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Comment by notyourwork | Hacker News Reader

I've started contacting customer service and requesting compensation when this happens. I tell them politely I pay for prime benefit and you are not granting me that benefit, therefore I receive a reduced prime fee.

I have had $10 and $5 credits given to me when this happens and I encourage everyone else to. Amazon needs to support the benefits they grant customers for prime.

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Yes. More of this. Amazon is starting to slip. It takes literally 1 minute on support text-chat to do this and it always saves more $ with less hassle than you would have if you went with another site. I've done this 3-4 times and every time I say it's the Nth time I've had to do it and they keep offering more and more.

What's especially annoying is that you have to pro-actively reach out to them. This isn't customer-obsessed.

I think I found a weekend project. Code an Amazon late delivery chat bot. Doesn't seem too hard.

Login and grab orders that are shipped. Compare delivery date (x). See if it changes or matches the estimate at time of order(y). If I package is deemed late create a message containing x and y and order number. Open chat support paste message. Might have to throw some additional canned responses but it seems pretty easy.

I would happily run that.

Email me when it's ready. jim.jones1@gmail.com

I'll help test. :)

Bonus points for using AWS AI services to power this over AWS Lambda.

Yes—and in the process—give Amazon more of your money.

Paribus.co does exactly this

Kinda cool - it does the first part based on what I see. It lets you know that they dropped the ball on delivery, but it's still on you to contact customer-service. Probably not a bad thing but I wish it went just a bit further - perhaps opening the chat for me and pre-populating a chat on the clipbooard or something....

I agree. It doesn't solve the last mile. The 'call to action' is just another email or notification. You still relinquish your inbox. They seem very transparent so I'm not trying to mock. But access to my entire inbox versus just my Amazon? I'll take the later.

What do you mean "it's still on you to contact customer service"?

Paribus contacts customer service to Amazon on your behalf for missed packages. Literally they open a ticket with amazon and complain.[0]

[0]: https://paribus.co/support/topics/purchases-and-claims/274

> you have to pro-actively reach out to them

It's been a long while since they missed a prime delivery date for me, but the couple of times they did, they credited my account automatically without my involvement (other than reading their email notification). Maybe I just got lucky?

Before I just dropped Amazon altogether, something like 75% of my Prime orders were late. At some point it becomes tedious to go to them and ask for some compensation. And they only ever offered me extensions of Prime (and lied about it, too, but that's another story). And I don't even live in some remote area...

I dropped Amazon because of their business practices, but it did not help that I live 30 miles from a fulfillment center and my prime orders we’re consistently late. Walmart is a 5 minute drive, and quiet at night.

Their business and labor practices didn't help either. Of course it didn't help matters that they had flat out lied to me for a week.

It used to be better when (presumably) they had more consistent delivery. They used to offer a month of free Prime membership when your package came late, but now they've been instructed to only offer the credits on additional orders.

I've also received a month extension on my prime. I indicated $10 which was approximate value for month extension.

I would do it but I do not have the patience to be on the phone for 30 min fighting over $10

I think you can do it over chat.

My success rate over chat is 0%. I just get told over and over that 'Prime guarantees shipping, not delivery. So your package will be shipped within 2 days [or 1 day for 1-day] to the nearest Amazon distribution center. Usually this matches with the delivery date, but not always. The updated delivery date for your order is when you will get it, so we are following our end.'

They tried that on me today (I've had a bad run this month - I usually have about an order a day)...

Item bought on Monday, with expected -delivery- Wednesday. Late Monday status said "Package has left seller facility and is in transit to carrier".

It's Friday morning now, no package, and status is still "in transit to carrier".

I argued that "Shipped" means the carrier has it. Not that it may or may not be sitting in a corner of a truck for the last week forgotten or unnoticed.

Give them a link to the terms of service and say "please direct me to the language in your terms of service to that effect." Follow up with "as a paying prime member, I insist on compensation for Amazons failure to meet their guarantee". This has always worked for me. Some reps have pressed back when I insisted on two instances of compensation for one order with two late packages. I replied "I have no sympathy for a multi-million dollar company that fails to meet its obligations." Have gotten several months of prime and gift cards through chat in this way.

I've only done this via chat, I don't have time to sit on hold or deal with phone.

Takes 5 minutes via chat, I do it while watching tv or checking email.

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