13 ms·

Amazon Charges Couple More Than $1,000 to Ship Paper Plates

83 points by jscheel 8y ago

la6470 8y ago
Is there like an anti amazon lobby in HN that keeps on posting this kind of crap?
lotyrin 8y ago
Amazon really needs to clean house when it comes to these third party sellers and third party listings, it's a mess. I'm glad this one in this case was supposedly dismissed (though I doubt they haven't reapplied with a new name... or even just held multiple seller accounts to begin with.
helianer 8y ago
I’m pretty surprised by Amazon’s reaction to them. This is clearly a rip-off transaction, and Amazon has always been pretty customer friendly with me.
- giarc 8y ago
  I would take that claim with a grain of salt. The person already claims that she didn't agree to $1000 shipping, but I think it's safe to say that there wasn't a glitch with Amazon's payment processing, she just didn't see it.
  - bsimpson 8y ago
    There's probably some threshold (either a fixed amount or in conjunction with the purchase price) where shipping is obviously a scam or mistake. For most transactions, I expect a severe warning if your freight is more than $100 would be appropriate.
    - helianer 8y ago
      I agree. Amazon also absolutely wants to encourage behaviour where you don’t even think before buying, so scammy listings like this are hurt their strategy. The fact that they later delisted the seller shows that they recognised the abuse.
  - ikeboy 8y ago
    It is not safe to say that. I've been tracking this glitch for months and I estimate millions of dollars in fraudulent shipping charges have been added by sellers exploiting this glitch. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't test ordered and seen the charges with my own eyes. Edit: go to https://www.amazon.com/Scalpmaster-Shampoo-Brush-Purple-Count/dp/B000NJG82W/?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/Scalpmaster-Shampoo-Brush-Purple-Coun.... Place a 1-click order. Verify for yourself.
    - EpiphanyMachine 8y ago
      I can confirm this. It is an item for $0.01 with free shipping. Once you add it to your cart and go to checkout it adds $10 in shipping fees. I got a generic response from support about sellers setting their own prices. I do not know if the "concern team" will actually look into this or get back to me but my question is being sent to them. I will no longer be using 1-click ordering until I know this issue is resolved. This seems at best a very bad bug / loophole for sellers to exploit or at worst a deceptive scam to steal from people. I hope Amazon takes this seriously and fixes it.
      - Buge 8y ago
        Also doing a 1 click purchase purchases it for $0.01 + $9.80 shipping, but the $9.80 shipping never shows up on the product page, during the purchase, or on the purchase completed page. You only see the $9.81 if you navigate to your purchase history and see it there.
        HEHENE 8y ago
        I experienced the same thing. Here is my chat transcript: --- Me: I placed a 1Click order and was charged more than the advertised price. Prashant: Hi, I’m Prashant, I’ll be glad to help you from here Prashant: May I've the last four digits of the order ID? Me: 5844 For the Scalpmaster Shampoo Brush Prashant: I see the item is being sold and shipped by a third party seller HEHENE who is charging Me: The listing said “$0.01 & FREE Shipping” but I was charged $9.81 Prashant: $9.80 as shipping and handling. Me: But the listing says “FREE Shipping” specifically Prashant: Let me quickly check this for you. Prashant: In this case, what best we can do is to refund the shipping and charges once the item is delivered. Me: Ok, because I feel like this is false advertising. I clicked the “buy with one click” button expecting to be charged exactly what was shown (“$0.01 & FREE Shipping) but I was not. Me: So you’re saying I should file a complaint once it shows up? Prashant: I certainly understand your concern. Prashant: You just need to contact us here and we will refund the shipping charges. Me: Haven’t I just contacted you? Prashant: We can refund the amount once the item is delivered.
  - fnordsensei 8y ago
    If a customer doesn't intentionally accept $1000 shipping charges, a properly run business would recognize this as a problem with their service design when they do end up with $1000 shipping charges. The alternative is to have a slowly growing public understanding that dealing with them is equivalent to gambling. If they're happy with that, then OK.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Johnny555 8y ago
