Amazon has gotten crappier in 2019

[Dan Druff]

With time often comes improvement, but not always with large companies.

Aside from its tremendous selection, Amazon's success has been defined by its fast (and often free) shipping, along with its great customer service. In fact, they were the only company to empower offshore phone reps to solve real problems.

In 2019, things have changed.

First, in order to cut costs, they have set up more and more distribution centers where they are doing a lot of their own deliveries. Unfortunately I have one of these in my city. I say "unfortunately" because the reliability of the deliveries has gone to shit.

This week, a battery for my computer (which I badly needed) disappeared in transit. Amazon didn't say it was delivered. They admitted it was "possibly lost" and the status was "unknown". Keep in mind that I ordered it 1-day shipping, and 5 days eventually passed.

The Philippines-based reps first lied to me about it, falsely claiming they had located it and that it would be arriving the next day. Obviously it didn't come. On the next call, they claimed that it would be "re-sent", but at the same time claimed it wasn't a second item being re-sent, but rather they were going to track down the lost item and send it again.

What?!

When I objected to this, and asked what she meant, the Philippines rep repeated this several times without clarification, and then cold transferred me to a Spanish-only line as punishment, when I was in the middle of the word.

Eventually this was solved by calling and asking for a US rep. You weren't able to do this in the past, but I guess you can now. I will be doing this from now on when calling Amazon.

The US rep was very good and found that my battery was "left in an Amazon truck and never delivered", and apparently had been driven around town for 5 days, without the driver even realizing it was still there. They had it retrieved and delivered today, and the box is all beaten up, like it had been banging around without anyone realizing it existed.

I made sure a report was sent to the Philippines rep's supervisor to pull the call and listen to her cold transferring me to the Spanish line, which is strictly against their rules. No idea if anything will happen to her, but I did all I could.

Anyway, this shit never happened in prior years. Very disappointing to see Amazon ruining a lot of what was good about it.

[sonatine]

When I objected to this, and asked what she meant, the Philippines rep repeated this several times without clarification, and then cold transferred me to a Spanish-only line as punishment, when I was in the middle of the word.

sounds like someone activated her bishop.

[Sanlmar]

US workers are so prideful about their quality of work that ritual seppuku was becoming epidemic at AMZN

Amazon had no choice but to outsource to foreign call centers.... but only as a temporary measure

AI is gonna exorcise all that human frailty right outta the equation. That and all the annoying employee benefits like health insurance.

The lies will be an engineering marvel.

[lol wow]

Go need computer batteries like a creepy Filipino

[Gordman]

A while back, I was actually brainstorming the idea of starting a YT channel of my (and perhaps other victims) phone recordings (and perhaps even videos... of for example a cable technician in my home) of blatantly disgusting customer service from big companies who stopped giving a shit about their customers.

Knowing me and my ludicrous procrastination levels at times, I have to admit this may be a little ways out.

I fortunately over the years never had a major hiccup with Amazon where I had to speak with a CS agent, but this certainly shines a little light on things.

I knew it was only a matter of time before the cs would take a nosedive.

I relish the days where for example: about 10 years ago I bought a 12" Dewalt sliding compound miter saw off of Amazon. I was excitedly waiting for the delivery as I had wanted this chopsaw for a long time. I paid approximately $600 for it.

After I got it and started putting it to use, I realized this was just not going to work for me. It was really a well made saw for most uses, but I simply didn't like the little kick back it gave when I let go of the button - this was because it somewhat hampered me from making proper trim-cuts when doing really intricate finish work. Otherwise this saw was good.

I emailed Amazon asking about a compromise if I paid for shipping etc and they instantly sent a free shipping sticker to me with instructions to send it back via UPS. Keep in mind now this box was about 70-75lbs with everything in it. That must have really costed them a bit for my product dissatisfaction. I was really happy and grateful they did this. I can only imagine how many other situations over the years they ended up eating, just like mine. I constantly asked myself how a company like this can stay in business with the already slim profit margins of retail as well as (a vast majority of the time) FREE SHIPPING.

I guess it reinforces the fact that nothing good lasts forever - even Amazon service

[Dan Druff]

US workers are so prideful about their quality of work that ritual seppuku was becoming epidemic at AMZN

Amazon had no choice but to outsource to foreign call centers.... but only as a temporary measure

AI is gonna exorcise all that human frailty right outta the equation. That and all the annoying employee benefits like health insurance.

The lies will be an engineering marvel.

Actually I've heard about this, and have discussed it before, though I'm not sure if I've mentioned it on PFA.

