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Consumer rights in the EU are pretty strong. They include two-week free returns, no questions asked, on things purchased online/remote.
These rights do not extend to businesses, though. Sounds like Amazon is not interested in being helpful unless legislation is twisting their arm.
Amazon.com has 30 day free returns and no need to chat with anyone. We can just drop it off at a location with no packaging or printed label. Not sure if it’s different for .de or for businesses. I wouldn’t think it’s different for US business accounts in the US.
The article is long and confusing. Why are you creating a US based account from Germany. No company will allow that due to tax purposes, especially for businesses.
I don’t have a business account with them but have had a Prime subscription since Prime became a thing and have to say that something has changed in regards to the support as of late and not for the better.
Last week, we had 6 orders scheduled to arrive to our house and we got notifications for all that they had been delivered to the office and handed to reception, which we don’t have, just a porch and a door. My wife contacted support to tell them and they said they would refund all of the orders without even looking to see where they got delivered to. The support person gave a few different totals, none of which were correct and we ended up having to go through our orders to add up the refund total since he couldn’t do it correctly. After all of that a refund was issued… and then the packages were delivered about 30 minutes later.
We have been trying for days now to let them know that the packages were delivered so we could be billed correctly but so far, every person we’ve talked to has said they’re allowed to refund but not allowed to charge us and that it had to be passed to someone above them.
I don’t have a lot of faith that they’ll figure it out and worry that some day, they’ll just cancel our account because they detected some type of fraud.
In some cases, it’s easier to eat up the cost instead of dealing with one problematic order and having a potential future customer switch to a different site permanently. You can be sure that they won’t ask if they said they can’t charge you.
If you really want to pay them money, order it again and return the old items. There is an option to not request money.
Companies are not allowed to charge for items they already shipped correctly or incorrectly. Even if they could, I can’t imagine it being easy for anyone to just bill you money and mark the order as completed without shipping anything.
From the FTC website - “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 need to return unordered merchandise. You’re legally entitled to keep it as a free gift.”
Since they issued the refund, you got unordered items. It’s a business write off as a loss to the seller or Amazon.
Thanks very much, that’s what we ended up doing. We just reordered the canceled items and then returned them with the “no refund needed” option chosen.
In a way, I’m glad people are slowing starting to come around and pay attention to this. For years, any time I would publicly complain about Amazon customer service online, it was very common for people to be completely dismissive or even blame me. I’d hear statements like “sure Amazon sucks, but they have great customer service” and I’d think to myself, just wait until it’s your time to find out that the customer service isn’t what you think it is.
Long story short, the item came with a broken part. Should have been quick and easy to rectify (send a replacement part, send a replacement unit, or refund the purchase). The seller was completely unhelpful. Amazon customer service would not intervene and insisted that I continue fruitlessly corresponding with the vendor, even though they had an “A-to-Z” money back guarantee if something goes wrong. It literally took months of back and forth between me, the vendor, and Amazon customer service before things were finally refunded in full.
So, basically I gave them another chance and they showed that things hadn’t improved a bit.
I was transferred between 16 different reps on an amazon chat trying to return a busted chair. I refused to log off, was polite, and started asking what the record for transfers was and of wed best it. I refused to explain the pr9boem again after the third transfer.
I wanted to return the chair and get the same model but not broken. I refused to take it to the post office.
They ended up refunding me the money and I kept the chair. Which kind of works. You can sit in it. Just can’t lock it when you Kean back.
Same thing happened with a vacuum that worked but kind of shot.out dust when you first turned it on.
Many corporations simply see customer support as a department that generates 0 revenue and costs them money.
They try to bring those costs down by off-shoring support, using AI, simply not having support, etc. These companies trade the good will of customers, the livelihoods of their employees, and the larger economy all for their short term greed. Line must go up this quarter.
Easy solution; don’t use Amazon.
I’ve been boycotting amazon for the past 6 or so years, and it’s gone well. But I moved to a remote place a while ago and they’re close to the only shop shipping there. I chose them over other shops for my recent hardware upgrades because the cost of shipping plus the customs’ 20% (applied on the cost of the item plus shipping, of course) make it unbearable unless I go for the lowest bidder. That doesn’t make me happy though
Just don’t used the world’s largest retailer and hope the next largest retailer isn’t mirroring their business practices.
This is long and I got bored but skimming it, it sounds like he was being stubborn about returning the items because he felt aggrieved. I can’t really feel much sympathy for his situation.
Amazon has definitely declined but this isn’t the shinning example I was hoping it to be.
A lot of these small blogs are like that. Just authors being Karens while trying to sound like they’re the victim.
I’ve had Amazon delay refunding items I have returned for months for no reason. I have had to show them the tracking number shows delivered before customer service will issue the refund.
I’ve also been saying this for a long time, only to be dismissed by most who are apathetic to what’s going on. So now, if I do have to deal with them, I only ever make purchases on my credit card, and if there is a problem, they get 1 chance to fix it before I dispute. In the last year, I’ve had to dispute 3 separate times. On the latest one, the item was never delivered. I asked for a refund or replacement, customer service was useless, so I sent in documents to my bank and disputed. What does Amazon do? They sent their “counter of my claim” to the bank from the shipping SHOWING THE ITEM TO BE UNDELIVERABLE as reason why the charge should not be reversed. My bank sided with me luckily. But they are truly awful now, and have been for a while.
Willing to give 10:1 odds that they’ve turned a bunch of their processes over to LLMs.
I’m a little surprised they successfully reached your bank with a rebuttal, rather than just firing mail into the ether.
I don’t use it anymore because of the terrible service and the sneaking of prime at every opportunity. It’s like going to a store where the staff refuses to talk to you and you always have to check if they took some money out of you wallet before you leave.
“Has become”?
oh, sweet, summer child…
Nah, this is a stupid internet shit-take.
Amazon support was actually great when they first started, and has just slowly slid downhill ever since. They had to start strong, because nobody really trusted online shopping yet. People forget that before Amazon was a handful of sketchy one-off websites and mail-in orders.
I feel like such a Karen but in order to get help from Amazon, you just have to ask for a supervisor. They have the power that the old customer service reps used to have
The reason Karens do it is it typically gets them what they want, after all.
Well yes, because they used to be great, now they aren’t.
They haven’t been great in well over a decade
Depends where you’re from. Present Perfect is fine in this context.
I’ve had a lot of shitty experiences with their customer service lately. They were at least somewhat decent a few years back.
