

You also have to take into account the case of a fraudulent reporter.

I believe there was an option like that, but it required me to send back the item I received and they would ship me a new one.

I think the support in the EU may be better than the US, unless things have changed very recently. Perhaps because our consumer protection laws are stronger and have sharper teeth!

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.

> I think the support in the EU may be better than the US, unless things have changed very recently. Perhaps because our consumer protection laws are stronger and have sharper teeth!

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.

> Not having an easy fall back to a human is also the error which a lot of silicon valley companies seem to fall into

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.

It's cheaper but ineffective. The trick is to use automation as much as possible and not a drop more. Excellent customer service agents are actually helpful for this. The agents you have aren't mindless drones, they're people and they don't want to do yet another stupid call where they explain that button X does thing Y, even though it's labelled X, they can gladly explain what needs improving because they're interacting with your customers all day - and then you can fix it. Cherish these people.

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.

You pay your bank a lot more than you pay Amazon, on a margin basis.

Current accounts in the UK are pretty much always loss leaders to lure people into the bank’s other products such as credit cards or mortgages. The margin on the CA alone is most likely negative.

First Direct is a bit of a niche though.Customer service is expensive because 90% of it is dealing with the same stupid questions over and over again. You will get to the point in any business where it isn't feasible to pay human beings to cope with this.

The point is to find a way to have the 90% questions answered by a machine, and the 10% by an expert human. And LLMs are (another step towards) making it hard to argue that this isn't feasible or isn't a good experience.

> Companies that paid humans to do customer service have been crushed by the scale of the new companies.

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...

They were crushed because a lot of them didn't do the "minimum"

> 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.

the other way to see this is that the "new companies" are doing loss leading, do not actually make a profit on their retail businesses, are trying to gain an illegal monopoly by putting competitors out of business by doing illegal business practices and dumping not just products and services but dumping entire industries on the market for below cost.

> I found Amazon historically has been very good about refunds and replacements, better than almost anywhere else.

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.

Our moral values don’t align , Bezos and I, that was okay. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me on everything. I kept using Amazon.

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/

"these assholes", with statements like that I'm discouraged to take the post in good faith.

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.

> "these assholes", with statements like that I'm discouraged to take the post in good faith.

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.

I may be wrong, but it seemed to me Amazon's customer support, historically, has been as bad as anywhere else, but, there was a high-level decision to offer refunds / small compensation payments by default.

> there was a high-level decision to offer refunds / small compensation payments by default.

Doesn’t that make the support way better?

No, if anything it results in worse support as things stay broken for much longer.

Order X, get Y, get refund, order X, get Z isn’t good support it’s a huge waste of my time.

Fool me once...

Yep, there’s a reason I’ve stopped shopping at Amazon it’s simply more time consuming than going to the store in the first place.

I keep hearing from people that they like Amazon due to the ease of refunds, but it's not been my experience. The last time I wanted to return an item as it was clearly used, but the automated system rejected my claim because I personally had used it (I really needed it the day it arrived, so I didn't have a choice - and I didn't want merely a refund, but a replacement, so this isn't like I got full use and didn't want to pay).

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.

What you’re describing is the first step of enshittification ( https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys )

Is it a problem they’re falling into or is it the same awful behavior most american companies are exhibiting—greed. Profits over prosperity. Disgusting.

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