Amazon UK are not cool


Prometheus

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 8, 2008
Messages
9,472
Now, I love Amazon UK. I've shopped with them for years, whenever they've had the best deals available - they've always been pleasant to deal with, and they've always been helpful, and that's kept me coming back.


However, after today, I won't be pre-ordering any video game hardware from them again. They fell far below my expectations, and whereas I'm usually one not to complain too much about iffy service as long as the problems are satisfactorily resolved, I am going to vent about it a bit in this case because the resolution was not very good, and I feel that it's worth warning others of this.


It all started back when they began taking pre-orders for the Nintendo 3DS, which if memory serves was in January. I pre-ordered as soon as I was able to, and when DaMummy from this forum pointed out the excellent bundle deal (£187 3DS + £15 game + £5 case + free screen-protectors) that Amazon started offering in mid-March (which came with the promise to existing pre-orderers of retaining the launch day delivery date if they wanted to swap orders), I jumped at the chance. Amazon guaranteed launch-day delivery, after all, and heavily promoted this fact. Because my postal service can be slightly unreliable, I went for the Express Delivery option, just to guarantee that nothing could go wrong with the delivery. But something did.


I became a tiny bit apprehensive when I noticed that the pre-order bundle page had had the text that stated delivery on launch day was guaranteed a couple of days before launch, but I shrugged it off - after all, it was perfectly reasonable to assume that it had simply been removed for the benefit of late pre-orderers, right...?


I watched my inbox throughout March 24th. It was more maddening than waiting for my Pandora shipping e-mail, partly because I knew exactly when this one was supposed to arrive. However, it never arrived. Shipping confirmations for games and accessories came and went, but nothing arrived for the 3DS itself - and its status in my account remained as "Not Yet Dispatched" until around 1:30am on the 25th, at which point it changed to "Dispatching Soon". Since it still said that the unit would be delivered on the 25th, though, I got some sleep, but later awoke to find that the unit had not been dispatched.


When my games and accessories began arriving, some of them via the courier service that was supposed to have been handed the console, I checked the status on my Amazon page - it still said "Dispatching Soon", with a delivery date of March 25th, even though by this point it could not possibly have gotten here on time!


I sent a polite but firm e-mail to Amazon requesting assistance, and asking, if possible, if they could dispatch the goods by same-day courier in order to keep the guarantee that they had made and I had paid extra money for. They then proceeded to ignore it for about eight hours.


Now, that's not to say that they didn't send any sort of response at all - about two and a half hours later they sent an automated e-mail granting me a refund of £5 or so on the shipping of some of the items they had already sent and which I had already received. It was obvious that they had barely even skimmed my help request.


I waited for some more time, until late afternoon, around 3:30pm or so, at a guess. At getting no useful response, I sent a request for Amazon to cancel my order, and then swiftly reserved a 3DS at a local store who had plenty of stock. It cost me a bit more, but I was able to go out and pick it up immediately, so I was happy with that.


Having been playing with my 3DS for a couple of hours, I checked my e-mail to find that Amazon did not respond to my help request until just before 6pm - that's around eight hours after I sent it. Now, I don't expect an instant response in any way - I know that customer service doesn't work that way - but when I've paid for guaranteed delivery, I expect to receive the goods, or at least an apology for not sending them. This is doubly-so when I know that people who did not pay for guaranteed delivery were receiving theirs both on launch-day and the day before. Not only had they finally responded to the help request, but they had also shipped the console during that time - I suspect because of the complaints I had made. They were quite hasty in their support e-mail to say that the console had been delivered "earlier in the day" (apparently thirty-eight minutes before saying "Oops!" counts as "earlier in the day" to them), but that they had re-routed it back to them as per my cancellation request.


They then proceeded to refund just a little under £2 of the postage cost, having already pre-emptively refunded the rest before I even contacted them (I had checked this before ever contacting them, and had found the refund notes that had been appended to the order to be strange), all the while acting as though this was doing me a favour in the e-mail I eventually got!


