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I think the other thing that's missing from this is that Amazon's customer service is really very good. I'll spend the extra dollars buying something from Amazo

I think the other thing that's missing from this is that Amazon's customer service is really very good. I'll spend the extra dollars buying something from Amazon than, say, one of their third-party merchants, because I know Amazon will take care of me if anything bad happens.

pja 15y ago
Yeah you can return stuff...right until they decide you're an unprofitable customer and drop you like a hot brick.
- icey 15y ago
  Does this happen frequently? I haven't heard about Amazon doing this before.
  - pja 15y ago
    See reply to CleverJake. They closed a stack of accounts a few years ago, whether they're still doing so I don't know, but the same logic applies...
- cleverjake 15y ago
  [citation needed] I have never heard of this happening ever with amazon, though I would love to know where your experience with this is coming from.
  - pja 15y ago
    The magic phrase to search for is "extraordinary number of incidents with your orders and corresponding shipments" which is from their standard form email when they cancel your account. My guess would be that Amazon's business model is very sensitive to the return rate, since returns are very expensive for them: their whole system is built around getting product out the door to the customer not the other way round! One or two expensive returns from a customer could wipe out all the profit they'll ever make from that individual. If they believe they can identify those customers who are likely to cost them money, it's in Amazon's interest to cut off service to those customers as early as possible. Perfectly rational behaviour, but I imagine highly frustrating for those customers who naturally feel that they've been somehow accused of wrongdoing when Amazon decides it doesn't want to do business with them any more.
    - hyperbovine 15y ago
      This behavior is not limited to Amazon. Big-box retailers and department stores also ban people who abuse the return policy. And, as an honest shopper who likes being able to return things from time to time, I'm glad for it.
      - pja 15y ago
        I think the troubling issue for some is that they can return things for perfectly good reasons, the items in question were in fact faulty, or mis-described on the website or whatever, but Amazon canceled their accounts regardless. Of course it's possible that those who go online to complain about this are in fact abusing the system, but from Amazon's POV it makes perfect sense: they don't want picky customers who will return borderline goods because it will eat into their margins. It's much more profitable to sell to those who won't notice the dead pixels on their laptop display (or whatever the problem happens to be).
- smallegan 15y ago
  I've returned plenty of things and I have never had this happen. I have however had them tell me to keep the item when the return shipping was going to cost them more than the item itself is worth. Which to me is good customer service and smart business thinking.
philip1209 15y ago
Completely true. I bought shoes on Amazon, after 3 months they started to fall apart. I went on service chat and they refunded my full cost immediately and didn't even ask for me to return the old shoes.
- leeoniya 15y ago
  this is a nightmare for merchants though, speaking from experience.
  - iamdave 15y ago
    Nightmare re: cost/inventory or both? I can kind of see how this works for merchants selling through Amazon. AMZN provides the customer with a good experience, makes customer feel valued, customer is more inclined to buy more products despite a bad moment knowing they'll be taken care of. Probably not how it pans out in practice, however.
    - leeoniya 15y ago
      the problem is, the customer is not always right. but your money and product is gone regardless...unless you're willing to jump through a ton of dispute hoops most of which take a long time and end up in favor of the customer on some obscure seller agreement clause. paypal does business this way as well.
      - tomkarlo 15y ago
        As a customer, that's how I want it to be. One of main reasons I consistently order from Amazon (and buy Prime) is the bad experiences I've had when trying to get customer service / return / exchanges on other sites. Saving $5 or $10 isn't worth it if I have to waste an hour dealing with issues like getting the wrong item shipped to me, or trying to return something. It's hard to argue with the logic behind a customer-centric policy here. Merchants are going to go where the customers are and they can spread the cost of dispute resolution, etc over far more transactions than an individual. Makes sense to inflict the "pain" on their side.
philip1209 15y ago
Completely true. I bought shoes on Amazon, after 3 months they started to fall apart. I went on service chat and they refunded my full cost immediately and didn't even ask for me to return the old shoes.
georgemcbay 15y ago
Yet another thing missing (which is huge for me personally) is predictability of shipping. If I buy something on Amazon via Prime (which means Amazon themselves will be fulfilling it), I know that if I order it 2 day shipping it will arrive in 2 days. If I bump it up to next day shipping (within the clearly marked and real-time updated window of shipping) it will arrive tomorrow. Amazon and Newegg are the only two web retailers that I trust to predictably get my items on a set time-table. It is all too common for other online sites to gladly accept orders for next day shipping or two day shipping at ridiculous markup and then actually use those shipping methods but only after sitting on the order for days before actually shipping it out... not exactly what I had in mind, guys.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  Sadly, this isn't true of international shipping. Depending on where you are in Australia it's entirely hit-and-miss.
- nfriedly 15y ago
  Agreed completely. I don't think a lone up-vote fully conveys how big of a deal this is to me. I've had horrible experiences with other sites not being able to give me a delivery date, or even worse, giving me one and not making it. I called pcrush.com a while back to confirm that ordering with 2-day shipping would get the item to me by that Friday. When it hadn't arrived by Saturday, I called back and learned that they had just shipped it that morning! I don't think Amazon has ever been late in the two years I've had prime.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  As much as I like moo cards I find their shipping options frustrating. You can order 2nd day shipping or even overnight shipping. But you can't jump ahead in the print queue, which can take as long as a week, making most of the shipping options completely meaningless.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
gcb 15y ago
No. That's true for the backed by Amazon stuff. The bulk is small shops to whom Amazon is just another layer between your credit card and them. For those cases they do nothing.
kahawe 15y ago
Also, amazon offers you free return-shipping and no worries. Typically the 3rd party merchants here in Euroland are literally only a few bucks cheaper on a 3-digit purchase but they take (much) longer to ship, you have to pay for return-shipping and often you need to pay for shipping and handling as well. On top of that, they often go with the absolutely cheapest possible shipping option to squeeze out a few more bucks and that often fails delivering to a DHL Packstation (a popular fully automated self-service post box here), which is a major annoyance. I specifically order to my Packstation so I do _NOT_ have to deal with the horror and pathetic sight that is a German post office in the evening. On top of that I am starting to really, really hate the amazon market place because their product offerings are horribly unorganized, they list in lots of wrong but popular categories and they put something up as a different product despite the same product already being there at least twice. Also I absolutely love ordering online and getting stuff in the mail so I decided to pay the I-dont-know 20 bucks a year for the Amazon Prime subscription and get free next-day(!) delivery on each and every order. Why would I give that up and pay for the slower and worse alternative?

