WWID? Amazon screw ups
3What would Irk do?
Ya, if this is TL;DR, skip to the end of the missive…
I received a birthday gift a couple weeks ago via Amazon. It was something I don’t need or want, can’t make any use for. I opted to use Amazon’s gift return process and use the credit to purchase something I can use. Don’t get hung up on this bit, “what to do with unwanted gifts” isn’t the point.
Using Amazon’s online return process I printed a return label and shipped the item back on October 6th. When I did this, the online system indicated I would receive a gift card credit within 2 to 3 hours after they received the item.
Amazon received the item Monday morning, October 12th. By Thursday evening, October 15th I still had not received a credit. So I navigated Amazon’s horrible customer service system maze and spoke with them via phone call. 20 minutes later I was told I should see the credit within 2 to 3 hours.
By Monday morning, October 19th I still had not received a credit, so back to Amazon’s customer service maze, and another phone call. After roughly 90 minutes with a customer service rep who kept trying to ask me about my order for envelopes and paper clips I asked to be transferred to a sup or manager. Holding for 20 minutes, sup answers call, gets the whole sorted tale and insists she’s the person to solve all my worldly problems. Another 15 minutes later (in over 2 hours now) I was guaranteed I would see a credit within 2 to 3 hours.
By Tuesday afternoon, October 20th, still no credit. Back to the maze, another phone call, another interrogation, another promise of 2 to 3 hours. No thanks, I need to speak with your sup please.
I go through the whole thing with the sup and insist that I will stay on the line until my account shows the credit. Roughly about 90 minutes later I start to see credits trickling into my gift card balance. $22.91 here, $13.48 there… it seems the sup went back to old orders and started processing refunds until he reached a level of about the amount of my return gift value.
Fair enough. It took hours and hours, but if that’s what Amazon needs to do, so be it. I’ll take my balance and move on with my life.
That was Tuesday afternoon. On Thursday morning I received an email notification from Amz that my return had been processed and my gift card balance credited. Sure enough, the original return had finally been processed.
Amz-> CS maze-> Phone-> 25 minutes later and the CS rep is still trying to explain to me how it isn’t possible for her to process a return for $13.48 for an old order that had already been refunded. She didn’t want to hear that all I need is for her to reverse the (duplicate) credit which appeared this morning.
I’ve already put so much time and effort and frustration into dealing with I thanked her for her time and assistance and ended the call.
TL;DR: Amazon gave me a double credit for a single returned item. I tried to get them to fix it. What would Irk do?
- 14 comments, 13 replies
- Comment
Take the money and btw…
/giphy happy birthday
@tinamarie1974 Thank you! I try not to dwell on it. Every day that passes and something new aches makes me live in a constant state of denial.
@ruouttaurmind age is a state of mind.
I had a great grandma who lived to be a centennial. She traveled to New Orleans in her 80’s to celebrate Mardi Gras. Traveled anywhere anytime as long as someone offered. The woman was 100 and was NOT old.
So, think young
@tinamarie1974
Yup, and mine is in the state of disrepair.
@ruouttaurmind - you blame the goat, you take the money, buy some breakfast octopi, and you thank Jeff for his generosity
Also, props for attempting the return. I would have done the same, but I also would have given up and said enough is enough
@kykazaa There is enough credit there to order the LEGO T1, the Beetle, and still have enough left for a couple subscribe and save orders of breakfast octopi.
@ruouttaurmind well, Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday!
I’d quit bothering. I’ve had the same type of thing happen.
You’ve done what you can. I wouldn’t worry about it now, you made a good faith effort to get it fixed.
Their mess up. Amazon can handle it. Not like they are broke or anything.
I think the $13.48 is (inadequate) compensation for your time and aggravation. I have had similar episodes with Office Depot. I ordered a tablet, got a text telling me it was in the store ready for pick up. Drove 35 miles to get it and lo and behold… it was nowhere to be found. “Oh, that is being shipping in this afternoon”. Yeah, well, I was leaving out of town so when I came back I contacted the store and they said since I didn’t pick it up, the order was cancelled and a refund would be issued to the payment source used.
A couple of days later I got an email with a return merchandise ticket for pickup by UPS and a notice I would get credit when the item got back to the supplier. Trouble was, I NEVER got the item to start with.
It took several contact attempts via chat, email and phone before I finally got the credit (about 30 days later).
@chienfou $13.48 was just one of five old orders which were credited. I was expecting $141, I wound up with $155ish, and then today my original $141 as well. Nearly $300 when I was entitled to $141.
I tried to keep it simple the last time I called and just asked her to reverse the $141 credit. But she kept focusing on the most recent transaction, which was the $13.48.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@chienfou @ruouttaurmind They can be totally screwed up. I had a double refund, and while not as much extra as you got, it was still fairly hefty. Took me many phone calls over several months to get it fixed. I kept thinking how stupid are they? Here I am trying to give them money back that belongs to them and they are making it as difficult as possible.
