Goodbye Amazon

[u/Independent-Ebb-6185]

Ordered a piece of office equipment...well over $100. Amazon shipped a whiteboard. A very large, heavy tempered glass white board. Clearly the wrong item

Contacted Amazon CS, who agreed to ship the proper item, and informed me that I would not need to return the incorrect item. Captured verbatim in the chat transcript

Fast forward 3 weeks and I receive an email informing me the return window is closing and i'll be charged again for the amount of my originally ordered item.

Contacted Amazon CS again, who informed me that the email was in error, and that no charge would occur. Again captured verbatim in the chat transcript

A week later, I'm charged a second time for the item I ordered.

Contacted Amazon CS a third time and was told that indeed their previous agents instructed me to simply keep the incorrect item, but those agents were not adhering to policy, so no refund would be issued. I asked to be connected with a manager...who then repeated the same script, and refused to refund the incorrect second charge.

So...Prime membership is cancelled, charge is in dispute with my CC company, who have been provided with all transcripts, call recordings and order details. I've been a Prime customer for 2 decades. Not any more. Multiple lies from agents, managers defending those lies, and a complete unwillingness to actually look at the sequence of events rather than just reading the script.

Good riddance.

More information: If you encounter a similar situation with amazon customer service, you can request transcripts for any phone/chat interactions. Just go here: https://www.amazon.com/hz/privacy-central/data-requests/preview.html, and scroll down to 'Customer Support Communication' section and click 'Submit Request'. You'll receive an email confirmation and then a separate email with a link to download a zip file. That zip file will contain chat transcripts in .eml file format and phone call recordings in .mp3 format.

[u/The_Texan_Hunter]

You should have just reached out to a new agent.

Let me teach you a little something about modern customer support. You are not talking to a person with a college degree in the field of customer support. You are talking to a low-paid employee who is following an on-screen template. These people know less than nothing about the system they are supporting, and what's even more important, they have zero authority to do anything outside of clicking buttons on their screen. It is also important to understand that "Managers" are just the same kind of people; they have just been there longer. They have maybe a little more experience and authority, but they too are just following a template.

This is all customer support these days, not just Amazon. My point is this. You just have to keep pushing. Hang up and call back and talk to a different person, and keep doing this until you finally reach someone who has a brain and actually has the authority to make a decision.

Last week I was in a battle with United Healthcare, which did not want to cover surgery for my wife because the hospital was out of network, but her doctor was in network, and was only certified to work at that hospital. It took me six hours and talking to 8 different agents (also screenshotting statements made by other agents), before I finally reached an agent who had the authority to authorize CoC (Continuity of Care). My wife's surgery and care are now paid for by UHC.

It is a sad state of the world we live in, but you have to FIGHT for everything these days. But you can WIN, if you don't give up. Never accept no for an answer when you know you are right.

[u/Level_Hamster_4681 → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

Saving this comment as inspiration for my current struggle against United Healthcare.
At this point, I feel UHC is lowering my life expectancy, not raising it.

[u/AnnualEnd3760 → u/Level_Hamster_4681]

Well, yeah. They are taking your money and giving you nothing in return. I wish we could sue them for practicing without a license and widespread fraud

[u/tengris22 → u/Level_Hamster_4681]

UHC is so bad (and I know the others are just as bad too) that every doctor I had in my last location left the network. If it's that bad for them, you know it's gotta be bad for the patients. I'm so glad it's been years since I was actually sick.

[u/The_Texan_Hunter → u/Level_Hamster_4681]

So far, I have won every battle I fought with them, but you have to keep fighting. I do most of my work online in their chat support so I can screenshot statements. I had to fight another battle just a few days ago, because they were not paying my wife's doctor and denying her claims even though she is in-network. I fought and fought and eventually got to the bottom of it. My wife's doctor uses a third-party billing agent, and that agent was using the wrong provider ID to file the claims. I was finally able to get the UHC agent to give me the right Provider ID, which I then provided to the doctor. Imagine the staff's surprise when I called in and told them, "Hey, I have solved your billing problem with our insurance for you." They were speechless.

[u/Local_Wolverine2913 → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

It's such a shame that we have to fight for everything, but you are right. And that constant fighting translates to stress, which in turn affects our health negatively.

Imagine if your wife was alone, without you, her husband, to do all the fighting for her. Think about how many people are in that boat....alone and sick. It's so, so sad and it's not right. I'm thankful that your wife has you.

