Amazon boycott

Not a review of a doll so much as a scathing and damning review of a company.

Amazon.co.uk.

Wow eee.. what a bunch of crooks.



ok, so last week I ordered two dolls. Before I ordered, as there was some issue with the stock quantity, I asked customer service to confirm that if they didn't have 2, they would send me 1 and refund for the second.
they swore that's what would happen and advised me to order as their stock checker said they had two in stock so I should be fine.

So i ordered and thought nothing more of it till i got a dispatch notice a few days later telling me both products had dispatched.
excitedly I waited for my dolls to arrive.

Imagine my surprise when I opened my parcel to find only one doll and... a gift card?
Yes, someone in the fulfillment centre had realised they only had one doll and decided instead of admitting this, they'd just sneakily substitute the item for a gift card for the same company.

I was pretty annoyed as substitution wasn't ever something that even occured to me!
So I contacted customer support.

The woman I spoke to seemed unable to understand basic english, after a good half hour of repeating myself and going in circles I finally got it through her thick skull that I had been sent the wrong item.
The usual "we only fulfil these orders, they aren't stocked directly by us" excuse was given, and I told them that I didn't want a replacement, I wanted a refund for the item I never asked for.

So she told me to print a label. My printer is broken, which I explained 3 times before she could grasp this concept. "Get a friend to print it". Yes, because I totally have a friend who lives close enough to just print me a label and pop over this evening with it. Wth?
She ummed and ahhed and yet again suggested I print it myself (didn't we just go through this?)
I needed a printed form to take it to the post office, but as I pointed out, i didn't want to have to walk to the post office (it's a fair hike) then QUEUE for half an hour or more (the queues there are horrendeous) with three children in tow (it's school holidays) so they could scan the item into the system and give me a reciept to prove I posted it.

finally she told me a courier could come pick the item "tomorrow". (It was friday)
I asked what time. She told me she "couldn't give me a time" and I argued that why should I waste my saturday waiting for a courier to pick up and item I NEVER ORDERED in the first damn place?
She finally told me her "supervisor" had made an "exception" (oh wow, aren't I special) to allow me to select an hour slot that was "convenient to me". I would get an email in the morning about this.
I agreed, and waited for an email.

none came. So we went out saturday because screw them, i'm not wasting my saturday.

when we got home we found an email telling me the courier would actually come Monday, they didn't do pickups on weekends (wtf? why did she say they did then!?)

Monday came, and I got two emails (why? god knows) telling me my order would be picked up between 2pm and 3pm. I had no option to change this slot, no choice in the matter. Between 2 and 3... which meant I wouldn't be able to go out with the kids for the day (It's SCHOOL HOLIDAYS, am I supposed to just sit in the house all day with the kids bored and running amok?)

Yet again I contacted customer service arguing that i'd been lied to and mislead by their previous customer service person. as a "good will" gesture the guy finally agreed to give me £5 in vouchers or something. Wow... soooo makes up for all this wasted time huh?

Anyway, the van didn't come at 2. It didn't come at 3. No.. instead it showed up at FIVE THIRTY in the evening. Yes.. 5:30.
what?

What the hell is the point of giving a time slot if you aren't even going to bother to keep it? I was busy, so off they went.

Yet more yelling at amazon, yet more excuses and refusal to budge on their "policy" (which is basically screw you customer for not just accepting any old shit we send to you).
I argued that 1: I had no ordered this item and returning this item should not inconvenience me, cost me money or leave me trapped in the house waiting for a van that probably won't even show up.

Amazon then threatened me telling me if I didn't return the item they would have to charge me.
Well bite me amazon. BITE ME.

Finally a guy admitted they could "print me a return label themselves" OH REALLY? Why didn't you do that on FRIDAY!? He made out like it was a huuuuge favour to post me a piece of fricken paper.

By this point i'm more than angry, I want to punch people.

He then told me I could "post the item back at my own expense and they would reimburse me" Uh... how about you fuck off?
I'm not spending MORE money because you assclowns can't figure the difference between a gift card and a doll. What the hell are you even smoking? Are you mocking me?

Christ.

So now i'm really mad.
It's difficult not to just cuss this idiot out and tell him to kiss my ass.