As advanced as AI is currently, it is worlds away from being able to replace customer service agents. This is because customer service is filled with subjective decision making and human judgment -- which is extremely difficult to replicate via AI. I'm not saying it won't ever happen, but we probably won't live long enough to see it.

We probably will see front line customer service replaced by AI. It's already happened to a minor extent with those really annoying "Speak to me in English and I'll help you" automated agents, which pretty much fail at everything they do. Front line agents are replaceable because they're almost acting as robots anyway -- listening for key words and then reading you an answer from a script or a rule book.

However, such AI robots will still fail to do equivalent work, because they're simply not human. The foreign call center reps are at least good at feigning like they care about your problem and that they want to help you. When they ultimately fail, you hang up thinking, "Well, at least she tried her best", if you don't already know better. Robots won't fool people the same way. It will infuriate people to call up, get a robot, and have the problem left unsolved. Dealing with cold, irrational AI has long been a human fear, dating all the way back to the days of HAL 9000 in the late '60s. Strange as it may sound, people much prefer being told no by another human being, as opposed to a robot.

With that said, these bots can be of some use for more mundane, non-controversial calls.

But will an AI be able to subjectively figure out when the customer deserves a courtesy credit for their trouble? That's decades away, at minimum.

[Gordman]

BTW, I realize I was rambling on with gibberish that admittedly has not much to do with the thread/op statement. Hey, I've been drinking a few cocktails again tonight the past few hours - sue me.

Anyway, I guess I was still somewhat winding down from a LOL "situation" that happened several hours earlier, but I never actually bothered to mention it in my other post like I intended.

So anyway...like on most days, I pick my son up from school a little after 3 pm. We get home and I proceed to help him out with his homework like I do every day.

We hear a faint "knock" at the door while sitting at the kitchen table 25 feet away, and before I can finish assessing the situation, he says "oh dad"..."the person outside said": "Amazon delivery!"

Now keep in mind that I am very hard of hearing (currently +70% hearing loss in both ears) but have good hearing aids now and it helps GREATLY in a majority of situations My point here is that my son will instinctively relay to me any pertinent info that he thinks I should know and may have not heard.

Within literally a few seconds, I hop out of my chair from the dining room table and rush to the door thinking that they need a signature, since they (again, according to my son) announced themselves as Amazon delivery right outside my front door.

I then open the door and see NO packages. NOTHING. I also see a gray SUV making a rapid U - Turn in front of my house and speeding off.

My gears immediately turned thinking it was some porch pirate who fraudulently announced themselves as they were walking up my porch and stealing a package. The reason I had this in my head is because there have been of course many instances everywhere of thieves implementing any trickery they can think of.

I was able to get the license # as they sped off but decided to at light speed grab my keys and chase after them. I never saw the vehicle again but I had called the police in the meantime to tell them what I "think" happened and also gave them the suspect vehicle info.

After about 10 minutes cruising around the blocks and submitting the info, I headed home.

I then walked up my porch

My fucking door mat had a slight bulge on it and I could see the tiniest sliver of brown protruding from underneath the door mat. The delivery driver actually had enough foresight to simply conceal my package, but I didn't notice it.

I felt so embarrassed. It really WAS just an Amazon delivery driver and I just learned that some of them use their own vehicles rather than a marked van. A city pd officer showed up a few minutes later and after I explained the situation, we just laughed ( I guess it made me a little more at ease since I already knew this officer)

Cool story bro.

[Dan Druff]

Took Ben on a hike behind one of the Amazon campuses. Happens to be right in front of some pretty good hiking areas around here. It also almost burnt up in last year's fires, but they got unlucky.

Now I see Amazon trucks driving around the area constantly. At first I thought their presence here was a good thing, but if they're going to do a crap job, it's definitely not.

BTW, they are at war with Fedex and have banned all third party sellers from using Fedex to ship, effective yesterday.

[Daly]

I Order coffee it’s at my house the next day

I order dog food next day

Paper towels next day

Ordered Macadania nuts it took 3 weeks. No reasons given at all.

What drives me a bit crazy is the inconstancy.

[Daly]

What will kill Amazon eventually will be the pivot away from $99 Prime membership with “free” delivery inclusive of 50 lbs of dog food to when they start to charge for what delivery really costs.

A lot (but not all) items will start to be cheaper down the street assuming any of these stores still exist.

[Dan Druff]

What will kill Amazon eventually will be the pivot away from $99 Prime membership with “free” delivery inclusive of 50 lbs of dog food to when they start to charge for what delivery really costs.

