I must be getting old.
How did these companies get so massive without any meaningful customer service departments? Amazon, Google, Facebook and many, many others where customer service is not even bothered with, yet people continue to use their products and services.
As a customer, I've had no trouble reaching Amazon customer service when I need help, and they've always been helpful - refunding or replacing the defective product.
The parent also didn't mention that Amazon has a policy of not allowing sellers to sell their products for a lower price on their own website. If only customers knew how much Amazon is screwing over sellers, they would be wary. Many sellers I know themselves don't shop on Amazon themselves due to this.
It does surprise me though that given that there's a lot of counterfeit junk and scam-like sellers on the site (which is a pretty bad customer experience). You'd think they'd shut that down.
In practice it doesn't matter because prime shipping is so much better than any non-amazon option I just deal with that risk (with some exceptions where I'll buy directly from the creator of the product).
Really? I'm strongly considering canceling my prime subscription specifically because shipping has gotten so awful. Amazon won't even allow you to select a shipping speed anymore. Pretty much everywhere else on the internet is better.
- Ordered a blanket directly from the blanket maker's website, order details were delayed, no shipping notice, no out of stock notice, order took 4 months to arrive (it was supposed to be a gift).
- Ordered some flatware from MOMA was charged and no shipping details updated, I waited six weeks before emailing them - they said the system 'lost the order' I had to have paypal reverse the charges.
There are other examples, but generally non-amazon sucks - even in the best of cases it's twice as long and usually expensive.
With Amazon I often get two day, next day, or even same day shipping for free. Packages arrive typically well packaged and undamaged and the tracking is really good. If there are any issues they are quick to resolve it.
That's another thing. Amazon used to ship things in boxes with appropriate padding. Now they're shipping books in manila envelopes, with predictable damage to the book from the tightness of the envelope.
It's mostly a comparison I'm making to alternatives which I've found to be worse (usually the non-amazon packaging is terrible).
This isn't as true as it used to be, and it's getting less true as time goes on.
This is why, when I decided to ditch Amazon, I also decided to avoid buying from companies that sell on Amazon.
They can't wrap their head around how you can have useful-ish software with shitty incomplete out of date documentation and tech support via people competing to get noticed on StackOverflow for their resume.
The more time goes on, I'm not sure I can wrap my head around it either...