I've seen some pretty insane expedited shipping fees - like $150 to get 2-3 day expedited shipping on an iPad vs free 5 - 6 day shipping, I always wondered if anyone actually paid those fees. I guess some people don't pay attention to the charge. I've never seen multiple hundreds of dollars or more -- Amazon really should have some reasonable cap. I'd be surprised if Amazon didn't show the exorbitant shipping fee to the person in this article, she probably wasn't paying attention and just clicked through assuming that it was going to be the usual Prime $5.99 next day shipping upcharge or similar.
13of40 8y ago
Unlike eBay they don't have a highest cost+shipping option, but I just went there and the highest priced paper plates from a third party are about $8000 for 96 plates with about $2 shipping.
40acres 8y ago
Sounds like a UI/UX problem to me.. I have prime & don't really do third party shipping and I've had no problems of this sort.
hughes 8y ago
> The Galloways now suggest you take a screen shot so you can prove later that you did not agree to any additional charges. Does Amazon actually take action based on an easily manipulated screenshot?
- rnotaro 8y ago
  They know that they are right.
  - giarc 8y ago
    Who is right? The couple or Amazon?
- microtherion 8y ago
  Why would they need a screen shot? The order confirmation e-mail would show the shipping charges as well. I very much doubt that the vendor was able to slip these charges by invisibly. Seems more likely the customer simply did not read the order screen before hitting OK.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
manigandham 8y ago
Side note: what a horrible standard of news quality here. This should be about 3 sentences, not hundreds of words and a TV interview. This is why most local news is ridiculous.
- vecinu 8y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. "People these days shop online, not because it's convenient but because you can get a deal!" "Person A does a ton of shopping online, you'll never believe what happened to them!"
  - ovao 8y ago
    You'll be amazed at this one simple trick of already knowing what they're about to say because the headline's already told you!
- jsmthrowaway 8y ago
  The article is a slightly edited transcript of what aired in the TV package and appeared in the teleprompter, which is the only strategy most local newsrooms can afford to do. Write once, publish twice. It’s not print journalism, it’s copy intended to hook television viewing interest, and that style does work. If local news quality bothers you, be more bothered that the person who did the translation almost certainly pulls minimum wage, while the slightly more notable person reading the same thing negotiated a significant contract. I used to write these for $9.50/hour in 2005, for a producer pulling about $13, while the anchor reading them and doing approximately nothing else was arguing over $5 million in their renewal. And the gutting of local hadn’t even started yet. Now most shops can’t even afford photographers and have their reporters shoot their own stories, probably close to minimum wage themselves if they’re fresh from J school. You think you’re going to get Peter Baker quality reporting in that scenario? You think that newsroom is empowered to develop source relationships and produce reporting that effects social change? They’re covering a shipping overcharge in an investigative feature, for crying out loud. The stylistic technique is far from why local news is ridiculous, and that’s a very shallow assessment. There’s a clear path to fixing local news but the market won’t permit it, on account of it being a market, not to mention the whole battalion of news directors terrified of change and wondering why their 1994 Eyewitness News rundowns don’t work any more, all the while sweating about how much more the only marketable face is going to ask for when the next book comes out. A lot of it is self-inflicted, but a lot isn’t. But don’t worry, it’ll die. The aforementioned anchor reminded me of this when I was reconsidering the industry again. He now does real estate and begged me not to go back.
catchmeifyoucan 8y ago
They need to send an email to: jeff@amazon.com
- Cd00d 8y ago
