Rant about customer service being awful and the solution I found for how to get real help.

TLDR: Email [email protected] and [email protected] and ([email protected] for good measure) with a detailed accounting of how customer service fails you for rapid escalation. I was explicitly told that this was acceptable to share.

Long rant:

Hey folks, so on march 10th, I ordered a pull down green screen. It was a third party seller, but amazon fulfilled. after 10 days of the delivery getting pushed back, I reached out ot customer service and was transferred from indian call center to north american based support, who said it would be shipped by the 28th or I'd be refunded or it'd be replaced.

Some time after this, it was simply cancelled. I noticed it in my cancelled orders and called repeatedly asking for them to reship etc, and it just wasn't happening. When asking to speak to north american customer service again, i was told this is impossible and no human on earth has this power. I asked why it was cancelled, asked them to uncancelled it, etc, but nothing could fix this. The indian service was useless and could offer nothing. I was hung up on, sent a blank email at one point and I was stern - but not screaming, not yelling, not swearing. Just "I was told this one thing, and I want this thing I was told to be honored."

After wasting 5+ hours on phone calls and escalations and finding it to truly be pointless, I set out to find another way to contact amazon. I found Vincent Duong and doug herring's contact information publicly listed on linkedin and other places - C levels at amazon USA, so I reached out to them directly. I did not receive a reply, but I did receive a call from Amazon.com Executive Customer Relations and their reply email was [email protected] rather than just [email protected]

This person was legitimately helpful. they pulled the actual call audio and listened to it and stated that it was very clear in the call you would receive the product if it wasn't shipped. they said the cancellation was a misunderstanding by an "outsourced service department" and that resulted in an unsolvable situation. After we talked it over and I was given a 50 dollar credit (item cost was initially 100ish) and was assured this wouldn't happen again, as is generally the case with these things, but it was nice that he had all the information and was able to understand that I was told something so they should honor it. Which... they didn't. but it was better than nothing after waiting more than a month for something I could just order from aliexpress for 60 bucks and also wait a month. I asked, repeatedly, if I could share any contact information for this department and he said there was no way to call in, but that I was free to share how I escalated it. I made it very clear that the email addresses were public, but I emailed C-levels directly to get further engagement on my issue, and he said that is appropriate.

This was not the end of my frustration, though. I wanted to order a large TV to celebrate a personal milestone, and placed an order earlier this week for an 85 inch LG, scheduled to be delivered today. I was called and told the packaging was damaged, so they could just ship a new one tomorrow unless I wanted to inspect it, but I told him that was just fine as long as they could ship another - as someone less tech savy would be receiving it under instructions to reject any serious damage or if the TV was visible through damage, which he said it was. So that's great, they'll reship. Large/heavy item handling is much less frustrating to deal with, it seemed like. I get a call from an extremely noisy indian call center 20 minutes later, informing me of a refund to my card, it will take 3-5 days to process. I say I don't authorize this, I want it reshipped as I was told would happen, one is still in stock and this should be doable. The price has been fluctuating up as much as 300 in the last few days so I want it for the price I paid, and I planned my weekend around picking it up and installing it, and was told "oh well the refund is already pushed sir you must purchase again"

Well the card I used has a good interest rate I wanted to take advantage of, but not a high enough limit to just throw another 1700$ TV on it, so this just does not work. I was told one thing, and then immediately had the rug pulled. I thought I could follow the same procedure as last time, but I figured at this point I'm just tired of amazon. I cancelled my prime and found the same TV at best buy for the same price I paid, for pickup on sunday.

And I just don't want to deal with spending hours on the phone with amazon, again, to find out that someone who says something has absolutely no responsibility for what they say whatsoever. In general it seems like amazon isn't always the cheapest option anymore, and they certainly don't have even remotely useful customer service.

So I wanted to rant about all that, and share what did work for me, for those who may want a solution. I was explicitly told, again, by exec CS that this information was OK to share. And if anyone else has any information on moving away from amazon, I'd love to hear it. Newegg seems terrible these days but generally it seems like best buy has competitive pricing for large items, so I imagine that's the case for a lot of things you might typically order - less one stop shopping, but not really paying more, generally.