pja 15y ago

Yeah you can return stuff...right until they decide you're an unprofitable customer and drop you like a hot brick.

icey 15y ago
Does this happen frequently? I haven't heard about Amazon doing this before.
- pja 15y ago
  See reply to CleverJake. They closed a stack of accounts a few years ago, whether they're still doing so I don't know, but the same logic applies...
cleverjake 15y ago
[citation needed] I have never heard of this happening ever with amazon, though I would love to know where your experience with this is coming from.
- pja 15y ago
  The magic phrase to search for is "extraordinary number of incidents with your orders and corresponding shipments" which is from their standard form email when they cancel your account. My guess would be that Amazon's business model is very sensitive to the return rate, since returns are very expensive for them: their whole system is built around getting product out the door to the customer not the other way round! One or two expensive returns from a customer could wipe out all the profit they'll ever make from that individual. If they believe they can identify those customers who are likely to cost them money, it's in Amazon's interest to cut off service to those customers as early as possible. Perfectly rational behaviour, but I imagine highly frustrating for those customers who naturally feel that they've been somehow accused of wrongdoing when Amazon decides it doesn't want to do business with them any more.
  - hyperbovine 15y ago
    This behavior is not limited to Amazon. Big-box retailers and department stores also ban people who abuse the return policy. And, as an honest shopper who likes being able to return things from time to time, I'm glad for it.
    - pja 15y ago
      I think the troubling issue for some is that they can return things for perfectly good reasons, the items in question were in fact faulty, or mis-described on the website or whatever, but Amazon canceled their accounts regardless. Of course it's possible that those who go online to complain about this are in fact abusing the system, but from Amazon's POV it makes perfect sense: they don't want picky customers who will return borderline goods because it will eat into their margins. It's much more profitable to sell to those who won't notice the dead pixels on their laptop display (or whatever the problem happens to be).
smallegan 15y ago
I've returned plenty of things and I have never had this happen. I have however had them tell me to keep the item when the return shipping was going to cost them more than the item itself is worth. Which to me is good customer service and smart business thinking.