  I did that for an item where the price had gone up to gouging territory (k-cups from 60cents/cup to well over $6/cup), and outlined my concerns: anxiety about subscribe and save prices, reluctance to Alexa order, and refusal of Dash buttons because I couldn't be assured of fair or stable pricing. Amazon's response was: "With sellers on Amazon, we do allow them to sell their products for the price they feel is fair."
  - ikeboy 8y ago
    FYI, 3p sellers through subscribe and save have prices locked in. They can raise prices but people subscribing will not pay more. Not the case for amazon selling directly, though.
  - catchmeifyoucan 8y ago
    Amazon's response isn't too outrageous. I completely agree that it is unfair to the consumer, but it isn't unheard of. Unless those k-cups are a monopoly owned by Amazon, they can't really regulate prices for them. If gas prices rise, I can't call the CEO of Exxon to bring them down. Same thing applies for Uber Surge pricing. That's just how our economy works these days.
sudonim 8y ago
Is the seller trying to trick people in to buying paper plates? Or is that just one of the ways people launder money using Amazon?
erik_seaberg 8y ago
Dear Amazon: fulfillment is what made you a household name. If you didn't get it from the manufacturer and put it in your warehouse, I don't want it. Stop feeding grey-market middlemen and con artists.
- mrpigeonpants 8y ago
  That ship has sailed, but they could up their vendor standards from grey-market to perhaps a soft creamy beige.
partiallypro 8y ago
There are a lot of 3rd party shipping scams on Amazon now. In fact there are a lot of counterfeit items on Amazon now. I think I've posted this before, but if I am ordering a name brand item, I will not buy it from Amazon anymore. I'll only order things that won't really matter if they aren't the real name brand now. Even if it is fulfilled by Amazon, even that doesn't guarantee it's not counterfeit. I can order a pallets of counterfeit items from Alibaba and ship them off to Amazon to fulfill (for a fee) so that I can qualify as a Prime shipper. I used to sell a lot of (legit) things on Amazon (a $250K/yr revenue pace) but Amazon raised their seller fees which choked my already low margin business; and honestly since that I feel like the amount of scams and counterfeits has skyrocketed because now Amazon has trimmed people's margins so much with their high fees. Now I hear from some others I know that sell on Amazon about how they will buy from Alibaba, negotiate a bulk rate and then sell it on Amazon. Generally they are almost all fake, but the seller doesn't care, or pleads ignorance. Then there's the shipping scams, which I feel are fairly new, but no less worrying if you're a customer. It's also a bit infuriating if you were/are a seller and people are getting away with this when you're trying to be honest.
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  I don't see the relationship between abundance of counterfeit items and higher fees edging out low margin sellers.
  - partiallypro 8y ago
    You can raise your margins if you merely sell counterfeit items, because your input cost is less. Amazon raising their seller fees squeezes margins and forces suppliers/sellers to reinflate their margin via external means. If you squeeze out legitimate sellers, the sellers that counterfeit will be more robust and their margins will be what the old baseline was before the seller fee increase (at least.) I don't see how you can't see that obvious relationship.
    - caf 8y ago
      The simpler response is: selling counterfeit items is inherently a higher-margin business than selling the legitimate version of the same items.
nodesocket 8y ago
I am a prime customer and literally every single time I have contacted Amazon support they have been receptive and refunded me, often times going beyond what I requested. I am a very skeptical of this story.
- lovich 8y ago
  As a counter anecdote, I bought a prime item on a Monday and didn't receive it till the following Monday. When I contacted Amazon they told me that prime just garunteed that shipping would take 2 days, not that they would ship it in 2 days and as they had shipped it on Thursday they would do nothing for me
  - casylum 8y ago
    I had that happen to me once. The Amazon rep told me the item was being transferred to a warehouse near me before being shipped out "2 day shipping". That sounds like 7 day shipping to me.
