Hacker News Reader

Comment by salvadors | Hacker News Reader

> Unfortunately, the cost of fraud, waste and loss is passed on to honest consumers in the form of overall higher prices.

In Amazon's case it's also possible to argue that the cost of fraud, waste and loss is passed on to honest consumers in the form of overall lower prices.

Customer service policies like this are a significant part of what allowed Amazon to grow to be the company it is today, and Amazon has used that power (some would say abused it), to drive prices lower than they would otherwise have been on many items.

> Especially when that convenience means having an item re-shipped to a different address that I never used before,

I'm personally very glad that they allow this, having had to had a broken Kindle replaced whilst on holiday in a different country.

View on HN

>having had to had a broken Kindle replaced whilst on holiday //

What would the negative repercussions of Amazon only shipping to the original verified shipping address have been - waiting a week to get your free replacement kindle?

I'd say it's ridiculous to re-ship to a different address based on an unverified claim of non-delivery; especially for high-cost items.

No; waiting 9 weeks to get it.

And as I read much more when I'm on holiday, and one of the reasons I bought a Kindle in the first place was so I didn't have to carry dozens of books on such a trip, I'm very glad that they were willing to ship it to not only a different address, but a different country.

> I'd say it's ridiculous to re-ship to a different address based on an unverified claim of non-delivery; especially for high-cost items.

It is. But Amazon is a ridiculous company that doesn't follow the rules of common sense. Amazon would rather lose a little (in the scheme of things) to fraud and continually amaze its customers than to stick it to thieves and Amazon customers. The customer is king.

It's especially genius with the Kindle because even if it's sent to a thief they will probably make money on it from the Amazon purchases of whoever ends up with it.

It certainly sounds ridiculous on the face of it, but without knowing the level of this fraud it's difficult to actually judge.

If these are two of a tiny handful of instances where this has ever happened, and there's many thousands of people who have had replacements shipped to alternate addresses (e.g. work, or a holiday location) then the cost of implementing additional checks for this - even if that's just the man-hour cost of asking additional questions - could be far more than the size of the loss.

And that's ignoring any less tangible customer experience angles - there's several people in this thread alone who have said they are more likely to buy from Amazon again as a result of this kind of customer service. I had to chase a missing order up last week, and the simplicity of the interaction was amazing compared to the hours (or even days) of battling I've had with some other internet businesses when things have gone wrong, and that definitely has at least some impact on my future decisions to use the respective companies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com