4 posts tagged “amazon”
Amazon.com, by far, is state-of-the-art when it comes to fulfillment and distribution as well as technology. But when it comes to customer service and marketing planning, Amazon.com scores a great, big zero. I believe Amazon.com is a good example of the challenges for consumers to do business with a virtual entity rather than a brick-and-mortar establishment. In essence, customers become virtual as well. There is no connection or outlet for customers beyond the channels provided by the company and the company cannot put a face to the customer.
My remarks here today are the result of the direct experiences relating to the Amazon.com Customer Vote disaster. My previous posts recap the incident and the aftermath (unresponsive customer service) that followed. Amazon.com's troubles with this promotion continued this week when they postponed the promotion to another time due to insufficient inventory for their promotional item, an Audiovox DVD Player at $25.00. The result was further outrage by customers that were notified to return to the site's page to participate at a specific day and time. Many customers were upset that they may not be able to participate due to their schedules or not receiving notification in advance of the new promotion period. Clearly, the two disparate incidents demonstrate an extreme lack of forethought and planning within the organization. Not to mention, these regrettable and preventable situations have shaken the confidence of thousands of their existing customer base.
You will likely find links to products on my blog to Amazon.com. I am not an Amazon.com affiliate and do not receive any incentive for providing such links. However, I hope everyone will understand that I will no longer provide linking in future posts to Amazon.com unless I believe the company has made significant efforts to rectify the situation and afford some concellation to afflicted customers.
I filed a Better Business Bureau complaint last week as a result of the first mishap. I received yet another canned response from Amazon.com denying any server outage during the promotion. I notified the BBB that the response was not satisfactory and the situation was still unresolved. In my response, I requested Amazon.com make good on the situation by either offering the product at the promotional price to customers afflicted by the promotion's snafu OR run the promotion again with the same product limit and price under a different methodology. Yesterday, I received a response from Jennifer Hanner of Amazon.com's Executive Customer Relations. Her message follows:
Dear Mr. Brown,
Hello again from Amazon.com.
Thank you for the additional feedback. I understand you feel very
strongly about this issue.
As stated previously, we are unable to extend the promotional offer
for the Xbox 360 to any additional customers. We now consider this
matter closed and will not be offering any further input.
We appreciate your business and hope you will continue to choose
Amazon.com.
Regards,
Jennifer L. Hanner
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.com
I want to make it clear that I am not upset with the limited quantity of the product. Rather, my issue with Amazon.com is with the promotion's execution and inequity as well as the lack-luster customer service that followed. I believe its deeply disappointing that a company would shrug off a customer relations issue and state the matter is closed and they will no longer respond. What brick-and-mortar business does that to their customers?!?! Therefore, I followed with another reply despite it likely falling on deaf ears. Here is my reply:
Dear Ms. Hanner:
Thank you for your response. I understand the limited nature of the product. However, I do not understand Amazon.com's lack of a customer-centric focus to offer some other concellation to the afflicted customers of your promotional disaster. I am completely open to alternative solutions for compromise but feel there should be some effort made by Amazon.com, if it intends to encourage future transactions. Long before working in advertising, I worked in retail management for nearly ten years. I understand sometimes initiatives do not go as planned and also understand that sometimes a business must make an effort to win back the confidence of their customers. I believe this is such a case.
I find your statement that this matter is closed rather crass, unsympathetic, premature, unprofessional and egoist. I have shopped with Amazon.com for approximately eight years purchasing a gambit of products. I also make decisions for my company's purchasing acquisitions which I have often directed through Amazon.com. Additionally, I oversee our technical initiatives [REMOVED]. I hope you'll understand that I do not consider this matter closed but rather ongoing; and that a lack of action will mean the loss of my business as well as [REMOVED]. I also fully intend to notify the Better Business Bureau and other consumer advocacy groups about this unfortunate ordeal and the lack of responsive, effective action. Its truly unfortunate that Amazon.com could not even offer an "apology", but rather only form letters skirting around the issue.
I am truly amazed by Amazon.com's lack of customer service. I had no idea this was the type of business that I was supporting in past transactions. I have sent a physical letter to your Customer Relations and Legal departments regarding this matter. Your response will be posted on my blog and sent to other media outlets for publication if we cannot find an amicable solution to this situation. I will also be sure to convey to my friends and family the level of service and consideration that Amazon.com does not afford customers in regrettable situations.
I believe Amazon.com can overcome this debacle by a.) offer an apology specifically for the situation, b.) address the solutions developed to prevent the situation from occurring in the future, and c.) some concellation for the long-term customers that were obviously alienated by this promotional effort. The energy that is being expended by your organization to counter the situation could have already been equally used to seize the opportunity to appease customers and prevent future occurrences.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from Amazon.com's management and the resolution(s) offered.
Sincerely,
Chris Brown
Note: I have removed content in the letter that related to my company/workplace to protect its identity, competitve advantage and internal information.
I very much doubt that Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos will ever read this blog, but I hope someone in his inner circle or in the company gets wind of the situation. There is a dark cloud forming over Amazon.com that shows the left hand (marketing) doesn't know what the right hand (operations) is doing. This problem is only exascerbated by the severly lacking customer service and the limited channels for communicating with the company to appropriately rectify customer issues. If left unresolved, the company is destined to continue to alienate customers and open the door for other competitors to outstep their offerings on service over price.
I will note that having worked in retail for many years, I tend to be one of the most patient and understanding customers when it comes to problems in the service industry. I rarely make a complaint unless I believe the situation was significant and preventable. In fact, this situation stands out as the single worst customer service situation that I have ever encountered. Honestly, I would be content with a.) a specific apology for the matter b.) an action plan and steps to preventing future occurences and c.) something as small as a $10 gift certificate for my time and trouble. Caveat Emptor - Buyer Beware.