At the time of writing they have yet to issue the £187 refund for the 3DS itself, which they have charged me for. (EDIT: They have now issued this refund. Bizarrely, they split it into an item refund for £162.01, and a "Goodwill Refund" of £24.99 - this is nonsense! There is no "Goodwill Refund" going on, they have just refunded exactly what I paid, and tried to make it look nice!)


I am seriously, seriously unimpressed by Amazon UK right now, and I certainly won't be purchasing hardware from them again. I only did so this time because I wanted the convenience of having it delivered, and they had the best price at the time of my order. I won't make that mistake again. I don't mind postage delays on software as I am fairly patient in that regard, but when it's hardware that I've waited a year and two days for and which I have paid a chunk of money to have guaranteed delivery for, I am a bit less patient.


So, yes, be warned. You may order hardware with Express Delivery, only to find that they don't bother shipping it out when they guaranteed they would, and then don't bother even reading your help-requests properly or at all, and don't help out in a timely fashion, either. I heard a number of reports of Express Delivery 3DS orders not being sent out on time yesterday - given how long it took them to deal with my e-mails, I have to wonder how many other people they did this to.


For the record, I got my 3DS from Argos in the end. It cost me more than Amazon's price, but for those looking for a decent trade-in deal, they're offering the 3DS at £109.99, with a free accessory pack (that they usually sell for £19.99), and £60-worth of discount vouchers (with a three-year lifetime), if you trade in a DSi XL in store.
 
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i feel rather responsible for all this :{ sorry, if it makes you feel any better, im having 3ds related problems with sears(paypal) and walmart(not delivering on their promise) right now
 
Im pretty annoyed with there policy of not allowing pretty much no electronic devices to be shipped OS.


The only place I have found that stocks the Jakks Capcom games plug and play is Amazon.co.uk and they will not ship to Australia. Seems crazy that out of Manufacture (and warranty) second hand electronic items cant be shipped OS.


It's very frustrating to see the item you have spent ages looking for up for sale but not be able to purchase it. It's like looking at candy through the glass window of a closed candy store .


Damn, Ive got a sudden taste for Candy now.
 
of course now amazon US are giving me trouble as well now, with the whole get $25 credit towards a game when you purchase a 3DS they have right now...ay yay yay, it doesnt at all help that none of their customer service reps speak english that well either
 
i feel rather responsible for all this :{ sorry, if it makes you feel any better, im having 3ds related problems with sears(paypal) and walmart(not delivering on their promise) right now
Nah, don't feel responsible for it. I strongly suspect that it would have happened anyway - my best guess is that they failed to hire enough staff to deal with it, in spite of their publicity about it being their most pre-ordered console ever.

Im pretty annoyed with there policy of not allowing pretty much no electronic devices to be shipped OS.


The only place I have found that stocks the Jakks Capcom games plug and play is Amazon.co.uk and they will not ship to Australia. Seems crazy that out of Manufacture (and warranty) second hand electronic items cant be shipped OS.
That's mad. Are these items with third-party sellers, or Amazon themselves? If it's the former, it may be worth contacting the seller to see if they'll ship to you regardless. As for the latter, is there perhaps a deputy service or mail-forwarding service of some sort that you can use?

of course now amazon US are giving me trouble as well now, with the whole get $25 credit towards a game when you purchase a 3DS they have right now...ay yay yay, it doesnt at all help that none of their customer service reps speak english that well either
Ooh, not cool at all. :( Good luck in getting that resolved, man.
 
WTF is wrong with you people?


Can't you just pre-order from a PHYSICAL store and pick it up at midnight like 'most' normal people (and save all the trouble of online sh*t)?
 
WTF is wrong with you people?


Can't you just pre-order from a PHYSICAL store and pick it up at midnight like 'most' normal people (and save all the trouble of online sh*t)?
High cost of living + a lack of a worthwhile games retail chain + better deals online + past experiences online that were better than dealing with a troublesome store = buying online.


Picking up at midnight is not something that most normal people do.
 
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