I explained that returning the item at my expense was unacceptable and that expecting me to walk all the way to the post office and queue in the first place was not acceptable, I had better things to do with my day than deal with the stress of the post office and staff that work at glacial speed (seriously our local post office guy seems to only have one speed and it's only a teeny step above completely frozen. I've never seen someone react so slowly, it's insane! no wonder there's always a huge queue stretching down the road!)

"we could send the courier back" HAH, the courier who couldn't even keep to their time slot? The courier who won't show up till evening? No.

I told them they had two choices. Either they come over and pick up the damn item at a time that was convenient to ME (is that really unreasonable? THEY screwed up, not me, why should I be punished for their incompetence?) or they allow me to keep the item and refund me for the inconvenience and stress their mistake caused.

they told me though "couldn't do that" (bullshit, they just don't want to. My custom is worth so little to them they would sooner never see any of my money again than refund me for one item. Nice huh?)

So I told them to give me head office's email and sent an email to higher up explaining that I took exception at 1: being sent substitutions in the first place. 2: that I was outright LIED to by two of their agents and messed around by others making stuff up and generally being extremely difficult and 3: their policy on the whole thing was stupid and how dare they expect me to be inconvenienced because of THEIR mistake.

I got an email back today.

and oh... oh it gets sooo much better.

they're now BLAMING THE STOCKIST. Yes, that's right.. an item that was "fulfilled by amazon" and thus packaged up by a spotty youth in a warehouse in wales are now claiming the company who sent the item to their factory in the first place somehow... made that spotty youth put the wrong item in my box?
What... the... fuck?

They said they have "reported the seller internally to investigate". THE SELLER? The supplier did NOTHING WRONG here! They trusted your company to be able to distribute their product competently, which you completely failed to do and that's THEIR fault?

Wow.. just.. wow.

Suffice to say, I told them they could bite me. I shall keep the item and they can run around and retrieve their money on their time. (I get to hang onto it for 30 days, HAH. that's 30 days they don't have my money and while it's a small stupid petty thing, at least it feels like they're having a minor inconvenience of being out of pocket briefly).
I told them their "blame everyone else" attitude was disgusting. The fact my future custom was given a precise monetary value (the cost of said gift card) was disgraceful and let them know that all my money? They shall never see a single damn penny of it again.

They could have made this right. The woman on friday should have posted me a return label, they should have offered me a "good will gesture" as appology but they couldn't even stand to part with a measly fiver untill several days and several lies later didn't work for them.
How disgraceful is that?

A return shouldn't be difficult. It shouldn't be something that results in huge stress for the customer. It should not inconvenience them in any way and it should NOT cost them.
Had they just handled my complaint competently to begin with, had they simply appologised and tried to make it as easy as possible for me then it wouldn't have escalated and I probably would have taken it on the chin and hiked to the stupid post office (I wouldn't have been happy about it though). But the option to have a label posted to me wasn't mentioned on the friday, the "good will gesture" never happened till after I had been lied to repeatedly and mislead by another agent.
Why did she lie to me? Why did they substitute the item? Why does nobody at Amazon seem to want to take responsibility for their mistake and instead seem to think I should suffer?
Why should I sit around ALL DAY waiting for a truck to come pick up my item? How is that at all fair when it wasn't my mistake?

The customer SHOULD NOT SUFFER due to a company error.

and here's the thing right? Amazon are a huge company. They could have taken the loss, they could have written it off and just moved on knowing they had something more valuable, customer loyalty.
but customer service doesn't matter to Amazon. See, they know they're so big that one single customer leaving is nothing. A drop in the ocean.
And that's really really shitty.

So yeah, all my blog readers? Please, avoid Amazon uk. they don't care about you as a customer, you are nothing to them. You're less than nothing. You're scum to be lied to, hung up on (yeah, one of the guys hung up on me. Nice.), mislead and fobbed off. YOU will be responsible for their mistakes, because somehow it's YOUR fault they can't do their damn job properly.
Do you really want to give your hard earned cash to a company who couldn't care less?
I know I don't. And so i'm completely boycotting the company. There's plenty of other places to buy online, plenty of places that actually give a shit about their customers and will own up to their mistakes.

Amazon, you made a big mistake here. A shortsighted atttitude got you a small amount of money off me, and lost you THOUSANDS of pounds of future custom.
Well done you morons, well done.