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Amazon.com GripesAmazon.com sells lots of stuff but is famous for selling books |
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As per Calling iTunes by Timothy Noah in Slate Aug 8, 2005, the customer service number for Amazon is 800-201-7575 (24x7). According to Hard to Find 800 Numbers call 866-348-2492 for rebate status information
June 21, 2007. I placed an order for three items on June 8th. When it arrived on June 20th, there were
only two items in the box. A visit to the Help section at Amazon.com
says:
"Are you missing an item? Check the packing slip that was included with your shipment ...
we may have split your order into multiple shipments, which we would indicate on the packing slip."
There was also no packing slip
The computer gripe came about when I called customer service today. There was a recording saying their database was down so there was nothing a customer service rep could do. Then it hung up the phone.
A problem request entered into the customer service section of amazon.com was reponded too very quickly and they are re-sending the missing item.
April 6, 2006. 18 weeks in Amazon rebate hell By Stefanie Olsen CNET News.com. Problems getting a rebate from Amazon.com
February 9, 2006. A reader of this page wrote about his experience buying something at amazon.com that was not being sold by Amazon. I can't verify this.
"If you place an order on the Amazon website, and it says the order is "available from" somebody besides Amazon.com, better hope that that particular supplier doesn't run out-of-stock. If they do, you will get e-mail notices from Amazon explaining that there is a delay in fulfilling your order, and ask for approval to extend it, even though the Amazon.com web site represents the product as shipping within 24 hours. Amazon has committed your order to their partner, and refuses to take responsibility for it anymore; they cannot (or will not) do anything except cancel it. And you cannot talk to the actual supplier, since you are not their customer, but Amazon's!"
 December 9, 2005. I placed an order with
Amazon on November 20, 2005.
Everything was fine with the order. FedEx delivered it on November 23,
2005. All was well ... until today, when Amazon sent me an email that they
just shipped the order. Say what? Here is screen shot from Amazon.com
showing the FedEx delivery tracking and the incorrect ship date of
today.
What kind of computer system can ship an order on December 9th that was already delivered on November 23rd? Great programming Amazon. Time to hire some new nerds. I emailed customer service in fear that they shipped the order a second time. They replied: Thank you for writing to Amazon.com to let us know that your package arrived safely. I apologize that your order is still showing as unshipped in "Your Account." Our technical specialists are working hard to correct the problem so that we can update the order status online as soon as possible. I have checked your account and can assure you that no duplicate orders have been placed. If you receive any automated e-mails regarding this order then please feel free to disregard them. Amazon hires people who can't tell the difference between zero and two. The problem was that their system said my order was shipped twice, not never. That's a "2" not a "0" for you Amazon employees. Technical specialists working hard to correct this problem? Yeah sure. |
October 30, 2004. IE6 Windows XP Home Edition with all patches except SP2. While checking on recent orders at Amazon.com I had to enter my Amazon userid (really an email address) and password. For the longest time, the web page where you do this is not secure - that is the URL is not HTTPS and there is no gold lock on the IE status bar. I have been getting around this by entering a bad password. The web page that says the password is invalid is a fully secure web page. Rather it has been fully secure.
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The problem is not just IE and not just Amazon.com, but something about the interaction of the two. Next I used IE on a Windows 2000 SP4 machine with all bug fixes applied. This generated a security alert: Revocation information for the security certificate for this site is not available. Do you want to proceed? I said yes and again, IE did not display a gold lock icon on the status bar for the Amazon.com sign-in page. Click on the thumbnail image here to see the full Security Alert window. In the second copy of IE (Windows 2000), Tools -> Internet Options ->
Advanced tab -> Security section, the two options for checking for security
certificate revocation are both enabled. In the first copy of IE (Windows XP),
the option to check for publisher's certificate revocation was on, but the
option to check for server certificate revocation was off. |
Web Site Broken |
August 20, 2004. I need to print a receipt for a recent order to file for a rebate. Instead, I got an error message that an "error occurred". |
July 2, 2004. Gripes by Chris Pirillo. Quoting: "I have to express extreme disappointment in Amazon's Gift Certificate program. I sent one to my mom for Mother's Day - and she couldn't get the code to work. By the time I found out, however, the message had been deleted." And it goes on.