A lot (but not all) items will start to be cheaper down the street assuming any of these stores still exist.

They were getting a sweetheart deal for years from delivery companies, which is how they managed to do this. However, they found it was even more cost-effective to start delivering things themselves.

Unfortunately this has turned delivery consistency and quality to shit, because they don't have experience in this area, whereas USPS/UPS/FedEx have been doing it for several decades.

Just got a text from my girlfriend this morning that Amazon listed one of her packages as "lost", so I have to go through the same BS right now -- this time for her.

Second time this week.

[Baron Von Strucker]

Amazon is systematically eliminating small business at a extremely fast rate, have started to notice high vacancy for retail locations mostly being rented to fitness companies and walk in clinics, rent for these places are for some reason quite high still so they sit empty. there is no organization to combat this online invasion and most people will take money savings over supporting local small, local business.
Im not sure you ever seen a postal, courier sorting complex, If you have you would be amazed that mail is received as timely as it is.

In Druffs case the delivery guy probably knows him as a problem customer and his address is probably flaged for random disruptive service, Druffs squeaky wheels bearings gets forgot on the truck or lost in a mountain of packages on purpose.
Lesson learned be kind to your delivery guys. True story a guy complained about his mail delivery guy cut across his lawn, he didn't get his mail for two months.

[Dan Druff]

Amazon is systematically eliminating small business at a extremely fast rate, have started to notice high vacancy for retail locations mostly being rented to fitness companies and walk in clinics, rent for these places are for some reason quite high still so they sit empty. there is no organization to combat this online invasion and most people will take money savings over supporting local small, local business.
Im not sure you ever seen a postal, courier sorting complex, If you have you would be amazed that mail is received as timely as it is.

In Druffs case the delivery guy probably knows him as a problem customer and his address is probably flaged for random disruptive service, Druffs squeaky wheels bearings gets forgot on the truck or lost in a mountain of packages on purpose.
Lesson learned be kind to your delivery guys. True story a guy complained about his mail delivery guy cut across his lawn, he didn't get his mail for two months.

Actually not true. I haven't complained to/about anyone local until this week.

They're just crappy at delivering.

[TheXFactor]

As an Amazon Prime member, you are supposed to receive free two day or one day shipping but this usually never happens. If you receive your item within a week, you are lucky. The only compensation that Amazon may offer you is a month of "free" Amazon Prime service.

[Dan Druff]

Round 2

The item my girlfriend bought was a Thanksgiving lightning deal.

Those are temporary deals where certain items are greatly reduced in price. If you miss it, or if the item sells out, tough luck. Fine. I accept that.

However, she ordered it at the lightning price on time, the order was processed, and they lost it in delivery.

I called and they said they could refund the item, but can't price match it to its current price if I want to reorder. Price match?! Wtf?? This isn't a price match. This is not penalizing us for having to re-order something THEY lost. (And they admit they lost it btw.)



Obv I'm fighting this out. I'm on hold now. I don't even believe this is legal. If they sell me an item at a certain price and lose it before it gets to me, they have to honor the same price to replace it. They can't just give me the options of a refund or the higher price, or otherwise that's a bait and switch.

[Krypt]

I think i’m gonna start buying electronics from costco as opposed to Amazon, because as far as I can tell they seem to be providing the better deals/packages.

[BCR]

What will kill Amazon eventually will be the pivot away from $99 Prime membership with “free” delivery inclusive of 50 lbs of dog food to when they start to charge for what delivery really costs.

A lot (but not all) items will start to be cheaper down the street assuming any of these stores still exist.

They were getting a sweetheart deal for years from delivery companies, which is how they managed to do this. However, they found it was even more cost-effective to start delivering things themselves.

Unfortunately this has turned delivery consistency and quality to shit, because they don't have experience in this area, whereas USPS/UPS/FedEx have been doing it for several decades.

Just got a text from my girlfriend this morning that Amazon listed one of her packages as "lost", so I have to go through the same BS right now -- this time for her.

Second time this week.

There is actually a much bigger fail waiting to happen after this winter that is going to be a 60 minutes level story. For a long time they have used the UPS to service rural areas. One can’t even begin to understand the difference in difficulty of delivering something to ones door in these areas as opposed to the mailbox. Because of the pissing match they are in with the post office, the postal workers have been instructed to make a literal federal case out of amazon workers putting even an envelope in the vicinity of the mailbox. It must be delivered to the home.