  - sologoub 8y ago
    If there is a guaranteed delivery date, they have to honor it. This was a couple of years ago - I ordered replacement computer parts to get a failed laptop up and running for a critical timeline. The parts didn’t arrive so I had to search for them and over pay locally. Amazon issued a full refund and told me to keep the parts since they were already in transit. Not sure if the story would be the same if the items were not sold by Amazon directly, but instead via the marketplace.
    - egeozcan 8y ago
      In Germany, and in my experience, the "guaranteed" delivery date isn't honored 40% of the time and when you call or email them, they just say that they are sorry and extend your prime membership yet another month. Especially DHL is just a joke in Hesse.
      - calvano915 8y ago
sgeisler 8y ago
This also highlights one of the most ridiculous properties of many payment methods/how we handle money in general. Both credit cards and bank accounts allow others to just "pull" money from them [0]. To me this is such a silly feature (bug): it's like letting anyone send emails in your name if you don't regularly check your sent folder to cancel fraudulent outgoing mails. The story described in the article would not have happened if our payment methods were all "push"-based. E.g. if you want to protect buyer and seller, a protocol could look like this: 1. select items to buy 2. send money to a trusted 3rd party (e.g. amazon) 3. the vendor ships the items or you can claim back your money in a predefined time frame This could even be done without a trusted third party if the used money was programmable [1]. [0] having grown up in Germany where cash and debit cards are the main payment methods (and knowing much securer systems), finding out about this was quite a shock back then [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multisignature https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multisignature
- calvano915 8y ago
  I'm all for improving the consumer experience but I don't see how this case would have gone differently. The likeliest scenario is the woman making the purchase did not notice the shipping charge when adding to cart and going through checkout. Perhaps something happened where the seller was able to modify the free shipping to the actual charge but as someone who has used Amazon and sold on Amazon for years, this is not likely/usual. I've discovered deeper in the comments that using 1-click to purchase allows for sellers to add shipping fees later that do not appear to the purchaser unless they check their order history (It says shipping is FREE on the product page but this is not actually the case). I've never used 1-click so this is why I haven't experienced this problem before.
  - sgeisler 8y ago
    > but I don't see how this case would have gone differently If you have to make a conscious decision to transfer money first before they ship anything I guess you would notice that $1000 for some plates is a bit much. A good example for this is paypal (even though I don't like them as a middleman): whenever I pay something using it I am redirected to their website and am shown what I will pay to whom in return for what and money only leaves my account if I confirm the transfer. > 1-click to purchase Well, 1-click buying is an anti-feature for me: it promotes impulsive, non-batched and probably quite often unnecessary buying and makes the whole process less transparent (what lead to this incident).
hmd_imputer 8y ago
It is interesting. I would have imagined that Amazon refunded it right away, with a free 2 months of Prime membership extension as an apology. Most of my interactions with Amazon Customer Service has been nothing short of perfect. Just the other day, I called to complain that an item that was marked as "delivered" actually wasn't delivered at all. Within 3 minutes, I got a complete refund and also a free 1-month Amazon prime extension.
denverkarma 8y ago
I’ve had Amazon Prime since the day it came out, but I’m seriously considering abandoning Amazon now. The ability to search and find items has deteriorated noticeably in the last two years as a hundred similar knockoffs appear for every search, and I feel I have to triple check the process to avoid fraud. I don’t enjoy the experience of shopping in a marketplace that is full of scammers and fraud. I wish Amazon understood that.