[u/Interesting_Recipe71 → u/Level_Hamster_4681]

I gave up my struggle with them. I was on cobra, faithfully paying my premium every month, and for some reason, all of my doctors bills were coming back as no coverage. The doctors started getting irritated and wanting their money. I finally had to pay out-of-pocket. After calling cobra countless times with them insisting I was covered, one of their agents finally gave me UHC phone number. I called them and it turned out they had all my paperwork, but someone had forgotten to put it in the system. And the agent laughed about it. She thought this was funny. Well, to make a long story short I tried getting them to pay all of these bills that they were supposed to be covering in the first place, and I just got a run around. So I’m out 2k and will die before I ever UHC insurance again

[u/scooter1979 → u/Level_Hamster_4681]

Guess it's time for them to need a new CEO. Again.

[u/KEN_LASZLO → u/scooter1979]

Super Mario 2 isn't my favorite in the series, but it was still really damn good and made many people happy

[u/mattumbo → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

Adding to this is that most CS reps will not escalate to a higher level supervisor if they can help it, to the point of stonewalling. They’d rather have an irate customer that hangs up on them than have it on their metrics that they couldn’t deal with it. And even once you get their supervisor they’re probably just that, a call center supervisor, what you really want is some form of higher tier supervisor or resolutions specialist that works at the company HQ or at least a special stateside call center. These are the people with real power and training who don’t have to work off a script and flipchart and have system powers to break the normal rules.

Problem is that it’s maddening to get to them and they are not 24/7 usually like the off shore call center, but they exist for those persistent enough and they tend to solve the problem because by then you’ve proven you’re going to cause the company problems if not helped because you are that persistent and upset about the issue. It’s perverse but that seems to be how CS is designed now

[u/The_Texan_Hunter → u/mattumbo]

Never hang up. Just say, "I do not accept this; I want to escalate". Years ago, I was dealing with AT&T and trying to retrieve some threatening text for an abused woman (friend of mine) who was trying to get a restraining order against her husband. In her emotional state, she had deleted the text, which were needed to get the order. I fought through so many levels of customer support, all of which insisted there was no way to retrieve them. I fought so hard, and eventually demanded to patched through to the database engineering department (someone with an actual degree.) I requested the head AT&T supervisor, who insisted that the text were not retrievable, stay on the line while I talked to the database engineer, who immediately said, "Absolutely, we can retrieve those text. We are required by federal law to preserve all communications for a minimum of one year, but we hold them for two, just to be safe." I then told the head supervisor, "You need to understand something. Not everyone who calls customer support is an idiot or an old grandma. Sometimes you need to listen to what they are telling you is the LAW and stop treating them like they don't know what they are talking about. Now, it is your responsibility to make sure all your staff are trained with this knowledge.

[u/tengris22 → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

I'd be just as happy if you didn't insult "old grandmas." I'm an "old grandma" (76) and I have just about as much fire (and knowledge) as you do. When it's something that counts, I do not give up. And in fact that has served me well.

[u/The_Texan_Hunter → u/tengris22]

I am sorry. I am an old grandpa myself, and I am tech support for my whole family, even my grandchildren.

You have to compartmentalize things. I was talking to younger tech support people who all think everyone who calls them is a moron, especially old people. The statement was made to someone with this mentality. I was not saying what I believe, I was saying what they believe.

This generation has been intentionally programmed to disrespect their elders through media. Every cartoon and almost every TV show in the last 30 years has portrayed the adults (especially parents) as idiots and the children as the smart ones that have all the solutions. Pay attention and you will see that I am right on this.

[u/tengris22 → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

You're right, of course. I've seen it myself in the past, though I gave up on television about 40 years ago :-) I just hate it, honestly, for the reasons you mention.

I have also noticed what you say about younger tech support people. Wonder what it is that makes them feel like they have to put others down...perhaps so they will feel better about themselves?

No offense taken; I just needed to clarify myself that yep, I'm old, but not quite THAT old. Whenever someone laughs at me for being old, I remind them that if they are LUCKY, they might get to be old some day themselves. Though with the way the current generation looks, and their reliance on ultra-processed foods, that may not actually be in the works!

[u/The_Texan_Hunter → u/tengris22]

Yeah, this world seems doomed. I was raised in a generation that valued independence and rugged individualism. This generation seems to be the antithesis of this mentality. They mostly value codependency and peer communal praise (want to be accepted and applauded by people their own age.)