So they were opening up a distribution center in my area and I have a buddy of mine who is a really sharp guy. Not a lifelong friend. Married a local girl and lives here now. Educated guy who joined the military post 9/11 despite being educated because USA. Has been quite successful in general.

So he and I were talking about amazon offering their delivery partnerships in which third party companies deliver amazon packages in amazon branded vans. That’s most of what you see when you see amazon vans are third party companies. They have a number of their own drivers in areas, but they are a fraction of the vans you see, and really seem to be almost more a long interview as amazon eventually phases out their own operation and recommends the better drivers to these franchises. They don’t really want to deliver their own packages ultimately. They want a third party to deliver them that is exclusive to amazon. Not fedex or ups or whomever.

This was maybe 18 months ago when they started offering these franchises which they subsidized. It was a low entry price to set up a small franchise.

So he was all into this idea. He was on a waiting list to open one and basically waiting on amazon to provide all the vehicles. You’re a third party company, and you essentially rent the vans off amazon, they cover much of the fuel cost, etc. At the time a number of business analysts took a look at the opportunity and found the margins really small when dealing with amazon. In a perfect world, you could make like $7500 per van per year and most fleets were capped at 40ish vans initially. Amazon didn’t want any of these franchises to become large enough where they had any leverage or bargaining power. They also didn’t want to rely on their flex program where people deliver from their cars like gordo saw. That is their flex driver. Those people are like Uber drivers who can work at will, drive their own vehicles, etc. Amazon has grown too quickly to rely on that.

So they opened and made a big splash about hiring their own drivers. They hired a few hundred local drivers. This is at the same point all these franchises are waiting around for their vans to arrive. The actual amazon drivers are driving around in rented uhaul vans, and the actual amazon vans are slowly trickling into these franchises. So at this point in time, anyone you saw in an actual amazon van was a third party worker, and actual amazon employees are driving around in uhauls. This made no sense to me. They had a press conference on local news about hiring drivers. Got tax incentives because I live in the rust belt. Meanwhile I know this dude is waiting on his vans and there are a number of other third party companies waiting on theirs and I’m like “why the fuck are you opening these franchises when they’re hiring their own drivers now?”

Ends up it was all a scam. The hiring their own drivers part. They’re a big huge PC company so they made this huge hiring story, got tax incentives, hired 65 year old women to make 150 stops a day, but it was really just a weeding out process for these franchises. Not two months later the guys from Seattle come down, hold this meeting, say they’re eliminating their own drivers and simply going with the franchise partners. Now it makes sense why they have all these franchises waitlisted and they’re driving the amazon vans while amazon drivers are driving around in rented uhauls. The news stations all cover these drivers coming out of the place like 6 weeks after they started telling reporters they’re already fired. But the Amazon guys are telling the third party companies which drivers were good, and they’re all promptly hired with no benefits or anything else. So it was essentially a long job interview for third party companies.

So now all these third party companies are delivering everything and my buddy has his full complement of vans. He opens for business with drivers that all were just fired from amazon, and recommended by amazon.

The problem is his particular areas are rural as fuck. I’ve lived in NE Ohio most of my life. To you it’s rural, but in my mind , it’s just suburbia and I assume it’s like delivering shit in any suburb. I’m thinking our weather sucks, but it sucks in New York and Chicago and elsewhere and they still get shit delivered. When it sounded like a bad business to me, it was because I assumed the margins are so small it’s really easy to lose $7500 profit through repairs, overtime, shit like that.

Anyway he opens up in summer and he’s a bit shocked at his delivery areas. Most of his routes start 30-40 minutes away to an hour away. I know Amazon pays fuel costs, but I’m thinking of winter and just getting to these areas. This dude is still super excited though and telling everyone how great an opportunity these partnerships are.

So I wanted to see what it was like and I go for ridealongs with him. He grew up on a farm and is a super can do person. I went out a few times with him and couldn’t believe the shit I was seeing. In my entire life I had never seen shit like this despite living in Ohio and Pa. Half mile grass driveways back to a double wide trailers. Just every address required driving some long gravel driveway to nowhere. All these rural areas are serviced not even by traditional post office drivers, but by rural carriers, and they only have to get shit to the mailbox.