83 points by jscheel 8y ago

Is there like an anti amazon lobby in HN that keeps on posting this kind of crap?

Amazon really needs to clean house when it comes to these third party sellers and third party listings, it's a mess. I'm glad this one in this case was supposedly dismissed (though I doubt they haven't reapplied with a new name... or even just held multiple seller accounts to begin with.

helianer 8y ago

I’m pretty surprised by Amazon’s reaction to them. This is clearly a rip-off transaction, and Amazon has always been pretty customer friendly with me.

giarc 8y ago
I would take that claim with a grain of salt. The person already claims that she didn't agree to $1000 shipping, but I think it's safe to say that there wasn't a glitch with Amazon's payment processing, she just didn't see it.
- bsimpson 8y ago
  There's probably some threshold (either a fixed amount or in conjunction with the purchase price) where shipping is obviously a scam or mistake. For most transactions, I expect a severe warning if your freight is more than $100 would be appropriate.
  - helianer 8y ago
    I agree. Amazon also absolutely wants to encourage behaviour where you don’t even think before buying, so scammy listings like this are hurt their strategy. The fact that they later delisted the seller shows that they recognised the abuse.
- ikeboy 8y ago
  It is not safe to say that. I've been tracking this glitch for months and I estimate millions of dollars in fraudulent shipping charges have been added by sellers exploiting this glitch. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't test ordered and seen the charges with my own eyes. Edit: go to https://www.amazon.com/Scalpmaster-Shampoo-Brush-Purple-Count/dp/B000NJG82W/?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/Scalpmaster-Shampoo-Brush-Purple-Coun.... Place a 1-click order. Verify for yourself.
  - EpiphanyMachine 8y ago
    I can confirm this. It is an item for $0.01 with free shipping. Once you add it to your cart and go to checkout it adds $10 in shipping fees. I got a generic response from support about sellers setting their own prices. I do not know if the "concern team" will actually look into this or get back to me but my question is being sent to them. I will no longer be using 1-click ordering until I know this issue is resolved. This seems at best a very bad bug / loophole for sellers to exploit or at worst a deceptive scam to steal from people. I hope Amazon takes this seriously and fixes it.
    - Buge 8y ago
      Also doing a 1 click purchase purchases it for $0.01 + $9.80 shipping, but the $9.80 shipping never shows up on the product page, during the purchase, or on the purchase completed page. You only see the $9.81 if you navigate to your purchase history and see it there.
      - HEHENE 8y ago
        I experienced the same thing. Here is my chat transcript: --- Me: I placed a 1Click order and was charged more than the advertised price. Prashant: Hi, I’m Prashant, I’ll be glad to help you from here Prashant: May I've the last four digits of the order ID? Me: 5844 For the Scalpmaster Shampoo Brush Prashant: I see the item is being sold and shipped by a third party seller HEHENE who is charging Me: The listing said “$0.01 & FREE Shipping” but I was charged $9.81 Prashant: $9.80 as shipping and handling. Me: But the listing says “FREE Shipping” specifically Prashant: Let me quickly check this for you. Prashant: In this case, what best we can do is to refund the shipping and charges once the item is delivered. Me: Ok, because I feel like this is false advertising. I clicked the “buy with one click” button expecting to be charged exactly what was shown (“$0.01 & FREE Shipping) but I was not. Me: So you’re saying I should file a complaint once it shows up? Prashant: I certainly understand your concern. Prashant: You just need to contact us here and we will refund the shipping charges. Me: Haven’t I just contacted you? Prashant: We can refund the amount once the item is delivered.
- fnordsensei 8y ago
  If a customer doesn't intentionally accept $1000 shipping charges, a properly run business would recognize this as a problem with their service design when they do end up with $1000 shipping charges. The alternative is to have a slowly growing public understanding that dealing with them is equivalent to gambling. If they're happy with that, then OK.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Johnny555 8y ago

I've seen some pretty insane expedited shipping fees - like $150 to get 2-3 day expedited shipping on an iPad vs free 5 - 6 day shipping, I always wondered if anyone actually paid those fees. I guess some people don't pay attention to the charge. I've never seen multiple hundreds of dollars or more -- Amazon really should have some reasonable cap. I'd be surprised if Amazon didn't show the exorbitant shipping fee to the person in this article, she probably wasn't paying attention and just clicked through assuming that it was going to be the usual Prime $5.99 next day shipping upcharge or similar.

13of40 8y ago

Unlike eBay they don't have a highest cost+shipping option, but I just went there and the highest priced paper plates from a third party are about $8000 for 96 plates with about $2 shipping.

40acres 8y ago

Sounds like a UI/UX problem to me.. I have prime & don't really do third party shipping and I've had no problems of this sort.

hughes 8y ago

> The Galloways now suggest you take a screen shot so you can prove later that you did not agree to any additional charges. Does Amazon actually take action based on an easily manipulated screenshot?

rnotaro 8y ago
They know that they are right.
- giarc 8y ago
  Who is right? The couple or Amazon?
microtherion 8y ago
Why would they need a screen shot? The order confirmation e-mail would show the shipping charges as well. I very much doubt that the vendor was able to slip these charges by invisibly. Seems more likely the customer simply did not read the order screen before hitting OK.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

manigandham 8y ago

Side note: what a horrible standard of news quality here. This should be about 3 sentences, not hundreds of words and a TV interview. This is why most local news is ridiculous.

