Comment by koyote | Hacker News Reader

Comment by koyote | Hacker News Reader

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Definitely noticed this as well.

Five or more years ago I bought a kettle from Amazon and two months later it starts leaking. Turns out it's a design flaw and a lot of reviews on the kettle mentioned the same issue. I sent a support ticket and they refunded me immediately and told me I could keep the kettle.

Then last year I ordered a knife on Amazon. A month later I receive a water flosser...

I contact support (which is now next to impossible to find in the UI) and they tell me they can't refund me unless I send the item back and they also won't be sending me my actual purchase. This was during lockdown and as I do not own a printer I was not able to print out the return slip. They also refused to come and pick it up. I got nothing, not even a "we're sorry" coupon; my account is over 20 years old.

So we went from automatic refund + you get to keep the item for an issue that was not their fault to them completely fucking up my order and then making me go through hoops, spend me own money to send their mistake back to them.

The good news is that there are a lot of different and competitive online retailers around these days, and a lot of shops are now online due to Covid. So it was not very difficult for me to stop using Amazon altogether.

> I contact support (which is now next to impossible to find in the UI) and they tell me they can't refund me unless I send the item back and they also won't be sending me my actual purchase.

If you receive something in the mail by accident, you are under no obligation to return it. I would have issued a chargeback given that you never received the item you paid for.

> By law, companies can’t send unordered merchandise to you, then demand payment. That means you never have to pay for things you get but didn’t order. You also don’t have to return unordered merchandise. You’re legally entitled to keep it as a free gift.

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-do-if-youre-bille...

Charging back on your Amazon prime account will quickly get it closed. Any gift balance you have goes with it. You can probably keep access to your digital purchases if you complain enough.

It certainly doesn't sound legal to invalidate your gift card balance, and it seems at least in one case a banned person received reimbursement in the form of a check.

> “All open orders were canceled, I just could access digital content purchased in the account. I had over $100 in my gift card balance and Amazon agreed to send me the refund, I received a check in my mailbox after 1 week,” wrote Do, who calculated that his rate of return for Amazon is about 17% — ordering 104 items and returning 18.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/if-youre-returning-a-lot-o...

If you do a chargeback, you have to be prepared for the company to permanently ban you as a customer. Many people are not willing to take that risk with their Amazon account.

I'm fortunate in that I have been able to cancel my amazon subscription and not do any more purchases with them, but if the poo hit the rotary accelerator I am sure I would be grateful to have the option.

I am not sure what the law is here in Australia, but as others have mentioned, a chargeback would have jeopardised my account. I don't pay for prime (although I think I actually had a prime trial at the time of the issue, which makes it even more infuriating) but have quite a few kindle books.

2 weeks ago I contacted Amazon because a delivery reached the estimated time and was marked as possibly lost. Because the order was split into 2 deliveries half which arrived and the other half lost, they couldn’t create a new order. So they refunded the missing items and delivery costs. Reordered and arrived in 5 days.

First time in like 10 years I’ve had to contact support and was happy!

Are you in the USA? Every Amazon return I have done is they give you a QR code and I drop it off at a UPS store. No printing required and UPS handles the packaging.

Amazon has many faults but returns have always worked well for me.

Australia.

I guess their systems aren't quite as smooth here. I'd still be quite annoyed to have to go to UPS in my free time to return something I never ordered.

Years ago I started using a Dot/Alexa. One day I needed to return something and asked Alexa for customer support and "she" responded by reading me the definition of customer support from Wikipedia or something. I tried numerous times in different ways before realizing there was no way to contact support through Alexa. That was the beginning of the end of our twenty year relationship.

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