Of course then they can surprise you. I got a past tenant’s textbooks delivered to my townhouse. I called Amazon and convinced them to call her to come get them (school had already started and they originally had wanted me to send the books back). About an hour later the owner of the books showed up. She must have updated her mailing address with them as I didn’t get anything else of hers again.
You brought the error to their attention and requested they correct it. They would not or could not comply. You have done your part being honest and reaching out to them, and you have spent a ton of your time dealing with them on both sides of the issue. Looks like Uncle Jeff wanted you to get yourself a little something for your birthday. Happy Late Birthday!
/giphy you tried
I have never heard of an amazon gift return? I would guess they are relatively, on an Amazon scale, rare and don’t talk to each other or put much effort into them. I wouldn’t worry about it if you got the original credit. I would have just sent an email/ticket that they over credited you and you are not going to use those credits and if they don’t take then back after a year of whatever… Eh. You’re not responsible and you tried.
I once ordered something for someone and just had it shipped to their address. It showed delivered but she didn’t get it… I just reported it was lost online after a week and figured they’d follow up with the carrier insurance or whatever and resend it. Instead they refunded it almost immediately cause not delivered. And a couple days later someone down the road showed up with “hey I have your package?” Wasn’t really anyway to deal with this situation.
@unksol A gift return is the process Amz has in place for a recipient to directly return an item received as a gift, drop shipped directly from Amz to the recipient.
When you send a gift via Amz you can specify in the ordering process that it’s a gift (there’s a checkbox in the checkout bit). When you do that, Amz includes a gift receipt in a shipping box which includes a shortcode.
As the recipient, when you enter the shortcode in your browser you are taken to an Amz page which gives you the option to send a thank you message to the sender, and/or return the item. The sender is not notified that you’ve returned the gift.
When I send a gift I always check that box to ensure the recipient has convenient options in case the item is the wrong size, colour, just don’t want it, etc. it would pain me to think of a gift just sitting in a drawer or closet, or worse, the trash, because it wasn’t something the recipient didn’t want or was the wrong size. The giving is the gesture, not the specific gift.
@ruouttaurmind @unksol I’ve had to do that. For a Stephen King book I was sent for my birthday that I’d already purchased.
The sender had considered that might happen and she checked with Amazon to make sure I could return it before buying it.
@lisaviolet It’s actually a pretty tidy system when it works as designed. I’ve used it a couple times previously and everything was smooth and flawless.
Now if more people would just get over the whole “you can’t return a gift” nonsense. Personally, I would be quite pleased to discover someone returned a gift I sent and used the proceeds to get something they really wanted. Because after all, my goal in giving gifts is for the recipient to have something they want and can use. Imma definitely not be hung up on the “but I selected that especially with you in mind” or “but it took me so long to find exactly the right thing”. Bollocks! If it truly was “just the right thing” they wouldn’t have returned it! Get over yourself gift givers!
/giphy happy belated birthday
I had an OK experience yesterday. I pre-ordered a video game being developed by Amazon themselves right when it was first announced, back in 2017, amd they were giving it away (i.e. pre-order price of $0.00).
Fast forward 3 years, and the game is getting ready to launch. Except Amazon decides to give the game a new item number and a new pre-order price, forgetting that people like me already pre-ordered it 3 years earlier and were in two beta sessions over the summer.
So I did the CS chat, got transferred to a CS rep who told me she couldn’t do anything, so I asked to escalate to someone who could. Duh?
The manager took a bit to understand and said he couldn’t just switch the order since they were now different ASIN numbers. So I said, well, how about credit me the current pre-order price and I’ll just pre-order it again under the new item. He said OK, and a credit appeared on my gift card balance, and I biught the new pre-order for $0.00 (as much as the original pre-order cost).
It was probably a lot easier since Amazon was the only party the entire time, so they couldn’t weasel out of it by claiming it was some merchant third party issue.
@ruouttaurmind, you returned a gift to Amazon?! Are you out of your mind???
@danlo The preponderance of evidence seems to indicate a greater than average likelihood I might just be
/giphy out of my mind
Yeah I’ve been having a similar issue with this site
I ordered the kn95 masks over 3 weeks ago and they still say they’re at the post office even though my friend down the street ordered the same ones at the same time and already has hers so apparently it’s lost in the mail and I contacted Meh about it 4 days ago and still no one has gotten back to me and I’m having to message them everyday now to try and get it sorted out and am out $40 until they decide to respond to my emails
I never used to have a problem with meh, but this has turned into some of the worst customer service of all time
@rebrace make sure you go to www.meh.com/support/tickets to see if any replies were missed.
I concur with what everyone else has said (you tried to be honest, it’s their mistake, you spent wayyy too much time dealing with this, etc.) but would also add you should use the credit sooner rather than later in case they finally figure things out & reverse the credit