vecinu 8y ago
I was thinking the same thing. "People these days shop online, not because it's convenient but because you can get a deal!" "Person A does a ton of shopping online, you'll never believe what happened to them!"
- ovao 8y ago
  You'll be amazed at this one simple trick of already knowing what they're about to say because the headline's already told you!
jsmthrowaway 8y ago
The article is a slightly edited transcript of what aired in the TV package and appeared in the teleprompter, which is the only strategy most local newsrooms can afford to do. Write once, publish twice. It’s not print journalism, it’s copy intended to hook television viewing interest, and that style does work. If local news quality bothers you, be more bothered that the person who did the translation almost certainly pulls minimum wage, while the slightly more notable person reading the same thing negotiated a significant contract. I used to write these for $9.50/hour in 2005, for a producer pulling about $13, while the anchor reading them and doing approximately nothing else was arguing over $5 million in their renewal. And the gutting of local hadn’t even started yet. Now most shops can’t even afford photographers and have their reporters shoot their own stories, probably close to minimum wage themselves if they’re fresh from J school. You think you’re going to get Peter Baker quality reporting in that scenario? You think that newsroom is empowered to develop source relationships and produce reporting that effects social change? They’re covering a shipping overcharge in an investigative feature, for crying out loud. The stylistic technique is far from why local news is ridiculous, and that’s a very shallow assessment. There’s a clear path to fixing local news but the market won’t permit it, on account of it being a market, not to mention the whole battalion of news directors terrified of change and wondering why their 1994 Eyewitness News rundowns don’t work any more, all the while sweating about how much more the only marketable face is going to ask for when the next book comes out. A lot of it is self-inflicted, but a lot isn’t. But don’t worry, it’ll die. The aforementioned anchor reminded me of this when I was reconsidering the industry again. He now does real estate and begged me not to go back.

catchmeifyoucan 8y ago

They need to send an email to: jeff@amazon.com

Cd00d 8y ago
I did that for an item where the price had gone up to gouging territory (k-cups from 60cents/cup to well over $6/cup), and outlined my concerns: anxiety about subscribe and save prices, reluctance to Alexa order, and refusal of Dash buttons because I couldn't be assured of fair or stable pricing. Amazon's response was: "With sellers on Amazon, we do allow them to sell their products for the price they feel is fair."
- ikeboy 8y ago
  FYI, 3p sellers through subscribe and save have prices locked in. They can raise prices but people subscribing will not pay more. Not the case for amazon selling directly, though.
- catchmeifyoucan 8y ago
  Amazon's response isn't too outrageous. I completely agree that it is unfair to the consumer, but it isn't unheard of. Unless those k-cups are a monopoly owned by Amazon, they can't really regulate prices for them. If gas prices rise, I can't call the CEO of Exxon to bring them down. Same thing applies for Uber Surge pricing. That's just how our economy works these days.

sudonim 8y ago

Is the seller trying to trick people in to buying paper plates? Or is that just one of the ways people launder money using Amazon?

erik_seaberg 8y ago

Dear Amazon: fulfillment is what made you a household name. If you didn't get it from the manufacturer and put it in your warehouse, I don't want it. Stop feeding grey-market middlemen and con artists.

mrpigeonpants 8y ago
That ship has sailed, but they could up their vendor standards from grey-market to perhaps a soft creamy beige.

partiallypro 8y ago

There are a lot of 3rd party shipping scams on Amazon now. In fact there are a lot of counterfeit items on Amazon now. I think I've posted this before, but if I am ordering a name brand item, I will not buy it from Amazon anymore. I'll only order things that won't really matter if they aren't the real name brand now. Even if it is fulfilled by Amazon, even that doesn't guarantee it's not counterfeit. I can order a pallets of counterfeit items from Alibaba and ship them off to Amazon to fulfill (for a fee) so that I can qualify as a Prime shipper. I used to sell a lot of (legit) things on Amazon (a $250K/yr revenue pace) but Amazon raised their seller fees which choked my already low margin business; and honestly since that I feel like the amount of scams and counterfeits has skyrocketed because now Amazon has trimmed people's margins so much with their high fees. Now I hear from some others I know that sell on Amazon about how they will buy from Alibaba, negotiate a bulk rate and then sell it on Amazon. Generally they are almost all fake, but the seller doesn't care, or pleads ignorance. Then there's the shipping scams, which I feel are fairly new, but no less worrying if you're a customer. It's also a bit infuriating if you were/are a seller and people are getting away with this when you're trying to be honest.