May 26, 2003. Two items that I recently purchased had rebates from Amazon. In both cases the rebate coupon was a JPG file (rather than the normal Adobe Acrobat file) and the quality was so poor that after printing it many times from many programs using many options, I could not get one legible copy. The details are documented on the rebates gripe page.
March 10, 2003. The
web page for the book Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization by Andrew B.
King says that it usually ships within 24 hours. However, when I ordered the
book, the estimated ship date was March 18, 2003 - 10 days from now, not
one.
FYI: It actually shipped on March 13, 2003, three days after the order was
placed.
October 10, 2002. I ordered a software program from Amazon on September 25, 2002. They shipped it on September 28, 2002. The estimated delivery date was October 4th thru October 10th. Usually, I've received merchandise well before the estimated delivery date. This item was not received by the October 10th estimate.
All my recent orders have qualified for free shipping. This order did too. However, unlike all my other recent orders, this was not shipped via UPS ground. Instead, it was sent by something Amazon refers to as "Ship Carrier". Orders shipped via UPS ground can be tracked at the UPS web site. Amazon does not have an option to track packages sent via this "Ship Carrier".
Emailing Amazon about this is possible, but finding it on their web site was
difficult. The trail to an email link (which really isn't email) is
1. Start at www.amazon.com/help
2. Click on "Problem with an order"
3. At the bottom of the page is a button labeled "email
us"
October 11, 2002. Amazon responded quickly to my inquiry about the missing merchandise and said "it appears the package may be lost". They are sending the merchandise again, estimated to arrive October 23, 2002. I asked them who or what "Ship Carrier" is.
October 12, 2002. They responded to my follow-up message very quickly and noted that they use one of four shipping companies depending on assorted factors. Which company lost my software? Quoting: "Unfortunately, in this case, we are unaware of the specific shipper it was shipped after it left our Fulfillment Center." Wow. There is a computer system that needs to be upgraded. I have no doubt however that Amazon will re-send the merchandise in a timely manner.
Amazon emailed me today that the replacement order was shipped. Quoting: "We thought you'd like to know that we shipped your items today". The email also suggested looking at www.amazon.com/your-account where it said the order was "Shipping soon. We are preparing these items for shipment". The computer system that sent the email hasn't yet told the system that generates web pages that the order has shipped. Note: The next day (October 13th) the web site still showed a status of "Shipping soon". On October 14th, same thing. The replacement order was issued by customer service on the 11th at 1:00 AM.
The replacement order arrived on October 15, 2002. The order status web page on the 16th said that it had shipped on the 12th. As noted above, two days after it shipped, the order status web page was still reporting is as "shipping soon".
Interestingly, the replacement order was shipped via the US Post Office and it is correctly reported as such. Who shipped the initial order ("Ship carrier") remains a mystery. Maybe it never got sent at all.
On the right is a screen shot for an order I placed with Amazon for a couple books recently. This order was eligible for free shipping and I opted for the free shipping. Yet, it certainly appears on the top part that my credit card was charged an amount ($57.44) that includes $4.98 for shipping. On the other hand, the bottom part says that the grand total for the order is $52.46 which excludes any shipping charges. Which amount was my credit card actually billed? Beats me. When I get my credit card bill, I'll update this item. The email that Amazon sent when this order shipped said: September 25, 2002. Turns out it's a bug. No big deal, all software has bugs. Amazon found the problem on their own (I didn't contact them but probably others did) and today they sent an email that said: We regret that due to an error you
were charged for Super Saver Shipping, although your order |
I purchased a computer monitor from Amazon on April 27, 2002. It was not in stock at the time, they expected to ship it in about 6 days or so. I was willing to wait. The monitor was eligible for Free Super Saver Shipping. This was fine with me, even though they warned that shipping this way was a few days slower than their other shipping methods. For free shipping, I was willing to wait a few days. The email confirmation from Amazon for my order said the monitor "usually ships in 2 to 3 days", which sort of conflicts with what the web site said at the time I ordered it.
April 30, 2002. Amazon emails messages to customers both to confirm their placing an order and when the order actually ships. As of this morning, I had not received the email about the monitor having shipped. I checked the web site and Amazon said they expect to ship the monitor soon.
