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What? They make returns very easy to do. There's a form that pops up and many choices for reasons.

by fouc 8y ago

mrtksn 8y ago
There was no return option on the SD Card, it was marked as "not eligible for return" so I had to deal with the customer support. I actually went ahead and dug out the conversation for you. This is my refund request: https://imgur.com/bthMMoN https://imgur.com/bthMMoN This is the response from Amazon: https://imgur.com/xWK8FVH https://imgur.com/xWK8FVH Yeah, they refunded me without a fuss but I prefer an experience where the items arrive in expected quality and I keep them. I think I actually kept the Prime membership for a while but I found myself disillusioned and felt uneasy when shopping at Amazon and later canceled as I was no longer buying stuff from Amazon.
- closetohome 8y ago
  So all it took was an email, they didn't even require you to return the product before refunding you, and you're unhappy with that for some reason?
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Absofuckinglutely. Anytime you end up with a fraudulent counterfeit it's a hugely unhappy situation for a number of reasons. The biggest for me would be: What if I hadn't caught it? Maybe I'm using some inferior counterfeits right now that I don't know about that Amazon ripped me off on, that might fail catastrophically. And also, there's plenty of times where you need a product by a specific time, and not having it at that time because you wasted a whole shipping cycle on a counterfeit is painful. When you end up with a counterfeit, you are being defrauded. How could anyone be happy in that situation just because your money was refunded? I just wanted what I was trying to buy. I didn't want free junk that wastes my time.
  - mrtksn 8y ago
    I spent all day thinking that my raspberry pi zero was faulty, trying to figure out why it’s not booting(FYI, very hard to obtain). Yes, I’m unhappy. A happy purchase is not one where you get a refund for low quality product, a happy purchase is a purchase that you end up spending your money on a product that satisfies you. I don’t care about 7gbp, that’s not the issue.
jsight 8y ago
Yeah, I mean, he got a refund and didn't even have to return anything. How dark is that pattern? Having said that, Amazon's product mixing is causing a lot of problems and trust issues for a lot of product types. I really hope they fix it.
- mrtksn 8y ago
  Me not getting a refund would have been a fraud. I would have filed a chargeback against that fraudulent purchase. A dark pattern is not about taking someone's money an running away but it's about impacting their decision making by designing processes or interactions that exploit common behaviour. An example of a well known dark pattern is adding things to the shopping cart just before check out. Another one is starting a subscription with a click of a button but requiring documents to be faxed for the cancellation. On my specific case with Amazon, the dark pattern is to make it hard for me to spot a fraudulent item and not making the standard refund process available therefore increasing the chances of purchase and decreasing the chances of refund by making it a hassle. Well, maybe it was not intentional, maybe it was a screw-up but that's again a lot of maybes.
  - jsight 8y ago
    Go do some digging on Amazon and look at all of the obviously fake SD cards out there. Then ask yourself, is this helping Amazon's business? This is a problem, and they treat it as such, they simply haven't found a suitable solution beyond simply making refunds with almost no questions asked. Unfortunately for their business, this actually enables a different kind of fraud that is also a real problem for them. That is vastly different from dark patterns about trying to inflate review scores or encouraging subscriptions to unwanted services. They do those things too, and pretty effectively.
    - mrtksn 8y ago
      Any sources on your claim that they are actively trying to solve that problem and that they are failing at it?
dingaling 8y ago
Returns through Amazon have become increasingly difficult and spiteful in the past two or three of 20 years I've been using them. Last week I returned a rotary airer that was damaged upon delivery. Amazon online 'help' told me I had to find a courier that could take the outsized parcel AND I had to pay out of pocket for it. They insisted that it be returned. They didn't refund the full postage cost or the cost of packaging. Amazon are throwing away their hard-won reputation by penny-pinching and treating customers as badly as other retailers. I'm out.

What? They make returns very easy to do. There's a form that pops up and many choices for reasons.

by fouc 8y ago

What? They make returns very easy to do. There's a form that pops up and many choices for reasons.

There was no return option on the SD Card, it was marked as "not eligible for return" so I had to deal with the customer support. I actually went ahead and dug out the conversation for you. This is my refund request: https://imgur.com/bthMMoN https://imgur.com/bthMMoN This is the response from Amazon: https://imgur.com/xWK8FVH https://imgur.com/xWK8FVH Yeah, they refunded me without a fuss but I prefer an experience where the items arrive in expected quality and I keep them. I think I actually kept the Prime membership for a while but I found myself disillusioned and felt uneasy when shopping at Amazon and later canceled as I was no longer buying stuff from Amazon.

closetohome 8y ago
So all it took was an email, they didn't even require you to return the product before refunding you, and you're unhappy with that for some reason?
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Absofuckinglutely. Anytime you end up with a fraudulent counterfeit it's a hugely unhappy situation for a number of reasons. The biggest for me would be: What if I hadn't caught it? Maybe I'm using some inferior counterfeits right now that I don't know about that Amazon ripped me off on, that might fail catastrophically. And also, there's plenty of times where you need a product by a specific time, and not having it at that time because you wasted a whole shipping cycle on a counterfeit is painful. When you end up with a counterfeit, you are being defrauded. How could anyone be happy in that situation just because your money was refunded? I just wanted what I was trying to buy. I didn't want free junk that wastes my time.
- mrtksn 8y ago
  I spent all day thinking that my raspberry pi zero was faulty, trying to figure out why it’s not booting(FYI, very hard to obtain). Yes, I’m unhappy. A happy purchase is not one where you get a refund for low quality product, a happy purchase is a purchase that you end up spending your money on a product that satisfies you. I don’t care about 7gbp, that’s not the issue.

jsight 8y ago

Yeah, I mean, he got a refund and didn't even have to return anything. How dark is that pattern? Having said that, Amazon's product mixing is causing a lot of problems and trust issues for a lot of product types. I really hope they fix it.

mrtksn 8y ago
Me not getting a refund would have been a fraud. I would have filed a chargeback against that fraudulent purchase. A dark pattern is not about taking someone's money an running away but it's about impacting their decision making by designing processes or interactions that exploit common behaviour. An example of a well known dark pattern is adding things to the shopping cart just before check out. Another one is starting a subscription with a click of a button but requiring documents to be faxed for the cancellation. On my specific case with Amazon, the dark pattern is to make it hard for me to spot a fraudulent item and not making the standard refund process available therefore increasing the chances of purchase and decreasing the chances of refund by making it a hassle. Well, maybe it was not intentional, maybe it was a screw-up but that's again a lot of maybes.
- jsight 8y ago
  Go do some digging on Amazon and look at all of the obviously fake SD cards out there. Then ask yourself, is this helping Amazon's business? This is a problem, and they treat it as such, they simply haven't found a suitable solution beyond simply making refunds with almost no questions asked. Unfortunately for their business, this actually enables a different kind of fraud that is also a real problem for them. That is vastly different from dark patterns about trying to inflate review scores or encouraging subscriptions to unwanted services. They do those things too, and pretty effectively.
  - mrtksn 8y ago
    Any sources on your claim that they are actively trying to solve that problem and that they are failing at it?

dingaling 8y ago

Returns through Amazon have become increasingly difficult and spiteful in the past two or three of 20 years I've been using them. Last week I returned a rotary airer that was damaged upon delivery. Amazon online 'help' told me I had to find a courier that could take the outsized parcel AND I had to pay out of pocket for it. They insisted that it be returned. They didn't refund the full postage cost or the cost of packaging. Amazon are throwing away their hard-won reputation by penny-pinching and treating customers as badly as other retailers. I'm out.