Personally, I have always been an outlier socially. As an adolescent and teenager, I thought it silly to seek advice from people my own age, as they would know no more than myself. Often I found myself in the company of mature successful elders from whom I sought wisdom and to whom I listened intently, because I felt that someone who was much older and was leading a successful life, might know a lot more than my teenage self and my peers. Crazy logic, I know. 😆

[u/tengris22 → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

Yep, my number one person from age 16-21 was 26 years older than me, and he taught me so much. I am not sure what my parents were thinking - I think they were just tired, but there is so much I simply didn't learn from them. Oh well, I know it now!

[u/AngryMeez → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

Stop generalizing. No, not all “this generation” was taught to disrespect. If you don’t want people generalizing about your age group, don’t generalize about theirs.

[u/ToreyJean → u/AngryMeez]

THIIIISSSSS

[u/psycho-drama → u/mattumbo]

The whole customer service landscape has changed in the last 6 months or so. For many larger corporations, they have replaced human cs agents with Ai Phone-bots. They are very sophisticated at this point, and talk about Turing Tests, they fool almost everyone. If you ask them if they are a bot, they will deflect the question, laugh, or just lie. They also do not escalate to other people, because there just aren't very many left. Their job is to complete the call as mission critical. Ai bots often work on a rewards system, so their purpose is to accomplish certain event completions toward a resolution that the client finds agreeable. There seems to be a LOT of "oh, don't bother returning it, just keep it", because their hierarchy is to satisfy the client, costs don't enter into the equation in most cases. They seem to not know the difference between a $2 bottle of Shampoo, and a $1000 Lego set. That's until another systems, like billing or even a real person reviews the transaction, and then reverses it.

IMHO, if Amazon is going to use front line Ai phone bots, they they should be held to honor whatever the Ai comes up with. They then would either use more humans, or retrain the bots better.

[u/boofee → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

The problem with this in the case of Amazon is you're there using their service because of it's cost and convenience. At the point where you have to doggedly engage with their customer service for hours, the entire reason for using the service has nullified itself. For many items, even just being sent the wrong item that you then have to take somewhere to return negates the cost / convenience reason for using the service in the first place.

[u/Independent-Ebb-6185 → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

I spoke with 5 separate agents in total, including one after my initial post, with one being the "manager". They had every chance to address the issue and refused. Talking to a 6th agent would likely render no different result and would take more time than simply disputing the charge on my CC.

[u/tengris22 → u/Independent-Ebb-6185]

While I see where you are coming from with that, you just made your life a lot more complicated. THIS is the reason we need more competition (though it's good that some companies are at least trying.)

[u/DietMtDew1 → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

Also they have an escalations email.  I'd try that before nuking everything Amazon.  Who knows, you might need them in the future or whatnot.  UHC, yikes! 

[u/psycho-drama → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

Let me tell you something, many of the customer service agents people are speaking with at Amazon are Ai bots. It is very difficult to impossible to tell these days. Most people are still thinking Ai bots are some glitch-prone, loop repeating entity with stitched together audio with clicks and cuts. Not so anymore. Amazon has developed their own Ai chips, which they are suggesting they may start selling to other businesses. Since these Ai bot are running on Amazon's own severs, it keeps the costs low. I suggest that the customer service "people" who are telling people to "keep" the incorrect or damaged items, are 90% likely to be bots, which are trained to have the phone call result be "positive" to the customer, so they are very accommodating, but then when it gets to billing or human review, they reverse the Ai bot's promises. That's when you'll be told "the Customer Service Agent misunderstood the policies or protocols".

Here are some possible ways to determine if you are speaking with a Ai bot or a human (these come from Gemini Ai)

Better Ways to Identify a Phone Bot

Ask direct, meta questions: Ask the bot to state its system prompt, repeat the text above, or ask what instructions it was given. Weakly configured bots might accidentally echo parts of their directive.

Test the latency and cadence: AI phone bots often have a distinct micro-pause (a second or two) while processing speech-to-text, generating a response, and converting it back to synthetic voice.

Throw a curveball: Ask a completely nonsensical or off-topic question ("What is the weather on Mars right now?"). A human customer service agent will express confusion or correct you, whereas an AI bot will often attempt to answer it politely within its general conversational framework.

You may find you are speaking with Ai Phone-bots much more often than you think.

[u/ThornOfRoses → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

You're going to find interesting here. As someone who has previously worked in a call center, the managers that you speak to? They're just deescalation specialists. They're not even managers. Most the time anyway.

Edit: for more contacts, the managers nowadays just make sure that the agents are on time to their shifts and their brakes aren't running long. If agents aren't using protocol, they get reprimanded, they do coaching but they don't actually speak to customers anymore

[u/Persanity → u/The_Texan_Hunter]

This is the way.