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Thursday, April 2, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Amazon.com and the rip off that is free shipping
There was a time when Amazon.com was one of the best places to buy books, electronics, and other good stuff. Unfortunately that time has ended and once again greed is the reason.
When Amazon was a smaller company and was just selling products that they stocked and shipped it was pretty good. At some point they decided to take on an eBay like strategy and let anyone sell anything on their site to make more money. That alone turned out to be a crappy system but their biggest downfall is their crappy customer service.
Ever see the free shipping option on items that ship directly from Amazon.com if your order is over $25.00? Ever notice how all items that are near the $25 price range are always just under $25 so they can get you to either pay shipping (which they will profit from) or add another item to your order (which they will profit from)?
Okay, it’s not an entirely sneaky approach and since the pricing is always listed I would even say there is nothing wrong with this tactic. They are a company and they need to profit to stay in business. Fair enough right?
Wrong. If you choose that free shipping option Amazon will simply hold your order for around a week before it ships out. Why would they do this? What benefit could it possibly bring to them? Simple…they want to sell you on their Amazon Prime service. This is basically an annual shipping subscription where you pay a fee ($80 or so I think) each year and then all your items are shipped 2-day for free. Of course, there is a catch there…it ONLY applies to items that Amazon ships. This is good for books and some electronics but many items are sold by 3rd part companies on Amazon and those don’t apply to the Prime service.
Back to my point though…if you choose the super saver free shipping option they will simply hold your order for a week or so because they want you to then see value in their Prime service. Case in point, I ordered a small Zune hold for around $24.50 and then had to fill my cart to get the free shipping so I chose a pair of headphones for the kid to use. No big deal except that I ordered on the 8th of September and expected my order to ship the next day since both items were listed as in stock.
I check my order a couple days later and see that it has an estimated ship date of the 15th, a full week later and even that was only an estimate…it could take longer. So I wanted to email Amazon but I couldn’t simply reply to the order confirmation emails they sent me, because that would be way too easy. I finally found the contact form on their site and told them that I was onto their scam with the free shipping.
A day later they replied with this…
Come on now. Are they really saving any money by holding the order for a week? Either way, somebody has to pull two products and toss them in a box…that process doesn’t change based on time. So, I replied back to their email to tell them I was reporting this scam to the BBB and got this…
Lovely. Great customer service there! So I found the contact form again and put my reply in there and a few hours later got this reply…
Such a dumb system and it is all designed to get you to upgrade to a faster shipping method or their Prime service. I understand if they can’t offer free shipping, but if you are going to offer free shipping then don’t penalize the customer with an unnecessary delay because they chose that option.
This was my last order with Amazon; there are so many better sites out there like NewEgg.com for electronics, software, computer stuff, etc who ship quickly even when they have free shipping deals.
To all my friends at Amazon.com: You've just been fecal'd!
When Amazon was a smaller company and was just selling products that they stocked and shipped it was pretty good. At some point they decided to take on an eBay like strategy and let anyone sell anything on their site to make more money. That alone turned out to be a crappy system but their biggest downfall is their crappy customer service.
Ever see the free shipping option on items that ship directly from Amazon.com if your order is over $25.00? Ever notice how all items that are near the $25 price range are always just under $25 so they can get you to either pay shipping (which they will profit from) or add another item to your order (which they will profit from)?
Okay, it’s not an entirely sneaky approach and since the pricing is always listed I would even say there is nothing wrong with this tactic. They are a company and they need to profit to stay in business. Fair enough right?
Wrong. If you choose that free shipping option Amazon will simply hold your order for around a week before it ships out. Why would they do this? What benefit could it possibly bring to them? Simple…they want to sell you on their Amazon Prime service. This is basically an annual shipping subscription where you pay a fee ($80 or so I think) each year and then all your items are shipped 2-day for free. Of course, there is a catch there…it ONLY applies to items that Amazon ships. This is good for books and some electronics but many items are sold by 3rd part companies on Amazon and those don’t apply to the Prime service.
Back to my point though…if you choose the super saver free shipping option they will simply hold your order for a week or so because they want you to then see value in their Prime service. Case in point, I ordered a small Zune hold for around $24.50 and then had to fill my cart to get the free shipping so I chose a pair of headphones for the kid to use. No big deal except that I ordered on the 8th of September and expected my order to ship the next day since both items were listed as in stock.
I check my order a couple days later and see that it has an estimated ship date of the 15th, a full week later and even that was only an estimate…it could take longer. So I wanted to email Amazon but I couldn’t simply reply to the order confirmation emails they sent me, because that would be way too easy. I finally found the contact form on their site and told them that I was onto their scam with the free shipping.
A day later they replied with this…
For this order, I see that the shipping method selected is our free Super Saver
Shipping option. This option is for customers who are willing to wait a
little longer to receive their items in exchange for free shipping. This
extra time is reflected in your estimated shipment date and allows us to ship
your order in the most cost-efficient way possible, and enables us to pass the
savings on to you in the form of free shipping.
