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I think the other thing that's missing from this is that Amazon's customer service is really very good. I'll spend the extra dollars buying something from Amazon than, say, one of their third-party merchants, because I know Amazon will take care of me if anything bad happens.

Yeah you can return stuff...right until they decide you're an unprofitable customer and drop you like a hot brick.

Does this happen frequently? I haven't heard about Amazon doing this before.

See reply to CleverJake. They closed a stack of accounts a few years ago, whether they're still doing so I don't know, but the same logic applies...

[citation needed]

I have never heard of this happening ever with amazon, though I would love to know where your experience with this is coming from.

The magic phrase to search for is "extraordinary number of incidents with your orders and corresponding shipments" which is from their standard form email when they cancel your account.

My guess would be that Amazon's business model is very sensitive to the return rate, since returns are very expensive for them: their whole system is built around getting product out the door to the customer not the other way round!

One or two expensive returns from a customer could wipe out all the profit they'll ever make from that individual. If they believe they can identify those customers who are likely to cost them money, it's in Amazon's interest to cut off service to those customers as early as possible.

Perfectly rational behaviour, but I imagine highly frustrating for those customers who naturally feel that they've been somehow accused of wrongdoing when Amazon decides it doesn't want to do business with them any more.

This behavior is not limited to Amazon. Big-box retailers and department stores also ban people who abuse the return policy. And, as an honest shopper who likes being able to return things from time to time, I'm glad for it.

I think the troubling issue for some is that they can return things for perfectly good reasons, the items in question were in fact faulty, or mis-described on the website or whatever, but Amazon canceled their accounts regardless.

Of course it's possible that those who go online to complain about this are in fact abusing the system, but from Amazon's POV it makes perfect sense: they don't want picky customers who will return borderline goods because it will eat into their margins. It's much more profitable to sell to those who won't notice the dead pixels on their laptop display (or whatever the problem happens to be).

I've returned plenty of things and I have never had this happen. I have however had them tell me to keep the item when the return shipping was going to cost them more than the item itself is worth. Which to me is good customer service and smart business thinking.

Completely true. I bought shoes on Amazon, after 3 months they started to fall apart. I went on service chat and they refunded my full cost immediately and didn't even ask for me to return the old shoes.

this is a nightmare for merchants though, speaking from experience.

Nightmare re: cost/inventory or both?

I can kind of see how this works for merchants selling through Amazon. AMZN provides the customer with a good experience, makes customer feel valued, customer is more inclined to buy more products despite a bad moment knowing they'll be taken care of.

Probably not how it pans out in practice, however.

the problem is, the customer is not always right. but your money and product is gone regardless...unless you're willing to jump through a ton of dispute hoops most of which take a long time and end up in favor of the customer on some obscure seller agreement clause.

paypal does business this way as well.

As a customer, that's how I want it to be. One of main reasons I consistently order from Amazon (and buy Prime) is the bad experiences I've had when trying to get customer service / return / exchanges on other sites. Saving $5 or $10 isn't worth it if I have to waste an hour dealing with issues like getting the wrong item shipped to me, or trying to return something.

It's hard to argue with the logic behind a customer-centric policy here. Merchants are going to go where the customers are and they can spread the cost of dispute resolution, etc over far more transactions than an individual. Makes sense to inflict the "pain" on their side.

In all fairness, if a few unfairly returned shoes are already almost figuratively putting you in the red, then you just might be in the wrong business or doing it wrong because online retail has clearly become this pond of a few HUGE fish who can easily afford to not care at all about returns - and customers love that and will keep coming back.

As a small time seller I can fully attest to this. I hate selling on Amazon just about as much as I love buying on Amazon.

Then why sell?

Largely because there is no upfront marketing cost. Also while it has been inconvenient and frustrating at times I must admit that it is profitable.

The only reason merchants get any business on Amazon is that customers are at least partly protected by Amazon's support infrastructure.

I'm sympathetic regarding some of the more egregious stupidities Amazon has foisted on some merchants, but when it comes to this part, it's pretty unambiguously what you signed up for.

Consider it from the other end: If you were selling autonomously on your own site, would you treat customers this well? What does your answer say about you? What impact do you think your answer will have on potential customers' choices?

Yet another thing missing (which is huge for me personally) is predictability of shipping.

If I buy something on Amazon via Prime (which means Amazon themselves will be fulfilling it), I know that if I order it 2 day shipping it will arrive in 2 days. If I bump it up to next day shipping (within the clearly marked and real-time updated window of shipping) it will arrive tomorrow.

Amazon and Newegg are the only two web retailers that I trust to predictably get my items on a set time-table. It is all too common for other online sites to gladly accept orders for next day shipping or two day shipping at ridiculous markup and then actually use those shipping methods but only after sitting on the order for days before actually shipping it out... not exactly what I had in mind, guys.

Sadly, this isn't true of international shipping. Depending on where you are in Australia it's entirely hit-and-miss.

