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This is no longer true about the returns - I may have to go to court with amazon over a warehouse item that was empty, and then they stuck me with the non-retur

This is no longer true about the returns - I may have to go to court with amazon over a warehouse item that was empty, and then they stuck me with the non-returned item when I returned the empty box, wiped my review of the 3rd party seller (fulfilled by amazon). They are currently lying to my credit card company about the chargeback. Not fun...

akouri 5y ago
Amazon support 10 years ago used to be amazing. They were truly a customer-first company. Today, Amazon support is probably worse than Comcast. They've been winning too long. I have starting curtailing purchases from Amazon, and ordering from any alternatives whenever possible.
- ziml77 5y ago
  The impression I'm getting here is that he didn't even talk to their support. You can do returns without ever talking to a CSR. But in this case that's a stupid move because when you do a return, you're saying that you'll return the actual item. So when they get it back and the box is empty, they're going to think you're scamming them. It sounds like his very next move was to do a chargeback, which again is a dumb thing to do if he hasn't even spoken to Amazon support.
  - buildbot 5y ago
    I did 3 times actually, at first there was no movement on it. I opened the return with support stating that I got an empty box, which they asked me to send back to them.
- joshmanders 5y ago
  As someone who had Comcast and has dealt with Amazon support I cannot disagree with this statement anymore. My only experience with Amazon support was a failure to deliver a $600 item, Amazon not only refunded the price right away after we figured out what was going on, but also credited me $100 for my trouble. Comcast? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA.
lucasmullens 5y ago
You sent Amazon an empty box? It's still their fault, but sending back an empty box and issuing a chargeback usually aren't the first things I try to get refunds from Amazon. Their support chat is usually pretty willing to give you a refund IMO (although if you've returned too much / had too much stolen over the years that might not be the case, which I'm guessing is the situation you're in)
- buildbot 5y ago
  They asked me to in the first place, I called them immediately when I got the box. I sent them back what I got, the original NVIDIA box + accessories. I actually asked them to check the shipping weight IIRC :/
billyjobob 5y ago
Why would you return an empty box? Legally Amazon had a contract to deliver you an item. They failed to do that, so you should have reported it as undelivered. When this has happens to me Amazon usually spend a few days “investigating” if the courier misplaced the item, then they admit it wasn’t delivered and send a replacement. If you report it as “delivered but there’s something wrong with it” then that’s going to trigger them to request you return it, and if you return an empty box that’s going to lead to the “customer failed to return item” pathway.
- Closi 5y ago
  They probably mean they opened the box and it was empty (i.e. they got sent a parcel, and the item's box was inside the parcel, but the item itself wasn't in the box). I've worked in quite a few eCommerce companies on the fulfilment side (although not Amazon, but including Amazon sellers) and this is pretty common - the overwhelming cause is that a scammer buys a product from an online store, takes it out of the box, replaces it with rocks or something of a similar size/shape to make it weigh the right amount, then shrink wraps it to make it look like it hasn't been sold and then returns it for the full value. However sometimes customers also lie and say that they received an empty box, when they actually had the item inside. It is very rare that the manufacturer will ship an empty box (however it does sometimes happen). Because of this, most eCommerce companies adopt a policy of "If the 'new' item was previously an unopened return, allow the refund, however if not, do not allow a refund". eCommerce companies track this by using different bins for returned products (or at least by not returning that product to a bin with the same SKU that is non-returned). This sucks for the customer if you are one of the unlucky people that gets a box sent empty by the manufacturer, but fortunately that's very rare (it's a tough one to resolve without lots of theft, as it's very easy for people to say that the box was empty and very hard to prove otherwise). This is even more difficult with third party sellers, as Amazon may not have full visibility with how they are tracking returns, and those third party sellers may have different policies around 'received empty' returns (I've not seen the above in any official policy, but can confirm it is common practice - again not with Amazon but I've worked with a number of eCommerce companies with similar issues and policies).
  - 5y ago

akouri 5y ago

Amazon support 10 years ago used to be amazing. They were truly a customer-first company. Today, Amazon support is probably worse than Comcast. They've been winning too long. I have starting curtailing purchases from Amazon, and ordering from any alternatives whenever possible.

ziml77 5y ago
The impression I'm getting here is that he didn't even talk to their support. You can do returns without ever talking to a CSR. But in this case that's a stupid move because when you do a return, you're saying that you'll return the actual item. So when they get it back and the box is empty, they're going to think you're scamming them. It sounds like his very next move was to do a chargeback, which again is a dumb thing to do if he hasn't even spoken to Amazon support.
- buildbot 5y ago
  I did 3 times actually, at first there was no movement on it. I opened the return with support stating that I got an empty box, which they asked me to send back to them.
joshmanders 5y ago
As someone who had Comcast and has dealt with Amazon support I cannot disagree with this statement anymore. My only experience with Amazon support was a failure to deliver a $600 item, Amazon not only refunded the price right away after we figured out what was going on, but also credited me $100 for my trouble. Comcast? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA.

lucasmullens 5y ago

You sent Amazon an empty box? It's still their fault, but sending back an empty box and issuing a chargeback usually aren't the first things I try to get refunds from Amazon. Their support chat is usually pretty willing to give you a refund IMO (although if you've returned too much / had too much stolen over the years that might not be the case, which I'm guessing is the situation you're in)

buildbot 5y ago
They asked me to in the first place, I called them immediately when I got the box. I sent them back what I got, the original NVIDIA box + accessories. I actually asked them to check the shipping weight IIRC :/

billyjobob 5y ago

Why would you return an empty box? Legally Amazon had a contract to deliver you an item. They failed to do that, so you should have reported it as undelivered. When this has happens to me Amazon usually spend a few days “investigating” if the courier misplaced the item, then they admit it wasn’t delivered and send a replacement. If you report it as “delivered but there’s something wrong with it” then that’s going to trigger them to request you return it, and if you return an empty box that’s going to lead to the “customer failed to return item” pathway.

Closi 5y ago
They probably mean they opened the box and it was empty (i.e. they got sent a parcel, and the item's box was inside the parcel, but the item itself wasn't in the box). I've worked in quite a few eCommerce companies on the fulfilment side (although not Amazon, but including Amazon sellers) and this is pretty common - the overwhelming cause is that a scammer buys a product from an online store, takes it out of the box, replaces it with rocks or something of a similar size/shape to make it weigh the right amount, then shrink wraps it to make it look like it hasn't been sold and then returns it for the full value. However sometimes customers also lie and say that they received an empty box, when they actually had the item inside. It is very rare that the manufacturer will ship an empty box (however it does sometimes happen). Because of this, most eCommerce companies adopt a policy of "If the 'new' item was previously an unopened return, allow the refund, however if not, do not allow a refund". eCommerce companies track this by using different bins for returned products (or at least by not returning that product to a bin with the same SKU that is non-returned). This sucks for the customer if you are one of the unlucky people that gets a box sent empty by the manufacturer, but fortunately that's very rare (it's a tough one to resolve without lots of theft, as it's very easy for people to say that the box was empty and very hard to prove otherwise). This is even more difficult with third party sellers, as Amazon may not have full visibility with how they are tracking returns, and those third party sellers may have different policies around 'received empty' returns (I've not seen the above in any official policy, but can confirm it is common practice - again not with Amazon but I've worked with a number of eCommerce companies with similar issues and policies).
- 5y ago