philip1209 15y ago

Completely true. I bought shoes on Amazon, after 3 months they started to fall apart. I went on service chat and they refunded my full cost immediately and didn't even ask for me to return the old shoes.

leeoniya 15y ago
this is a nightmare for merchants though, speaking from experience.
- iamdave 15y ago
  Nightmare re: cost/inventory or both? I can kind of see how this works for merchants selling through Amazon. AMZN provides the customer with a good experience, makes customer feel valued, customer is more inclined to buy more products despite a bad moment knowing they'll be taken care of. Probably not how it pans out in practice, however.
  - leeoniya 15y ago
    the problem is, the customer is not always right. but your money and product is gone regardless...unless you're willing to jump through a ton of dispute hoops most of which take a long time and end up in favor of the customer on some obscure seller agreement clause. paypal does business this way as well.
    - tomkarlo 15y ago
      As a customer, that's how I want it to be. One of main reasons I consistently order from Amazon (and buy Prime) is the bad experiences I've had when trying to get customer service / return / exchanges on other sites. Saving $5 or $10 isn't worth it if I have to waste an hour dealing with issues like getting the wrong item shipped to me, or trying to return something. It's hard to argue with the logic behind a customer-centric policy here. Merchants are going to go where the customers are and they can spread the cost of dispute resolution, etc over far more transactions than an individual. Makes sense to inflict the "pain" on their side.

philip1209 15y ago

georgemcbay 15y ago

Yet another thing missing (which is huge for me personally) is predictability of shipping. If I buy something on Amazon via Prime (which means Amazon themselves will be fulfilling it), I know that if I order it 2 day shipping it will arrive in 2 days. If I bump it up to next day shipping (within the clearly marked and real-time updated window of shipping) it will arrive tomorrow. Amazon and Newegg are the only two web retailers that I trust to predictably get my items on a set time-table. It is all too common for other online sites to gladly accept orders for next day shipping or two day shipping at ridiculous markup and then actually use those shipping methods but only after sitting on the order for days before actually shipping it out... not exactly what I had in mind, guys.

jacques_chester 15y ago
Sadly, this isn't true of international shipping. Depending on where you are in Australia it's entirely hit-and-miss.
nfriedly 15y ago
Agreed completely. I don't think a lone up-vote fully conveys how big of a deal this is to me. I've had horrible experiences with other sites not being able to give me a delivery date, or even worse, giving me one and not making it. I called pcrush.com a while back to confirm that ordering with 2-day shipping would get the item to me by that Friday. When it hadn't arrived by Saturday, I called back and learned that they had just shipped it that morning! I don't think Amazon has ever been late in the two years I've had prime.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
As much as I like moo cards I find their shipping options frustrating. You can order 2nd day shipping or even overnight shipping. But you can't jump ahead in the print queue, which can take as long as a week, making most of the shipping options completely meaningless.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

gcb 15y ago

No. That's true for the backed by Amazon stuff. The bulk is small shops to whom Amazon is just another layer between your credit card and them. For those cases they do nothing.

kahawe 15y ago

Also, amazon offers you free return-shipping and no worries. Typically the 3rd party merchants here in Euroland are literally only a few bucks cheaper on a 3-digit purchase but they take (much) longer to ship, you have to pay for return-shipping and often you need to pay for shipping and handling as well. On top of that, they often go with the absolutely cheapest possible shipping option to squeeze out a few more bucks and that often fails delivering to a DHL Packstation (a popular fully automated self-service post box here), which is a major annoyance. I specifically order to my Packstation so I do _NOT_ have to deal with the horror and pathetic sight that is a German post office in the evening. On top of that I am starting to really, really hate the amazon market place because their product offerings are horribly unorganized, they list in lots of wrong but popular categories and they put something up as a different product despite the same product already being there at least twice. Also I absolutely love ordering online and getting stuff in the mail so I decided to pay the I-dont-know 20 bucks a year for the Amazon Prime subscription and get free next-day(!) delivery on each and every order. Why would I give that up and pay for the slower and worse alternative?