Agreed completely. I don't think a lone up-vote fully conveys how big of a deal this is to me. I've had horrible experiences with other sites not being able to give me a delivery date, or even worse, giving me one and not making it. I called pcrush.com a while back to confirm that ordering with 2-day shipping would get the item to me by that Friday. When it hadn't arrived by Saturday, I called back and learned that they had just shipped it that morning!

I don't think Amazon has ever been late in the two years I've had prime.

As much as I like moo cards I find their shipping options frustrating. You can order 2nd day shipping or even overnight shipping. But you can't jump ahead in the print queue, which can take as long as a week, making most of the shipping options completely meaningless.

No. That's true for the backed by Amazon stuff. The bulk is small shops to whom Amazon is just another layer between your credit card and them. For those cases they do nothing.

Also, amazon offers you free return-shipping and no worries. Typically the 3rd party merchants here in Euroland are literally only a few bucks cheaper on a 3-digit purchase but they take (much) longer to ship, you have to pay for return-shipping and often you need to pay for shipping and handling as well. On top of that, they often go with the absolutely cheapest possible shipping option to squeeze out a few more bucks and that often fails delivering to a DHL Packstation (a popular fully automated self-service post box here), which is a major annoyance. I specifically order to my Packstation so I do _NOT_ have to deal with the horror and pathetic sight that is a German post office in the evening.

On top of that I am starting to really, really hate the amazon market place because their product offerings are horribly unorganized, they list in lots of wrong but popular categories and they put something up as a different product despite the same product already being there at least twice.

Also I absolutely love ordering online and getting stuff in the mail so I decided to pay the I-dont-know 20 bucks a year for the Amazon Prime subscription and get free next-day(!) delivery on each and every order. Why would I give that up and pay for the slower and worse alternative?

I'm personally fine with NOT buying at a cheaper merchant somewhere else because I know:

- Amazon ships fast

- Sending things back to Amazon is free and fully automated

- If something breaks in a year, Amazon will usually replace it without a big hassle

- I don't have to get another account at another merchant that will save my password and credit card data in plaintext

- Amazon packaging is great

- ...

There is more to a purchase than just the product itself

- amazon has a relatively painless website, unlike a lot of other webshops

>especially coupled with the free 2nd day shipping

There's an added bonus if you live near a distribution center, in which 2nd day often turns into next day. In a handful of cases, I've had next day turn into same day -- ordering something before I go to work, and finding it was delivered in the middle of the afternoon by a specialty shipper like LaserShip.

It's especially magical if you're shipping to Manhattan as they offer same-day delivery. It's such a delight to click "Buy!" in the morning and have it by mid-afternoon.

Guess I'm near a distribution center then as I generally find that free super saver shipping, which is supposed to take 5-8 days, ends up being two day. Definitely hinders my urge to go Prime.

In addition to the free shipping on 2 day delivery or the $4 next day delivery we purchase a lot from amazon on our chase/amazon credit card due to the 3% cash back on purchases from amazon. We pay the card off every month and then by the time Christmas rolls around we have tons of points to redeem. We also typically buy gas (2% back) and a few other large recurring monthly expenses on the card for the 1% cash back. I wouldn't use it for anything that I wasn't paying off immediately though as the interest rate sucks. The combination of prime and the card have significantly increased the amount we spend with Amazon.

The extra 2% back (assuming 1% from another card) is nice. While I do this as well, it does not end up making an impact on most stuff when I run the numbers. Combined with the shipping & customer service convenience though... :)

The 2% gas (& food?) / 1% everything is the same as any other (good) card.

Also yes, pay it off immediately. Not paying off any credit card immediately is insane, because the interest rates on basically all credit cards is abysmal. There are a lot of credit cards that will have 0% intro periods, but then the standard 10~15% rate after that. I've never seen one with an actual low interest rate (and if you think about it, why in hell would anyone offer such a card?) - correct me if I'm wrong though.

Treat it like a debit card, but enjoy the benefits of building a credit score.

Amazons credit card through chase is 3% on purchases at amazon.com, 2% for gas at most locations and 1% on everything else. Where the cash back works out is on things you have to spend money on anyway and can't get cheaper, gas being a good example of that. Our gas expenditures for last year resulting in about $100 in points on $3600 in gas. Using my debit card would have simply resulted in $3600 in debits.

Regarding clothing: I've heard the idea that we'll all scan our bodies, upload that data, and an online site will be able to show us what will fit us.

People may find that too creepy, but Amazon could do something else: gather lots of feedback about what fits customers and what doesn't. You get 3 pairs of pants, rate them "too big" and "too small" and "just right". Eventually that could correlate that if you and Customer X both fit these pants recently, the shorts he bought last week will probably fit you too.

(This would be more complicated for women, of course.)

I think Zappos already does something similar with shoe sizes.

Never having to go to Best Buy again is worth the Prime membership alone.

I agree with you. Buy.com is often cheaper, but the items don't even ship the same day. Why wait around when I can pay $10 extra on a $200 item and get it same day?

Ultimately, Amazon is doing what I think all companies should: compete on value instead of on price.