Come on now. Are they really saving any money by holding the order for a week? Either way, somebody has to pull two products and toss them in a box…that process doesn’t change based on time. So, I replied back to their email to tell them I was reporting this scam to the BBB and got this…
Greetings from Amazon.com. We're sorry. You've written to an address that
cannot accept incoming e-mail.
Lovely. Great customer service there! So I found the contact form again and put my reply in there and a few hours later got this reply…
I have researched your order and see that it was shipped on September 11,
2008. We were able to ship your package in advance of the date estimated on our
web site, so we expect your order will arrive by September 17, 2008.
For your reference, we offer free Super Saver Shipping as an option for
customers who don't mind waiting a little longer to receive their items in
exchange for getting free shipping.
So there you have it. I called them on
their scam, threatened a BBB complaint and suddenly a few hours later my order
shipped…a full 5 days before the estimate? I can say for sure this wouldn’t have
happened if I didn’t email them…I can say that because I have had this issue
several times now.
Such a dumb system and it is all designed to get you to upgrade to a faster shipping method or their Prime service. I understand if they can’t offer free shipping, but if you are going to offer free shipping then don’t penalize the customer with an unnecessary delay because they chose that option.
This was my last order with Amazon; there are so many better sites out there like NewEgg.com for electronics, software, computer stuff, etc who ship quickly even when they have free shipping deals.
To all my friends at Amazon.com: You've just been fecal'd!
Friday, September 5, 2008
Crutchfield.com - Customer service done right
Here is another example of what customer service is supposed to be. I wanted a pair of the Bose Quiet Comfort 2 noise canceling headphones and I found them over here at Crutchfield.com. Since these headphones are the same price at all authorized Bose dealers I figured I would buy them from Crutchfield since they have a good customer service reputation and I have used them several times in the last 10-15 years.
I placed my order and they were quickly shipped out (free shipping!) and even arrived a day ahead of schedule.
I unpacked the headphones and could immediately smell cigar smoke on them. They stunk really bad. Upon further inspection could see that the black fabric inside the headphone ear pieces was falling out as well. They looked new but clearly were used (returned) or refurbished or something.
For $300 this isn't what I expected and so I sent off an angry email to Crutchfield. To be clear, this email was a reply of the email they had sent me with tracking info. I point that out because many companies won't let you reply to an email and instead you have to fill out a form on their site which is the beginning of bad customer services in my book. Crutchfield made it easy to bitch, which I like.
I demanded a new pair be overnighted and that they send a pre-paid shipping label to take these back at their expense.
This was on Thursday and I didn't expect a reply until Friday, at best, but within a few minutes Max at Chrutchfield replied to apologize. That alone calmed me down a lot. Then another reply included a PDF return shipping label. A third email then was a receipt of my new order. Max said they would ship my new order out Friday morning (it was late Thursday by this point) and would send it for next day delivery. Note that the next day would be Saturday and they set it for Saturday delivery. All of that happened in minutes after I emailed them. That's impressive.
It's clear that Crutchfield understands that the problem isn't when something goes wrong, it's how the situation is handled that matters...and they handled it as best as they possibly could. Crutchfield usually doesn't have the cheapest price around on anything but it just goes to show that you get what you pay for. Sometimes when the price is a little bit more it's because that company is providing more than just the physical product they are selling. Keep that in mind.
Although it is Friday and I won't receive the new headphones until tomorrow I am sure it will work out just fine (I even have a tracking number for the new headphones). Neither I or Crutchfield knows why these smell like cigars as they did confirm these are new units and they do not allow smoking in their warehouse. Maybe a customer returned them to Bose directly and thy got listed as new, who knows.
Quick side note: I did try the Bose headphones for a few hours and they are awesome. Best sounding headphones I have ever heard and the noise canceling stuff is amazing.
I placed my order and they were quickly shipped out (free shipping!) and even arrived a day ahead of schedule.
I unpacked the headphones and could immediately smell cigar smoke on them. They stunk really bad. Upon further inspection could see that the black fabric inside the headphone ear pieces was falling out as well. They looked new but clearly were used (returned) or refurbished or something.
For $300 this isn't what I expected and so I sent off an angry email to Crutchfield. To be clear, this email was a reply of the email they had sent me with tracking info. I point that out because many companies won't let you reply to an email and instead you have to fill out a form on their site which is the beginning of bad customer services in my book. Crutchfield made it easy to bitch, which I like.
I demanded a new pair be overnighted and that they send a pre-paid shipping label to take these back at their expense.
This was on Thursday and I didn't expect a reply until Friday, at best, but within a few minutes Max at Chrutchfield replied to apologize. That alone calmed me down a lot. Then another reply included a PDF return shipping label. A third email then was a receipt of my new order. Max said they would ship my new order out Friday morning (it was late Thursday by this point) and would send it for next day delivery. Note that the next day would be Saturday and they set it for Saturday delivery. All of that happened in minutes after I emailed them. That's impressive.