It arrived at my house by 3:00 PM today.
Just for fun, I logged on to Amazon.com again. Now it says the monitor shipped today (April 30th) via UPS ground. The delivery estimate is for May 7th through May 13th (see screen shot below). I opted to track it via a link on Amazon.com. The package tracking page correctly showed the package had been delivered. However, it also showed that it had shipped on December 31, 1969 from Jonestown, PA. Interestingly, the package was in Harrisburg, PA yesterday. So a package Amazon reports as having been shipped on the 30th was in route on the 29th.
I also tracked the package on UPSs web site where it says that it shipped on April 29th. The email confirmation of shipping was sent by Amazon today (April 30th) around noon. My ISP got the email message around 3:00PM and I got it at around 4:00PM, after having the monitor in my living room. The email said the monitor shipped "today".
Can you gripe about service that is too good? Of course not, the gripe is with the Amazon package tracking system which provided three different shipment dates, a poor delivery estimate and misleading shipping information at the time of the purchase.
October 9, 2002. This pattern has continued. On October 6, 2002 I placed an order for a small electronic device. It was shipped on October 8th by UPS ground and arrived on the 9th. Great. The estimated delivery date however was October 18th thru the 21st. Not a good estimate. Off by 9 - 12 days.
March 18, 2002. A search for a book failed to find it. It was there however, a search by ISBN turned it up.
Someone lent me a book and I wanted to see how much Amazon was selling it for and read the reviews of it. I went to the detailed search page for books. For author, I typed in the first four letters of the last name and said it was the "Start of last name". For the title, I typed in the first three words of the title and tried it both with the "exact start of title" option and the "title words" option. Both searches failed to turn up the 1998 book. They only found a copy of the book that is scheduled to be released next month. I also tried the full authors last name with the same results.
The 1998 version of the book is there however, Amazon sells it and claims it normally ships in 24 hours. However, to find it, I had to search by the ISBN.
September 15, 2000. I went to buy a book at Amazon for the umpteenth time. After adding it to my shopping cart,
I clicked on the link to check out. The
first page it took me to, looked much like the below, but was not secure. For
whatever reason, they defaulted to asking for my userid/password on an insecure
web page! (Update: this has remained true through April 2002)
Knowing this was a bad thing, I clicked on the button to Sign in using our secure server. Sure enough, this returned a secure page, but also produced the error messages in red (click the picture on the right for a full size image in a new window).
FYI: This can work to your advantage. By entering an invalid password you get the web page above. Despite the error message, this is good news, because this page is secure.
After placing the order, I selected the option to track it from the display below.
Again, I was prompted for my userid and password and again I was on an insecure web page. The URL for this page is shown below (changing the numbers). Secure web pages are HTTPS, this was HTTP.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/flex-sign-in/ref=hy_ty_1/999-9999999-9999999?
opt=a&page=help/ya-sign-in-secure.html&response=order-history-filtered&method=POST
&ss-order-filter=most-recent-order&return-url=order-history-filtered
I had a discount from a gift certificate, but forgot to enter the claim code for it until the very
end. My fault.
However, there is no way to go back and do this. You have to use the browser back button.
When I got
the instructions for using my gift certificate it said:
You can redeem your gift
certificate by entering its claim code on
the order form.
What order form? It takes 6 web pages to place a book order (address,
credit card, items, wrap, ship, etc.).
It turns out the gift certificate "claim code" is entered on the page where
you select which
credit card to use.
October 4, 2000. Today I purchased an item from the electronics section of Amazon. The shipping cost for electronic items is composed of a fixed dollar amount plus an extra cost per pound. At the point where the user is asked to chose the type of shipping, Amazon does not calculate the exact shipping for this order. There is a link for information about the types and costs of shipping, but the link only provides the formula. You are not told how much it will cost for your specific order until the very last step in the buying process. If you want to see how much another shipping option would cost, you have to edit the shipping choice and again to go the very last purchasing step.
This gripe is not unique to items where the charge is computed by the pound. It also applies to books where the shipping cost based on the number of books.
In comparison, Bookpool displays the actual shipping costs using four different shipping methods, as soon as you place a book in your shopping cart, before even signing in with a userid and password.
