Amazon insisted I report my missing package to the police
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Did you try reaching out to executive customer relations, either through ajassy@amazon.com or jeff@amazon.com? (FWIW Jeff's address still works despite him stepping down 2 years ago)
Always had a very quick response and resolution whenever I had an issue that was beyond the ability of "normal" customer service to resolve.
This approach is incredibly effective, and will almost certainly guarantee one of the infamous "question mark" emails gets sent out. There's a whole process built around question mark emails that drags in a bunch of senior staff to ensure things get resolved.
You can read about it here: https://www.inc.com/business-insider/amazon-founder-ceo-jeff...
I've been on the receiving end of an ajassy question mark email once. That was an interesting way to spend a few days. The customer was complaining about slow uploads to the aws service I worked on. All I had to go from was their country, via some guesswork. They did at least mention which region it was they were having issues with.
It took a bit of effort but I was able to prove from service logs, to a reasonable degree, that the problem was with their ISP. All I had to go from was what country they were in, didn't know their ISP, which added to the fun.
The only mitigation I've found is to make multiple orders separating out heavy/bulky/liquid/light/fragile items, shipping cutoffs permitting. But of course this is less likely to work with Amazon where they coalesce different orders. (The latest incident was due to forgetting to do this, which should be their job, for them)
I was in the middle of getting scammed by a company out of Lithuania when I mentioned that I was going to turn this information over to a reporter at a company I work for, and the tone of the CS person changed from "I can't help you" to "yes, we will give you an immediate and complete refund."
Insurance companies often do the same thing--it's not about catching crooks, it's about making lying much higher risk.
…says someone who doesn’t understand the experience of community–law-enforcement relations in lots of communities in the US.
This has nothing to do with other systemic issues that are off-topic here.
> This has nothing to do with other systemic issues that are off-topic here.
And I rather think my point was that the “other systemic issues” are not off-topic here because they are why police interaction as a reporter/victim is not, and even more relevantly here is not perceived to be risk-free in a number of less-socially-privileged segments of society, and that policies which impose mandatory law enforcement interactions are (and are known to be by firms adopting them) effective means of disincentivizing engagement with whatever function is gatekept by those policies from people in those communities, not merely excluding “scammers”.
If you have a porch camera that shows a theft then that is reportable.
"Amazon says they delivered it but they didn't" could be a paperwork screw up.
So, if I were the police, I wouldn't really put much stock in those photos at all. Surveillance camera footage, however, is a different story.
It is evidence.
It is not irrefutable proof, but then evidence usually isn’t.
Under these circumstances, the author isn't the victim of the crime - the parcel hasn't been delivered so the victim is Amazon. Under HOCR, 3rd party reports can only be taken for rape offences (unless the 3rd party has specific connections, like a parent/guardian).
Amazon know this and they will eventually back down when the case is escalated to someone who knows what they're doing.
All the author is claiming is that their package wasn't delivered. Packages fail to be delivered all the time but that doesn't mean some crime is occurring in every instance.
Even if you take the "delivered to receptionist" as evidence of a crime the author was still not a victim. The item was stolen from the courier not the author.
I think more importantly it doesn't matter if the package failed to be delivered due to a criminal act or a simple mistake. In either case Amazon is equally required to offer redress, so obtaining a police report is a red herring.
Amazon, having predicated their reputation on amazing customer focussed service, now seem to be the epitome of the opposite.
Amazon says they delivered my package, but their picture confirmation of delivery wasn't even my package. I looked outside and couldn't find the package anyway.
If I wanted to mark the package as lost, Amazon says to wait three days as if the package will magically manifest itself. Amazon also says to ask all my neighbors as if delivering my package to someone else is expected.
Lo and behold, the correct package was delivered on the third day without any notification whatsoever.
The fact that the correct package was eventually delivered seems to indicate that Amazon knows there's a discrepancy between their internally- and externally-facing systems and they've built a bunch of speed bumps (like a three-day waiting period) to reduce customer discontent.
My solution was to no longer buy things from Amazon.
Target.com and B&H Photo now get my business. They routinely use carriers who understand they should deliver packages to my building's secure foyer and not the public trans shelter around the corner.
(And yes, I could have packages delivered to a locker, but the nearest locker is a further walk than the local Target store, so why would I?)
Separately, I had my bank block Amazon Prime from charging my debit card. It shows up as a different merchant so they were do it and I can still make one-off purchases (which I don't like to any longer). I did this because the UI to cancel Amazon Prime did not work on my new, updated MacBook. It did not respond to clicks on the "confirm cancel" or whatever button.
The latest scam I ran into was that I would get a tracking number that matched my city and state. USPS doesn't usually put any other information on the tracking number, so Amazon would claim it was delivered.
The scammer would order a very small package (less than a lb) to a random address in our city and then use that tracking number to scam me out of hundreds of dollars.
I was only ever able to get my money back by going to my USPS office and getting a manager to sign and date a form that said that the package was not delivered to my address. Due to privacy concerns, I could never see the destination address.
It's a huge inconvenience and most people won't go through this (or even know they need to get this info from a manger).
Next time try the United States Postal Inspection Service. They are a full federal law enforcement agency with nationwide jurisdiction and might be interested in a case like this (IDK how much they are kicking-down-doors-guns-blazing or investigating dog-bites-mail-person cases).
I once had a law enforcement friend tell me that if you're ever buying items on eBay and are worried about scams, pay for it with a USPS money order (by mail) because any scams would then be mail fraud for the USPIS to investigate vs. your local PD who isn't going to be able to do much if the scammer is elsewhere.
YMMV!
So Amazon claims this isn't a real requirement, that it was a rep error, and refunded the author?