Waterluvian 8y ago
I don't see the relationship between abundance of counterfeit items and higher fees edging out low margin sellers.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  You can raise your margins if you merely sell counterfeit items, because your input cost is less. Amazon raising their seller fees squeezes margins and forces suppliers/sellers to reinflate their margin via external means. If you squeeze out legitimate sellers, the sellers that counterfeit will be more robust and their margins will be what the old baseline was before the seller fee increase (at least.) I don't see how you can't see that obvious relationship.
  - caf 8y ago
    The simpler response is: selling counterfeit items is inherently a higher-margin business than selling the legitimate version of the same items.

nodesocket 8y ago

I am a prime customer and literally every single time I have contacted Amazon support they have been receptive and refunded me, often times going beyond what I requested. I am a very skeptical of this story.

lovich 8y ago
As a counter anecdote, I bought a prime item on a Monday and didn't receive it till the following Monday. When I contacted Amazon they told me that prime just garunteed that shipping would take 2 days, not that they would ship it in 2 days and as they had shipped it on Thursday they would do nothing for me
- casylum 8y ago
  I had that happen to me once. The Amazon rep told me the item was being transferred to a warehouse near me before being shipped out "2 day shipping". That sounds like 7 day shipping to me.
- sologoub 8y ago
  If there is a guaranteed delivery date, they have to honor it. This was a couple of years ago - I ordered replacement computer parts to get a failed laptop up and running for a critical timeline. The parts didn’t arrive so I had to search for them and over pay locally. Amazon issued a full refund and told me to keep the parts since they were already in transit. Not sure if the story would be the same if the items were not sold by Amazon directly, but instead via the marketplace.
  - egeozcan 8y ago
    In Germany, and in my experience, the "guaranteed" delivery date isn't honored 40% of the time and when you call or email them, they just say that they are sorry and extend your prime membership yet another month. Especially DHL is just a joke in Hesse.
    - calvano915 8y ago

sgeisler 8y ago

This also highlights one of the most ridiculous properties of many payment methods/how we handle money in general. Both credit cards and bank accounts allow others to just "pull" money from them [0]. To me this is such a silly feature (bug): it's like letting anyone send emails in your name if you don't regularly check your sent folder to cancel fraudulent outgoing mails. The story described in the article would not have happened if our payment methods were all "push"-based. E.g. if you want to protect buyer and seller, a protocol could look like this: 1. select items to buy 2. send money to a trusted 3rd party (e.g. amazon) 3. the vendor ships the items or you can claim back your money in a predefined time frame This could even be done without a trusted third party if the used money was programmable [1]. [0] having grown up in Germany where cash and debit cards are the main payment methods (and knowing much securer systems), finding out about this was quite a shock back then [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multisignature https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multisignature

calvano915 8y ago
I'm all for improving the consumer experience but I don't see how this case would have gone differently. The likeliest scenario is the woman making the purchase did not notice the shipping charge when adding to cart and going through checkout. Perhaps something happened where the seller was able to modify the free shipping to the actual charge but as someone who has used Amazon and sold on Amazon for years, this is not likely/usual. I've discovered deeper in the comments that using 1-click to purchase allows for sellers to add shipping fees later that do not appear to the purchaser unless they check their order history (It says shipping is FREE on the product page but this is not actually the case). I've never used 1-click so this is why I haven't experienced this problem before.
- sgeisler 8y ago
  > but I don't see how this case would have gone differently If you have to make a conscious decision to transfer money first before they ship anything I guess you would notice that $1000 for some plates is a bit much. A good example for this is paypal (even though I don't like them as a middleman): whenever I pay something using it I am redirected to their website and am shown what I will pay to whom in return for what and money only leaves my account if I confirm the transfer. > 1-click to purchase Well, 1-click buying is an anti-feature for me: it promotes impulsive, non-batched and probably quite often unnecessary buying and makes the whole process less transparent (what lead to this incident).

hmd_imputer 8y ago

It is interesting. I would have imagined that Amazon refunded it right away, with a free 2 months of Prime membership extension as an apology. Most of my interactions with Amazon Customer Service has been nothing short of perfect. Just the other day, I called to complain that an item that was marked as "delivered" actually wasn't delivered at all. Within 3 minutes, I got a complete refund and also a free 1-month Amazon prime extension.

denverkarma 8y ago

I’ve had Amazon Prime since the day it came out, but I’m seriously considering abandoning Amazon now. The ability to search and find items has deteriorated noticeably in the last two years as a hundred similar knockoffs appear for every search, and I feel I have to triple check the process to avoid fraud. I don’t enjoy the experience of shopping in a marketplace that is full of scammers and fraud. I wish Amazon understood that.