It's clear that Crutchfield understands that the problem isn't when something goes wrong, it's how the situation is handled that matters...and they handled it as best as they possibly could. Crutchfield usually doesn't have the cheapest price around on anything but it just goes to show that you get what you pay for. Sometimes when the price is a little bit more it's because that company is providing more than just the physical product they are selling. Keep that in mind.
Although it is Friday and I won't receive the new headphones until tomorrow I am sure it will work out just fine (I even have a tracking number for the new headphones). Neither I or Crutchfield knows why these smell like cigars as they did confirm these are new units and they do not allow smoking in their warehouse. Maybe a customer returned them to Bose directly and thy got listed as new, who knows.
Quick side note: I did try the Bose headphones for a few hours and they are awesome. Best sounding headphones I have ever heard and the noise canceling stuff is amazing.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
ThePocketSolution.com - Online buying done right
I was in the market for a way to extend the battery life of a Zune (It's like an iPod only less pretentious (there I go using big boy words!)) so that the battery would last longer when used for playing video on the device. This will be useful for plane trips to keep the boy occupied and is much smaller and easier to deal with than those portable DVD players.
In a few minutes I found a few battery pack options that would work from places like Amazon.com and Buy.com but once you added the shipping on they couldn't compete with this one: http://www.thepocketsolution.com/PSI-32452/Microsoft+Zune+AA+Battery+Booster.html
I was able to use Google Checkout on their site, which I am not a big fan of but it does speed things up and the total bill was only $15.85 shipped. Seemed liked a fair deal for a hunk of plastic.
That site even let me pick an option to ship the product in environmentally friendly packaging (when available) which was interesting and confusing. I expected the product to be hand delivered by a smelly tree hugger on a bicycle but that isn't what they meant I guess because it shipped in a not-so-environmentally-friendly bubble mailer. Inside of that was a cardboard box holding the unit so I guess that part can be recycled. Still, a fair effort compared to most hard plastic wrapping everything else comes in. My guess is that larger items might ship with cardboard boxes with earth friendly peanuts or whatever for packing but such a packing job wouldn't make sense for a tiny item like this that was shipping via USPS.
Oh yea, back the point of this post... I placed the order at 4pm on Monday the 25th of August 2008 and the next day (26th) at 6am I had an email showing that it shipped via USPS with a delivery confirmation number. It arrived at my house on Friday the 29th.
Not only did this company NOT gouge me on shipping (only $2.90 shipped) but they shipped the product the next day. Keep in mind that I ordered at 4pm in AZ time which was hours later in NY time where they company is located so they were probably closed when I ordered. I hate to say that's impressive because it's what I expect any time I order, but the truth is that not many places work like that. In fact, the bigger the company the longer that process seems to take. When you go with a small guy like this company they have more to lose and generally understand what taking care of their customers means.
I didn't have to email them and ask for a tracking number or a status update or anything. They did exactly what you would expect and that's rare so I figured I would give them a good plug. they have all sort of Zune, iPod, iPhone, and other such accessories as well. Please note that I am not affiliated with this company (or any company I mention on this blog).
Now, if only the idiots at Ikea.com were this good...but that's for another post because that one is still assery in progress.
In a few minutes I found a few battery pack options that would work from places like Amazon.com and Buy.com but once you added the shipping on they couldn't compete with this one: http://www.thepocketsolution.com/PSI-32452/Microsoft+Zune+AA+Battery+Booster.html
I was able to use Google Checkout on their site, which I am not a big fan of but it does speed things up and the total bill was only $15.85 shipped. Seemed liked a fair deal for a hunk of plastic.
That site even let me pick an option to ship the product in environmentally friendly packaging (when available) which was interesting and confusing. I expected the product to be hand delivered by a smelly tree hugger on a bicycle but that isn't what they meant I guess because it shipped in a not-so-environmentally-friendly bubble mailer. Inside of that was a cardboard box holding the unit so I guess that part can be recycled. Still, a fair effort compared to most hard plastic wrapping everything else comes in. My guess is that larger items might ship with cardboard boxes with earth friendly peanuts or whatever for packing but such a packing job wouldn't make sense for a tiny item like this that was shipping via USPS.
Oh yea, back the point of this post... I placed the order at 4pm on Monday the 25th of August 2008 and the next day (26th) at 6am I had an email showing that it shipped via USPS with a delivery confirmation number. It arrived at my house on Friday the 29th.
Not only did this company NOT gouge me on shipping (only $2.90 shipped) but they shipped the product the next day. Keep in mind that I ordered at 4pm in AZ time which was hours later in NY time where they company is located so they were probably closed when I ordered. I hate to say that's impressive because it's what I expect any time I order, but the truth is that not many places work like that. In fact, the bigger the company the longer that process seems to take. When you go with a small guy like this company they have more to lose and generally understand what taking care of their customers means.
I didn't have to email them and ask for a tracking number or a status update or anything. They did exactly what you would expect and that's rare so I figured I would give them a good plug. they have all sort of Zune, iPod, iPhone, and other such accessories as well. Please note that I am not affiliated with this company (or any company I mention on this blog).
Now, if only the idiots at Ikea.com were this good...but that's for another post because that one is still assery in progress.
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