Daily Archives: December 11, 2008

I Am Not Happy With Amazon

On Monday I tried to place an order with Amazon for almost $500 worth of Christmas gifts for the family.

I had 24 items in my shopping cart. I pressed the checkout button. I tried to choose a shipping address. I pressed the Ship to this address button and nothing happened. I could not advance to choosing a shipping method or payment method.

This was 9 pm central so I went to the help page and clicked the Contact button and then had Amazon call me.

The customer service rep was unable to help me and suggested I try again in a half hour or so and call back if I still couldn’t advance past choosing a shipping address.

I tried again and couldn’t advance past choosing a shipping address. By then it was too late for me to call back so I went to bed.

Tuesday morning I tried again to place the order and once again I couldn’t advance past  choosing a shipping address so I called again.

I was on the phone with the customer service rep for 38 minutes. He couldn’t help me either. He wanted me to put my credit card information in the One-click settings. I don’t use One-click because I don’t want to associate a particular card with a particulr address. I use different accounts depending on what I’m purchasing. He told me he was going to escalate the issue to the team. I received an email shortly thereafter that said, in part,

Greeting’s from Amazon.com

I have forwarded your concern to the techinical team and they will work on this issue.  Rest assured,  they will get back to you within the next 24 to 48 hours.  I apologize for this inconvenience.

Please be assured that we are here to make things easier for you and will do whatever we can to prevent you from bearing any kind of loss.

So on Wednesday I tried again several times and still couldn’t get past choosing a shipping address. I was also getting messages that items in my cart had been removed because the item was no longer in stock and the price went down slightly on one item.

This morning at about 5:30 I tried once again. At the shopping cart there were notices that two of my items had risen in price (one was the item from yesterday that had decreased in price) and two items were no longer available. My order from Monday that had 24 items and was nearly $500 in price was now just over $400 and only had 19 items in it.

I was finally able to advance past choosing a shipping address. When I got to shipping options I chose super saver shipping because the front page at Amazon said that I still had 7 days to order and be able to receive my order by Christmas. But the next page told me that the microwave/convection oven I had ordered would not arrive by Christmas with super saver shipping and if I wanted it by then I should choose a faster shipping option.

So I called Amazon  once again. I explained to the customer service rep that I had been trying to place this order since Monday. That there were issues with their site that prevented me from placing the order, that I had lost items from my shopping cart because I hadn’t been able to place the order when I wanted to, and now at least one item in my order (the most expensive one) wouldn’t make it by Christmas unless I spent more on shipping.

I asked for free 2 day shipping  on my order because of all the inconvenience that I have had with this order so far. She put me on hold while she found out if she could do that.

About 5 minutes later she came back on the line and said that 2nd day shipping for the order would amount to around $100 and that they could only give me a $30 credit towards the shipping costs.

I told her if that’s all she could do then I would cancel the order. And then I hung up and canceled the order.

Shortly thereafter I received an email saying that I could have a free trial of Amazon Prime and that after the trial period I could pay the $79 annual fee. It did say that I could go into my account and decline to upgrade to the full annual Amazon Prime if I so chose.

Well, the order is canceled and I will now do my shopping at brick and mortar stores for this Christmas and I have only 2 weeks to do it. I actually have to get it done by next Friday because the kids will be out of school after that and one just can not take the children with when buying Christmas presents…

Hubby has an order in with Amazon for an out of stock book that he needs for work and he may well cancel his order too. That book is $100…

So needless to say, I am not a happy camper with Amazon right now.

mm-5