December 18, 2000. In the grand Bill Clinton tradition, Amazon will list products for sale as "currently available" when they are "currently not available". If I were reading this, I wouldn't believe it either. But a picture is worth a thousand words:
From the Amazon.com home page, I searched for "samsung monitor". As you can see in the screen shot above, the first Samsung monitor that this search returned is "currently not available" despite the heading that brags my search results are limited to that which is "currently available".
This quirk is not limited to searches. If you go to the Electronics section and ask for all the 17 inch monitors sorted alphabetically, you will see (at least today) more unavailable merchandise listed as currently available.
The list of 17 inch monitors can be presented in six different sort sequences. One sequence is called "featured items". Amazon currently has 84 monitors. Display them in any sequence and you will see 84 monitors. Display just the "featured items" and ... you see 84 monitors. Not so featured. Bill Clinton would be proud. After all, it depends what you mean by "featured".
February 16, 2001. Amazon sells software that you can download immediately. I did this for the first time today and at the end of the process, you are on a web page with a link to start the download. The web page for the software product I purchased said the download was 15 megabytes. I click on the link and downloaded a file that was only 750K. Of course, I think something went wrong and an argument with Amazon is imminent. Instead, it's just bad documentation. You don't download the software, you download an application that, in turn, really downloads the software.
May 15, 2001. Computergripes.com sells nothing, it's a hobby. However, I am associated with another web site that is an Amazon Associate, which means that we get a referral fee for items purchased from Amazon when when we refer people Amazon. Every now and then I check the activity and earnings reports at associates.amazon.com. Not today. Instead it said:
It was back in service May 17, 2001. I don't know how long the service was disabled, Amazon did not send prior notification of this problem. I stumbled across it by accident.
The Amazon.com Customer Service Page at clicheideas.com has phone numbers to call Amazon for help, other customer service contact information and a list of Amazon gripes. The phone numbers shown on this page (created by Ellen Hobbs) are (800) 201-7575, (206) 346-2992, (206)-266-2992 and (206) 266-2335. January 12, 2005.
Customer Service: The Hunt for a Human by Katie Hafner in the New York Times December 30, 2004. Quoting: "Try to reach customer service at Amazon.com to fix a problem with an order and you will encounter one of the most prominent and frustrating aspects of the Internet era: a world devoid of humans. Not only is there no telephone number on Amazon's Web site, but the company makes a point of not including one."
Amazon's Confusing Return Policies by Grace Aquino From the September 2004 issue of PC World magazine Posted July 27, 2004. A buyer of a laptop discovers that more than one online store is involved in the transaction.
They
are everywhere you want to be - and even where you don't want them
September 25, 2000. InfoWorld Magazine. By Ed Foster. I can't explain the title
of this story, but this article is about the Amazon privacy policy. They revised
it recently, and, in the opinion of Mr. Foster, it basically says Amazon can do
anything they feel like with your personal information.
Amazon Pays a Price for Marketing Test
Customers bristle at short-lived 'dynamic pricing' trial, but charging according to demographics may spread quickly.
October 2, 2000. By David Streitfeld of the Washington Post. Amazon recently
started charging different customers different prices for the same merchandise.
Regular customers were being charged more than new ones.
Poor shipping
processes got Amazon on this year's holiday naughty list
January 15, 2001 issue of InfoWorld magazine. By Ed Foster. This article
describes cases of orders that were deemed by Amazon as being in the process of
being shipped even when they were not going to ship for weeks. These orders
could not be cancelled. The customers credit cards were already billed (and
these are back-ordered items).
| Page created: September 2000 | Page last updated: June 21, 2007 |
| Prior updates: April 8, 2006 | |
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Today,
the URL was HTTPS but there was no gold lock on the IE status bar. A new
problem. I tried using Firefox 1.0PR and it worked fine from Firefox - all
indications that the Amazon page was secure displayed normally. Then I tried
using IE to get my email from a web page because my ISP has a secure sign-on
page. That worked fine. 
September 24, 2002. Amazon used to offer free shipping on orders over
$100. At the moment it applies to orders over $25. It appears they had some
kinks in adjusting their systems for the new free shipping limits.