Not only rural, but he also had areas of western pa that have 1000 foot cliffs with no guardrails or anything. He’s all excited about this business and I’m like wtf? How are you doing this shit in winter? I wouldn’t go down these roads in a 4x4 with chains on my tires, let alone some amazon cargo van. We keep going up these driveways and I’m like how the fuck do you think you’re getting up this in the winter? It’s a quarter mile lot with a mud turnaround at the end? Like this didn’t phase him. He thinks I’m making too big a deal of it. I’m starting to question how sharp he is. I took a boatload of pictures because I hate winter driving, and I want to run it by other friends. I’m seeing uphill grass driveways in West Virginia. Roads that are literally grass. I’m asking other people do you think you could do this in winter in a cargo van? They’re all like fuck no. Is that even a driveway?

The first storm hits like three weeks ago. Early 24 hour blast. Like half the companies had an accident of some sort, and this is nothing yet. My buddy didn’t have a single one. He’s still optimistic. He still fails to see that he’s sending a couple amazon trucks off cliffs before the winter is out. This is happening everywhere because all these types of areas were previously serviced by rural post office workers. The impediment of the driveway coupled with the pace amazon expects, like 150 stops. It’s pure insanity. They are going to kill a whole lot of drivers this year and by next winter there will be amazon boxes by the mailboxes. I’m sure of that. After a few days with him I told him I would invest in tow trucks and manufacturing amazon boxes before ever thinking of one of those franchises in anywhere that has a winter. Prepare for an avalanche of stories of people going off ice covered cliffs and roads. I’m shocked amazon in their rush to conquer the world and fight with the post office hasn’t foresaw they’re about to pay out a few billion in lawsuits after this first winter. I’m positive reducing this liability is why they don’t really want to deliver their own packages, but they’ll still get attached to the lawsuits. The post office is going to laugh their ass off after this winter. Amazon will fade it and still thrive, but they are in for a serious wake up call this winter. All these areas love amazon because they don’t even have local Walmarts. I can’t stress how rural this shit is and how fucked up these driveways and towns are. Carnage is coming.

[Dan Druff]

Well, it's solved (probably), but it took 45 minutes on the phone. Awful.

I learned something though.

On this call, I got the Philippines, but knew better and asked for a US rep. I got a US rep fairly quickly. However, the US rep took an eternity to look into the problem, and eventually she came to the conclusion that she "can't price match" and that's that.

Bullshit. That's against California law. I looked it up while on hold.

I told her that and she said she'd transfer me to a supervisor. I was on hold a looooooooong time and finally she came back telling me she was transferring me to "her lead".

Guess who her lead was?

Yep, someone in the Philippines! Terrible. (This wasn't her lead, obviously, but just some "lead" and she grabbed whoever came up first on the phone.)

I gave the guy a chance, but he sounded confused and clueless, and I wasn't optimistic. Sure enough, after a long time on hold, he came back telling me that he couldn't adjust the price and could only give me a "promotional credit" for the difference, which isn't all that useful because it can only be used to buy items sold directly by Amazon.

I said I wanted the price adjustment now, not some bullshit promo credit. He said, "That's our only option."

I told him they were breaking California state law, and explained why. He wasn't impressed. Finally he said he would "ask a US lead" about it. I told him I wanted to speak to a US lead myself -- where I should have been transferred in the first place!

He got me to a US lead, who resolved it quickly, by giving me a e-gift card for the difference, a refund, plus a $10 promo credit, so I can reorder the item right away at the higher price and not be out any money. Plus I'll have the $10 promo credit for my trouble, which totally wasn't worth it, but better than nothing.

Anyway, what did I learn, aside from the fact that Amazon sucks and that I'm a persistent cheap Jew?

When calling their customer service, immediately ask for a US rep.

Then, if you don't get satisfaction, quickly ask for a "US lead". They are empowered to solve things. That's who solved both of my problems this week.

[Gordman]

Holy FUCK I can ramble on about stupid irrelevant bullshit when I've been drinking...

Selfnoose

[limitles]

No one would have predicted how massive Amazon has become but I'm sure some predicted how things will end. Of course they aren't as great as they were when they decided to take on the free market economy.

Someone said recently that corporations exist for one purpose and that is to maximize profits and keep their shareholders happy. Customers are third on the list. And when you are unregulated as most business pursuits are in the states you wind up with monsters like Walmart, Amazon, Uber etc., etc.,

Amazon and the rest usually play the game on the way up, except for Uber, but when they own practically everything they don't worry so much as they once did.

Monopolies are no good, never have been, never will. Power corrupts., absolute power corrupts absolutely. The sun will come tomorrow nah, nah nah. Always look on the bright side of life. There it's a tie.

Oh by the way I see you can buy those mini homes on Amazon now and the best part is, the shipping is free.