Amazon FAILURE!
I placed an order with Amazon for a book on March 5th, 2013. The order was accepted and I was provided with a delivery estimate from 15th March to 21st March (2013).
I placed an order with Amazon for a book on March 5th, 2013. The order was accepted and I was provided with a delivery estimate from 15th March to 21st March (2013).
All the items but one arrived in a reasonable timeframe and on 25th March I received an e-mail informing me that Amazon was having a problem supplying one book and I was offered the opportunity to cancel the order for the item. I chose to keep the order open.
Today I decided to contact Amazon and ask if my order had fallen through a hole or was there a process churning away in the background to make sure my five month old order was going to be fulfilled.
The response I received was tripping over itself apologising for any inconvenience experience by this delay and explaining… Why don’t you read it:
“…I'd like to bring this to your information that we do our best to ensure that all of our customer orders leave our Fulfilment Centre as close as possible to the availability and delivery estimates that are listed on our website.
However, on rare occasions, we may receive multiple orders for the same item in a short period which can add time for the orders to get dispatch as we fill orders as quickly as we can on a first-come, first-served basis.
Because of this reason, this book has not been dispatched yet. I assure you that we are working hard to obtain this book for you and we will ship it as soon as we are able to obtain it.
We have several fulfillment centers across the UK, meaning the items in your order may be stocked at different locations and will be delivered at the earliest, once we've received the stock for you…”
At the bottom of the e-mail there were two links: one to click if the response solved my problem and one to click if it did not solve my problem. I clicked the “did not solve…”
This brought me to a screen where I could rate a few things and/or leave a message.
I left a message stating the response did not solve my problem and left me with no confidence that I would see that book any time soon.
On finalising my comment I was offered the opportunity of having Amazon telephone me on the issue. I was reluctant to do that, but after a few minutes I thought it would do no harm. Having worked with many customer relationship systems I knew the operator who would ring me would have all the details about the issue, including my response and may be able to do something about this pathetic lack of communications.
Clicking on the “Ring me” button I was asked for my telephone number and whether I wanted to be called now or in five minutes. I left it at now and as soon as I clicked go my phone rang.
Most impressed I answered the phone and said, “Hello!”, expecting to be talking to an agent. Instead I was greeted by a recorded message telling all the agents were busy at the moment, that my call was important to Amazon and that I would be put through to an agent as soon as possible.
I contemplated hanging up but decided to give them a couple of minutes. In that time I was put through to an agent who introduced himself and asked how he could help me.
I told him I was responding to a call from his contact centre which was prompted by Amazon’s system that had all the details about the issue and that I would have expected him to have the details presented to him before I was contacted.
He started saying he did not have visibility of the screen and…
At that point I had had enough and I informed him that I was accepting a call from Amazon where all the details of my issue were available and that I was not going to waste my time explaining it all over again. I told him I thought the process was pathetic, thanked him and said good night.
I wonder if Amazon will do anything more on this issue.
Amazon seems pretty impervious to any complaints. I’m sure my order will still be open for that item on 5th March, 2014 and I will not have received any more communications on the issue.
I placed an order with Amazon for a book on March 5th, 2013. The order was accepted and I was provided with a delivery estimate from 15th March to 21st March (2013).
All the items but one arrived in a reasonable timeframe and on 25th March I received an e-mail informing me that Amazon was having a problem supplying one book and I was offered the opportunity to cancel the order for the item. I chose to keep the order open.
Today I decided to contact Amazon and ask if my order had fallen through a hole or was there a process churning away in the background to make sure my five month old order was going to be fulfilled.
The response I received was tripping over itself apologising for any inconvenience experience by this delay and explaining… Why don’t you read it:
“…I'd like to bring this to your information that we do our best to ensure that all of our customer orders leave our Fulfilment Centre as close as possible to the availability and delivery estimates that are listed on our website.
However, on rare occasions, we may receive multiple orders for the same item in a short period which can add time for the orders to get dispatch as we fill orders as quickly as we can on a first-come, first-served basis.
Because of this reason, this book has not been dispatched yet. I assure you that we are working hard to obtain this book for you and we will ship it as soon as we are able to obtain it.
We have several fulfillment centers across the UK, meaning the items in your order may be stocked at different locations and will be delivered at the earliest, once we've received the stock for you…”
At the bottom of the e-mail there were two links: one to click if the response solved my problem and one to click if it did not solve my problem. I clicked the “did not solve…”
This brought me to a screen where I could rate a few things and/or leave a message.
I left a message stating the response did not solve my problem and left me with no confidence that I would see that book any time soon.
On finalising my comment I was offered the opportunity of having Amazon telephone me on the issue. I was reluctant to do that, but after a few minutes I thought it would do no harm. Having worked with many customer relationship systems I knew the operator who would ring me would have all the details about the issue, including my response and may be able to do something about this pathetic lack of communications.
Clicking on the “Ring me” button I was asked for my telephone number and whether I wanted to be called now or in five minutes. I left it at now and as soon as I clicked go my phone rang.
Most impressed I answered the phone and said, “Hello!”, expecting to be talking to an agent. Instead I was greeted by a recorded message telling all the agents were busy at the moment, that my call was important to Amazon and that I would be put through to an agent as soon as possible.
I contemplated hanging up but decided to give them a couple of minutes. In that time I was put through to an agent who introduced himself and asked how he could help me.
I told him I was responding to a call from his contact centre which was prompted by Amazon’s system that had all the details about the issue and that I would have expected him to have the details presented to him before I was contacted.
He started saying he did not have visibility of the screen and…
At that point I had had enough and I informed him that I was accepting a call from Amazon where all the details of my issue were available and that I was not going to waste my time explaining it all over again. I told him I thought the process was pathetic, thanked him and said good night.
I wonder if Amazon will do anything more on this issue.
Amazon seems pretty impervious to any complaints. I’m sure my order will still be open for that item on 5th March, 2014 and I will not have received any more communications on the issue.