They lose money on most if not all sales. Have you looked at their financial statements ever?
Amazon, has classically garnered tons of market share with an excellent value priced product and excellent service. As evidenced by their financial results, they can’t continue with their current cost structure into perpetuity, or they will eventually go out of business. They either have to raise price, or lower costs (which inevitably means lowering the quality of their service).
Soon-to-be-former employee here. I can’t talk for the whole operation (I’m shipping center) but I can say that for the US and Prime, complaints like yours are taken seriously. Will anyone get reprimanded? Maybe - but that would probably be a couple weeks off once a full diagram (literally) of what went wrong has been prepared. And I will say that the US operation is much more customer reactive that the UK version (yes - there are slight differences across borders). But don’t think that this will go away if you don’t press it; it will continue to live and land on someones desk even if it isn’t the CEO. And you may never know the actual result but there will be one.
There you hit on what maddens us employees. Person 1 and 3 were following what we call “standard work”. Everything is expected to fall into a specific problem/category and that dictates a specific solution. The problem is few humans or their problems fit within that.
Because of the way they, in theory - and usually in practice, deal with this sort of problem, it may be more beneficial to lose some money on one deal, and regain it in spades because of the trust they build up with customers. Knowing that they will look after me allows me to chose Amazon for my purchases without having to give it a second thought. Long may it last. That doesn’t explain, though, why they constantly don’t seem able to make profits - or how they can survive as a generally loss making company.
Well, duh. That’s how competing on price works. Always. Price sensitive consumers are going to go for the cheapest one within a category, with little regard for other considerations.
Amazon isn’t a lowest-cost retailer though. Most of their stuff can be got cheaper elsewhere, but for a lot more inconvenience. For example, I’m sure a local specialty hardware store might have a particular oddball sized Torx screwdriver cheaper than I can get it on Amazon, but I have to go halfway across town during restrictive business hours to do that. So I spent the extra $1.25 and got it from Amazon.
Pretty much everything they do is like that in one way or another- you can find it cheaper, but you’ll have to hunt it down in retail stores. Like, for example, my cellphone case. I’m sure I could have found it cheaper somewhere else, had I cared to scour every cell phone store, electronics store and discount store within 15 miles of my house. But I got the exact one I wanted, in the color I wanted in 2 days from Amazon, even if it was something like $5 more than what Best Buy wanted in a different color.
One thing to consider is that not all Amazon Prime orders are fulfilled by Amazon in-house. Many are (I’m guessing) fulfilled by other companies who agree to adhere to Amazon’s standards and requirements. I’d guess that this is one of those, and there’s potentially some miscommunication and friction between you, Amazon and them.
My fairly limited experience is there is damn near nothing I can get in a bricks and mortar store that I can’t find cheaper on Amazon. The main exception are store-branded goods where you can’t get the exact part number from Amazon at all.
YMMV.
Agreed to an extent, but the PTB are not going to see this email - they can’t, there is simply not enough time in the day for them to read every email. They are going to see a roll up report put together by analyst that aggregates complaints by type. By using a narrative format for the email and not making clear what complaint(s) carry what weight, the OP risks having his multiple complaints boiled down to “failed delivery”. A better approach is to enumerate the complaints and offer ways that the company could make it right:
I’m not saying the complaints weren’t valid, nor that it is something that should be tolerated. I’m only saying that, for maximum impact, it could have been communicated more effectively.
I’ve noticed several items with a Prime delivery date that is then changed when I’ve ordered. Responses from customer service recently have included extending my Prime membership and, bizarrely, telling me to ship back items in transit while a new item is sent (but scheduled to arrive even later) or cancelling my order without asking me. I agree that various facets of Amazon’s customer service have been worse recently.
Two things. First, I found that Chatting with Amazon is better than calling them. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever called them, but Chatting always works. Gets rid of any language barriers.
Second, you have to be careful what you wish for. One company I used to deal with had outsourced customer service, horrible outsourced CS. They listened to their customers and brought it back to the states. A year or two later they raised their rates and people got mad about that and the company said that part of the reason they had to raise the rates was because of the more expensive customer service. Either talk to the people in Mexico or Vietnam or India or pay an extra $12 a year, but you can’t expect them to pay more and just eat that cost.
I call them every time (almost every time) one of my prime shipments is late. Don’t get me wrong, I feel silly pulling up a chat box to say ‘My box of staples was supposed to be here yesterday and it hasn’t arrived yet’, (and I get strange looks from friends and co-workers as to why I even order such mundane stuff from Amazon), but if I’m going to pony up $100 a year for two day shipping they don’t get to just not ship it on time. I’ve probably had my membership extended 4 times in the last 3 years.
I’ve read that there’s some maximum time they’ll let you do that and I don’t know if that’s the case, but so far all of my complaints have been easily verifiable. That is, the date on my account says, for example: Ordered on May 4th. Arrive by May 6th. And I’m calling on the 7th and can see from the UPS tracking that it’s still another day out or that is hasn’t even shipped yet. It’s not ‘we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt’ type things.
Considering how much I order from them AND I use the streaming service. If they miss a delivery here and there and make up for it with $8.70 refund (prime+tax for a month), I’m happy. I rarely use Amazon for things that I have some kind of IRL two day deadline on.