Back in February I bought a Dell laptop from an Amazon third-party seller. In May I was having some trouble with the trackpad so I contacted Dell for a repair. Much to my surprise Dell said that they had no record of a warranty on the unit. So I contacted Amazon and asked if they could help me find the warranty. The Amazon agent instead offered to allow me to return the unit. Their exact words were “As I have check the details for you with my lead. In this case I can help you with the refund on return.” I was a bit surprised by this and repeated that I was just trying to get the warranty information. The agent then said “As I have check the details for you, the seller have provided the 30 day return policy for this item. However In this case I can help you with the return for the full refund.” I agreed to this and sent back the unit.
In the 6 weeks since the return I have had 11 chats with Amazon and still have no refund. The seller refunded about $100 of the $1100 price and said that is all that they will refund since the return was outside the return window. On four occasions an Amazon agent told me that they escalated the issue and someone would contact me, but that has never happened. On my last conversation, I talked to a manager (from the “Leadership Team”) who said that they opened an internal ticket and “Rest assured that this time you’ll hear from us. They will definitely update you via email within 72 hours.” That was a week ago and again I have heard nothing.
I’m not sure what options I have at this point. I’m considering a chargeback on my credit card. Do you think that would work? Or should I threaten Small Claims Court? Would Amazon just cancel my account if I try either of those options? (I am a pretty loyal customer and typically make several thousand dollars of purchases per year.) Any other ideas?
A few things. Try calling instead of chatting. Sometimes you’ll get better, or at least different, results since you’re talking to someone that’s only talking to you instead of chatting with someone that’s clearly has multiple chats going at the same time.
Another option is to make a stink about it on facebook. Go to their page, go to the last thing they posted and comment with a (very) condensed version of this. You’ll see there’s about a dozen other people doing the same thing. Amazon will respond and after a few back and forths, they’ll give you a link and ask you to fill our a form, again, you’ll see this happening with other people as well. In my experience, someone will get back to you within a day or so. But it’s not going to be some tier 1 customer support person, it’s (again, IME) someone that will actually get things taken care of.
WRT this, if you do post to their page, almost instantly, you’re going to get tons of friend requests and replies all from people with names like “Customer Support” or “Post Purchase Help” pretending to be Amazon employees. They’re, obviously, not. But their bots are rather aggressive.
Lastly, you can dispute it with your CC. I’ve considered doing that, but I always worry they’ll retaliate some how. Not allow me to use Prime anymore? As for small claims…I feel like taking one of the biggest businesses in the entire world to small claims court is a big risk. Or maybe not, I’m not a lawyer.
TLDR: Try calling instead of chatting, then make a scene on facebook.
If you post on Facebook, make damn sure that when someone responds to you, it’s actually Amazon. Phishers hang out and post as if they’re the company, then gather all your information. A family member got taken in by an “airline” rep in the way and has had unpleasant consequences.
I don’t have a Facebook account but my wife does, so I guess we can use hers even though I was the purchaser. Forgive my naivete, but how do I recognize that a responder is really Amazon?
You can also email ecr-replies@amazon.com and jeff@amazon.com with the order details and usually someone in a higher-up team will look at those and answer, with the ability to override lower level agents. It bypasses the normal bureaucracy, and is a poorly kept secret for when the normal escalations don’t work.
You can also just call and keep on asking to escalate and speaking to a manager.
Here’s a real reply, notice the blue checkmark, the name Amazon dot com, the word ‘author’ next to their name…
Here’s some fake replies, notice…none of that:
.
Also, Amazon will NOT send you a friend request, you’ll get a bunch of those as well. But that link, in the real response, that’s the link I mentioned upthread.
Yes, I’ve been suspecting that too. There may even be an automated system that discards the escalation attempt if there is already a refund. The order status on the web site says “Your refund has been issued.”
I would also advise leaving a negative review for the seller (which is different than leaving a negative review for the product). You might want to consider doing both because the product was also defective.
Have you thought about filing a complaint with your state’s attorney general’s office?
I had a little issue with Wilson Leather three or four years ago. Briefly (I hope), I decided it was time for a new leather jacket. I had an old one that I’d gotten from a brick-and-mortar Wilson store many years previously, and I liked it well enough to get another. But the store was gone. So I ordered online. The old jacket was a medium, and it still fit, so that was what I asked for. It was too small. Apparently they now had a new sizing scheme? (Or worse quality control?) As I recall, the website had posted a policy explicitly allowing refunds, and I was hauling the “bad” one back to the UPS store to send back the very same day I received it. I was going to get a refund and then order a new one, size large.
After several weeks of getting the runaround both in email and phone calls to customer service, with various promises that I would see the purchase price credited back to me and/or that they would (for some reason) “escalate” the issue, I finally went to my attorney general’s website and filled in the form to file a complaint. About a week later, voila! The Wilson folks apparently didn’t like being called upon to answer questions from a government entity.
And I got a new jacket from a different local store.
Chargeback. This isn’t Amazon’s issue (it’s not their $) and I disbelieve they’re going to ban you for one chargeback anyway. It’s not like it’s automatic: it’s a way to get their attention. The issuer will give you a temporary credit and it SHOULD get someone with a brain at Amazon to look at it for real. Part of creating the chargeback case will be a bunch of questions, which will let you explain the partial refund.
I just sent an email to ecr-replies@amazon.com as Reply suggested above. If I don’t get a response in a week or so, I may try a chargeback as the next step. However I’m not sure that’s possible since the original purchase was in February. I think there’s a time limit on when you can do a chargeback, isn’t there?
There might be. I think the easiest way to find out would be to find the charge on your credit card bill (online) and see if there’s a dispute button next to it.
Just quickly glancing at one of my Chase cards, it they seem to limit it to 60 days, but if I had a problem with something further back than that, I’d probably try calling them to see if they can help me out.
But I’d still suggest you nag them on facebook. That almost always gets me better results when their customer service people don’t even seem to understand what the problem is, much less how to fix it. I think the people on facebook, and the people that respond to you if you use the link they give you (which I think is the same people that you just emailed) aren’t more than just CSR drones working off a script. They have more resources to get things straightened out.
As a general rule, subject to exceptions, the time limit on a chargeback with a Visa credit card is 120 days, so if you plan to go that route, I would urge you to get the process started soon.
It’s still worth a try, though. There are some exceptions. It is from the delivery date and not from the invoice date, but with Amazon, they are probably the same. And having a seller string you along might be one of the exceptions. You’re out $1,000, and that’s a pretty big deal.
Well here’s another frustration. Apparently you can leave seller reviews only within 90 days of the purchase. So I can’t even leave feedback about this crappy situation.
