6 ms·

It seems like the Amazon reps weren't paying attention to the detail, or the seller was also supplying fraudulent evidence of delivery. This blog post will lik

by davidu 9y ago

It seems like the Amazon reps weren't paying attention to the detail, or the seller was also supplying fraudulent evidence of delivery. This blog post will likely get it resolved for the buyer, though it shouldn't have to be this way.

mikeash 9y ago
Wouldn't surprise me. Superficial reading is an ongoing danger of text-based support. The other day, my wife used Amazon's chat support to ask a question about what would happen if she canceled her free Prime trial. The rep said: give me two minutes to look into this. And then came back with: I've canceled your Prime as you requested, thanks, gtfo. She managed to unwind this after a great deal of effort, but man.
- derekp7 9y ago
  Reminds me of when I called my cell phone carrier, to have an unused line dropped from my account. Had to give them my phone number, and the number for the line to remove. "Ok, hold on one second..." [click]. Phone didn't work any more -- they removed the wrong line. Had to go to a land line, and hang on hold for 30 minutes to get someone to start restoring my account (and to make sure I didn't lose my grandfathered data plan).
  - matwood 9y ago
    > Phone didn't work any more -- they removed the wrong line. Had to go to a land line, and hang on hold for 30 minutes to get someone to start restoring my account Haha. I have a similar story where I needed help from Comcast. I was on the my cell with them and they wanted to verify it was me, and hung up to call my home number. Well, I only have a home line for a fax machine and do not have a normal phone in the house. I heard the fax ring a few times so I called back. It took over a 1/2 hour to convince them to use a different authentication method. They kept insisting to call my home phone. Sigh.
  - tehwebguy 9y ago
    Exact same thing happened to me. They couldn't fix it until Monday though (it was Friday and was porting a number).
ajross 9y ago
I'm more sympathetic to Amazon here than most. Scams are hard to detect. They set up a shipping confirmation process that's worked fine for them for almost two decades now. It has a hole (it only checks the town and has no closed loop to verify that the shipper shipped to the right address in that town), but none of the existing employees actually know that it has a hole. They get a report about a missing shipment, check their process, and it says it was received. Case closed. This is like trying to report a web site vulnerability to a help desk employee. It doesn't work. You have to escalate until you find someone who understands the root issue, and escalation is messy (and involves blog posts like these).
- codegeek 9y ago
  I dont get why you are being sympathetic towards Amazon. They delivered the package to a WRONG address and then closed the case just because it was delivered to the SAME town ? Don't you see an issue with Amazon's system here ? This is just incompetence and nothing else. I love amazon but this particular case is just incompetence on Amazon's part after the fraud happened.
- rhizome 9y ago
  It has a hole (it only checks the town and has no closed loop to verify that the shipper shipped to the right address in that town), but none of the existing employees actually know that it has a hole. This is an entirely predictable outcome, especially for the brains at Amazon. This was implemented according to specifications and designs that involved several people, meaning that it was a conscious and deliberate decision to only check the city, which is obviously imprecise. This imprecision does not even require computers to recognize it.
  - ajross 9y ago
    > This is an entirely predictable outcome Said someone about every security bug ever. This is the shipping fraud equivalent of "this never would have happened if you used rust". It's not helpful.
    - 9y ago
Sleeep 9y ago
So, in my experience (FWIW) every Amazon customer service rep I've ever dealt with has extremely poor grasp of the English language and don't know how to veer off script (so to speak). If you say "the shipping weight does not make sense," they ignore that because their script/training only says "check the tracking number." It's like talking to a poorly programmed bot.

by davidu 9y ago

mikeash 9y ago

Wouldn't surprise me. Superficial reading is an ongoing danger of text-based support. The other day, my wife used Amazon's chat support to ask a question about what would happen if she canceled her free Prime trial. The rep said: give me two minutes to look into this. And then came back with: I've canceled your Prime as you requested, thanks, gtfo. She managed to unwind this after a great deal of effort, but man.

derekp7 9y ago
Reminds me of when I called my cell phone carrier, to have an unused line dropped from my account. Had to give them my phone number, and the number for the line to remove. "Ok, hold on one second..." [click]. Phone didn't work any more -- they removed the wrong line. Had to go to a land line, and hang on hold for 30 minutes to get someone to start restoring my account (and to make sure I didn't lose my grandfathered data plan).
- matwood 9y ago
  > Phone didn't work any more -- they removed the wrong line. Had to go to a land line, and hang on hold for 30 minutes to get someone to start restoring my account Haha. I have a similar story where I needed help from Comcast. I was on the my cell with them and they wanted to verify it was me, and hung up to call my home number. Well, I only have a home line for a fax machine and do not have a normal phone in the house. I heard the fax ring a few times so I called back. It took over a 1/2 hour to convince them to use a different authentication method. They kept insisting to call my home phone. Sigh.
- tehwebguy 9y ago
  Exact same thing happened to me. They couldn't fix it until Monday though (it was Friday and was porting a number).

ajross 9y ago

I'm more sympathetic to Amazon here than most. Scams are hard to detect. They set up a shipping confirmation process that's worked fine for them for almost two decades now. It has a hole (it only checks the town and has no closed loop to verify that the shipper shipped to the right address in that town), but none of the existing employees actually know that it has a hole. They get a report about a missing shipment, check their process, and it says it was received. Case closed. This is like trying to report a web site vulnerability to a help desk employee. It doesn't work. You have to escalate until you find someone who understands the root issue, and escalation is messy (and involves blog posts like these).

codegeek 9y ago
I dont get why you are being sympathetic towards Amazon. They delivered the package to a WRONG address and then closed the case just because it was delivered to the SAME town ? Don't you see an issue with Amazon's system here ? This is just incompetence and nothing else. I love amazon but this particular case is just incompetence on Amazon's part after the fraud happened.
rhizome 9y ago
It has a hole (it only checks the town and has no closed loop to verify that the shipper shipped to the right address in that town), but none of the existing employees actually know that it has a hole. This is an entirely predictable outcome, especially for the brains at Amazon. This was implemented according to specifications and designs that involved several people, meaning that it was a conscious and deliberate decision to only check the city, which is obviously imprecise. This imprecision does not even require computers to recognize it.
- ajross 9y ago
  > This is an entirely predictable outcome Said someone about every security bug ever. This is the shipping fraud equivalent of "this never would have happened if you used rust". It's not helpful.
  - 9y ago

Sleeep 9y ago

So, in my experience (FWIW) every Amazon customer service rep I've ever dealt with has extremely poor grasp of the English language and don't know how to veer off script (so to speak). If you say "the shipping weight does not make sense," they ignore that because their script/training only says "check the tracking number." It's like talking to a poorly programmed bot.