There's also the money you save but not stepping foot in a store. That is, you don't throw extra items in your cart out of temptation.

Are you sure about that? Amazon spends a lot of money (and screen space) trying to recommend items for you to buy. I have to imagine that they do that because it works.

As as Amazon user, it does work.

But screen real-estate is quite a bit cheaper than the physical counterpart.

Exactly! Less "expensive" in what way? sure the purchase price might be lower but what about the "pain in the butt" price? If you have to load a baby into the car drive 5mi (gas) get the thing you need and drive back 5mi (gas) and the whole thing takes two hours of your night when you could have been working and getting paid $XXX.

Nope Amazon is cheaper 99% of the time once you factor in the "pain in the butt" price.

Yes, exactly. We've gone from buying stuff at WalMart or BestBuy or whatever (with the associated marginal costs of gas, taxes, etc) to basically getting just about everything from Amazon. Small electronics, appliances, office supplies, etc. For anything over $50 or so I do compare prices with other online places, but more often than not Prime usually wins out simply based on the free shipping. For niche-ish things for example Monoprice will usually beat Amazon, but for most smaller purchases that are not immediately required, Prime has paid for itself many times over, especially considering my consumption of their member videos over my Roku.

I use monoprice as well for cables, etc. Well under half the cost of Amazon makes it worthwhile.

I've really loved Amazon's "Amazon Basics" brand. Lots of cables available at very reasonable prices, simple, frustration-free packaging, and always Prime eligible.

I generally wish I could go to the site and not even see non-Amazon warehoused items- effectively always keeping the "prime only" box checked. I like buying from Amazon, not the marketplace. It's also confusing for the non-savvy user.

There probably is an option somewhere for that. It's just that the Amazon site is so awfully designed and ugly...

(For years I would read how Amazon pioneered A/B testing and measured statistics on every pixel of its site and tweaked out the wazoo, and I would wonder how this was possible given that the site was a chaotic mess that actively impeded me when shopping there - could my sense of what is effective and attractive be that out of whack? And then I read in Yegge's famous Google+ post that this was not true, but the cluttered chaos was kept at the specific request of the CEO, Jeff Bezos. And I went, 'oh of course; that explains everything.')

Ugly sites can convert better: http://scobleizer.com/2006/03/04/the-role-of-anti-marketing-...

See also: Any direct marketing long form sales letter.

I'm not very sure about that. Amazon's site may not be beautifully designed but it works. As they advertise, it has never taken me more than a click to buy an item unless I want to change something. Also, it has one of the better product search engines amongst all retailers. Their reviews are generally considered genuine and useful and they're clearly laid out. I'm generally happy with their website design.

Yes, it works, but could it be better?

Notice that you can have great reviews or product search engines despite a busy chaotic layout - the search engine source code doesn't give a toss what the pages look like as long as it has the data it needs, and the reviews come in if you have enough customers and don't make too hard on them to submit.

I mostly buy books from Amazon, and since they're usually the cheapest option anyway, typically don't comparison shop for them. However, I do buy used books when they're significantly cheaper, or Kindle books when they're the cheapest (except in cases where I feel Kindle provides significantly less value, such as programming books.)

Compared to the stacks of full-price books I was getting from Borders a decade ago, I'm doing a lot better.

But don't you need to leave the house to return the items? I've always regarded dropping off and mailing packages to be a huge chore.

That's true. I rarely have to return things to Amazon, so it doesn't come up much.

However, I buy so much from the (I'm a Prime member) the I almost always have a small box around. I just put the item in it, print out the pre-paid shipping label, and drop the box in a UPS box or at a UPS store. It's not that bad.

I buy more than I return so the "pain in the butt" cost is still lower. Plus Amazon makes it really, really easy to return stuff, you just print the label and drop it off.

Good point. Returns usually are exception conditions, so one need only factor in a fraction of the "cost" of a return when making most purchases. However, when I order two sizes of the same shirt, I obviously will be returning one of them.

You don't need to leave the house. When you return something Amazon gives you the option to drop off or have UPS pickup the package the next day.

As far as I know, they'll only do that for really expensive items. I've never been given the pickup option for my returns (the most expensive was worth a bit under $300).

I've seen it for a variety of items, but I'm in downtown Manhattan- I suspect the economies of scale make a difference here.

The local delivery is a killer.

I can order by 9AM and, for just $3.99, have it delivered that same day.

The first time I did this, I forgot I even had Prime, so I was ready to pay for that for 3-5 day shipping. What a pleasant surprise that was!

From my wife's perspective, that's an added bonus -- the UPS store is right beside Starbucks :) In all seriousness, the post office, UPS store, FedEx Office (formerly Kinkos), etc. are all located in places we pass by during other common excursions (grocery store, etc.), so the marginal cost is low.

You make a good argument for states figuring out how to strictly enforce the sales tax on Amazon purchases. As Amazon cannibalizes local retail (similar to what Walmart has done but without even the crappy jobs) the tax base will erode further.