I thought I would update everyone on the Amazon.com Customer Vote snafu. After a volley of emails and phone calls to customer service, Amazon.com has still failed to respond adequately. I'm shocked by their lack of customer service. I have been a long-time customer and have had positive experiences previously but never have really had the need to interact with customer service before. Wow! What a enlightening experience.
I did have the opportunity to speak to a very friendly and helpful (as much as could be for a first-line customer service representative) CSR, Dave. He provided me a physical address...well its a P.O. Box, but what the hell...to send my concern. Unfortunately, it gets routed through the legal department before it will get to the Customer Relations dept. Seems a bit shady that Amazon.com does not have a physical address for customers to communicate. And while they do provide emailing to customer service, the feature is buried within the site and you can only expect a canned message that quite possibly does not address your issue. Anyway, I've drafted my customer complaint and will be sending to off to Amazon.com. I wonder if I'll even get a response at all. I've decided to take all my other holiday shopping to other retailers and I will be diverting commercial purchases in my business to other vendors until I see some kind of reconciliation effort by Amazon.com. If anyone else would like to write to Amazon.com about their atomic bomb of a marketing promotion, here is the address:
Amazon.com
Attn. Customer Relations
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226
I also filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and hope it makes an impact with the company's leadership to better plan and execute their promotions to make it a more equitable experience. Its so disturbing to read on their discussion boards about users that were able to get 4 units in the promotion that they plan to return to Wal-mart for the full price. And others used a mirrored SSL url, that most consumers were unware, and were able to retrieve the page to get the promotion while thousands of other customers that were directed to the non-secure page by Amazon.com received Error 404. What a disaster!
Here is the official response that I received from Amazon.com about their Customer Vote - XBox 360 fiasco. Its ironic that the CSR states that they had no problems with their servers when hundreds of customers have posted the issue to the site and their blogs and even the media has picked up the story. Liar, liar, Jeff Bezos' pants are on fire! I call "Bullshit!"
Thanks again, Amazon.com for sending me some form letter that doesn't even address the situation. Maybe you should hire some American customer service representatives and stop outsourcing to India.
Hello from Amazon.com.
Please accept my sincere apology for the inconvenience that has
Caused.
We are very sorry to hear that you had difficulty using our site.
From our end, we have not had any server problems recently--it is
possible that the problem is with your provider, or somewhere in
between. If the problem was caused by high network traffic, you may
have more success by trying again at a different time.
We are pleased to utilize top of the line servers, internal routers
and network connections. Although we often wish we could affect this
problem, many issues regarding speed are actually a result of complex
routing patterns over the Internet itself. Even the best Internet
services can't get around this fundamental problem.
Thank you for writing about purchasing "x box" as part of our Amazon
Customers Vote promotion. Unfortunately, this item is no longer
available at the promotional price. I'm sorry you were not able to
purchase the item at the price you desired before we sold out. It
may still be available for purchase from Amazon.com at the regular
price or from third-party sellers on our web site.
These discounted items are only available in limited quantities
immediately after the winners of Amazon Customers Vote go on sale
each week. You can vote, make purchases, and find more information
at our Amazon Customers Vote page:
Each week, we post information on how many units of each product are
available at the promotional price and when they can be purchased.
As soon as we sell out, we make every effort to put this information
on our Web site immediately.
If you have any further questions regarding this issue, please use
the direct link below to e- mail our appropriate department and
select a subject for your e-mail as "Other questions & comments", so
that we can investigate further:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html
Please copy and paste the URL into your web browser to reach the
specific page.
Rest assured that when we receive the email from you using the form
above, we will investigate and take any actions available to us to
resolve the problem.
However, if you require immediate assistance, here are our Customer
Service Department phone numbers:
Customer Service is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
U.S. and Canada: 1-800-201-7575
International: 1-206-266-2992
Well continue working hard to ensure that you receive accurate
service, and to minimize the chances of anything like this occurring
again.
Thank you for your interest in Customers Vote and for doing your
holiday shopping at Amazon.com.
Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:
If yes, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-y?c=
If not, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-n?c=
Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept
incoming e-mail.
To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help
section of our web site.
Best regards,
Swaminathan.T
Amazon.com Customer Service
http://www.amazon.com
Today, Amazon.com offered its first promotion as part of its Customer Vote program. The Xbox 360 Core System normally offered at $299.99 was to be available at 11:00AM PST for only $100. The promotion was limited to 1000 units.
I, like thousands of other Amazon.com customers, logged into the site well before the promotion time. I arrived at the Customer Vote page at 10:45AM PST. Then, at 10:55AM, I began refreshing the page every 10 seconds to
Honestly, I don't think I've been this pissed about a business in quite some time. I have been a long-time and regular customer of Amazon.com. I've filed a customer service complaint with Amazon.com as well as filed a claim with the Better Business Bureau. Hundreds have posted angry reponses on the discussion threads of the Amazon.com Customer Vote page. CrunchGear also add a post to their blog about the snafu and there numerous negative comments. If a satisfactory consellation isn't made by Amazon.com, I don't believe that I will ever do business with Amazon.com again. I have already purchased some gifts for the holidays from Amazon.com and plan on returning these to Amazon.com and repurchase with another retailer. I will do the remainder of my holiday shopping with other retailers and e-tailers. I also handle my company's commercial purchases and select the vendor. I often use Amazon.com but will be deviating those purchases to other businesses as well. I want to give Amazon.com the benefit of the doubt and offer them the opportunity to rectify this tremendous fiasco. If Amazon.com does not offer some restitution, I certainly hope that the financial impact will send a strong message. I will post an update if and when it becomes available. If you were equally slighted in the promotion, please file your complaints and add to your blogs.
