Amazon investigates after high-value orders were switched for cheaper products

I found Amazon historically has been very good about refunds and replacements, better than almost anywhere else. However nowadays its getting harder and their chat service has been replaced with automation as has the phone service and while they exist you have to search quite hard to find them. The automation unfortunately isn&#x27;t dealing well with this sort of problem.<p>As Amazon is automating via web interface a lot of this sort of thing its also too narrowly defined the refund&#x2F;replacement service and its bound to cause issues. Not having an easy fall back to a human is also the error which a lot of silicon valley companies seem to fall into. So I tend to use Amazon only for things I can&#x27;t find elsewhere or relatively cheaper items, anything expensive is usually cheaper and better supported elsewhere.

One thing to remember: Small Claims Court (or whatever it is called where you live). Most jurisdictions have something like this: a light-weight court system without lawyers for low-value cases. Pay a minimal fee, like 10% of your claim, up front, and your claim is in.<p>Just make sure you know exactly who your counterparty is. If the item is sold by someone else via Amazon then your first target is the seller, not Amazon. HOWEVER there may be the Amazon A-Z guarantee, which is part of their deal with you, and which you can sue them over.<p>I&#x27;m always amazed about how stories like this never seem to talk about &quot;here is how you use the court system when MegaCorp stonewalls you&quot;.

I&#x27;ve received multiple counterfeit, or tempered with items shipped &amp; sold by Amazon.com.<p>My most recent example was box containing six Lego Minifigs before Christmas. Luckily we opened the outer box, to find all six of the Minifig bags had been opened, Minifigs removed, and random plastic put in the box (to make up the weight?), then box carefully resealed.<p>Amazon did replace it, but ultimately Amazon cannot know if it was us or some previous returnee who committed the return fraud against them because they don&#x27;t individually track previously returned items. That&#x27;s the big problem with Amazon&#x27;s process, when an item is returned, before it is released back into inventory, they need to uniquely track it. If it gets returned twice they need to know (and associate blame correctly).

Disclaimer: used to work for Amazon a long time ago<p>I&#x27;m a little surprised to hear this as Amazon has only ever been a fantastic CX when it came to returns and this was by design from the early days.<p>That said, I can see a confluence of factors coming together - Amazon is needing to shore up costs as its share price is being hammered. This would lead to customer service being squeezed (or automated) and more stringent returns policies.<p>Also in the UK the cost of living crisis is def causing a measurable uptick in crime presumably at every node of the logistics pipeline, from picking &amp; packing through to delivery and in the window between delivery and customer receiving the package.<p>In London package theft is a huge problem atm and wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if this was a deliberate bait n switch rather than benign accident

I ordered AC from amazon and received an older version. The whole ordeal was interesting, to say the least. I&#x27;ve written about it here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pgpt.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;how-amazon-deceives-its-customers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pgpt.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;how-amazon-deceives-its-customer...</a><p>The main point is that these companies can waste hours or even days of your time while automating everything on their end. Hence, they are incentivized to make profitable &quot;accidents&quot; and hope you&#x27;re not stubborn.

(Source: Sell on Amazon, understand their processes)<p>There are several potential explanations for what’s going on here. These are the most likely (imo):<p>1. Customers are engaging in return fraud where they “return” an expensive item for a refund, but send back a different, cheaper item. Amazon’s warehouse personnel don’t catch it and then the cheaper item ends up in inventory as the more expensive item, which then gets shipped out to a different customer.<p>2. 3rd party sellers are engaging in fraud by sending in cheaper inventory and claiming it is actually more expensive items. Customers then receive the cheaper items when they order the more expensive item.<p>The way to avoid this is to buy items that are “shipped from and sold by” Amazon or the manufacturer.<p>Everyone gives Amazon a hard time, but in our experience, they are usually pretty good about doing the right thing for customers. They’re actually trying to solve a hard problem at scale (be a universal marketplace that delivers in 1-2 days). They make mistakes, but imo actually do a pretty good job.

Amazon has gotten to the point, where I no longer use it for orders over about $50 (USD). I go directly to the vendors&#x27; sites; even if they are more expensive (sometimes, the vendor uses Amazon for fulfillment, but at least, I can be sure I am getting the real thing).<p>To give them credit, they are quite responsive, when it comes to refunds (I have even had to use the Amazon guarantee, once, because the seller ghosted me).<p>To give them shame: When you do something quite often, you get good at it.

I purchased a refurbished iPhone 13 recently from Amazon&#x27;s renewed store, as it seemed like a better deal than blackmarket.co.uk and more reliable than eBay.<p>Probably the most expensive thing I ever bought from Amazon but I&#x27;m very happy with it. Despite being one of the lower &quot;grades&quot; of refurb, it looks brand new, has 100% battery health, and is still under Apple warranty until October. Saved hundreds of £ compared to buying new!<p>I have had a couple of instances in the past of &quot;wrong product sent&quot; (eg: ordered toothbrush heads, got a phone case?!) with Amazon but it certainly didn&#x27;t happen on this occasion.

Off on a tangent here but I purchased a Logitech mouse from Amazon. The middle mouse button stopped working but it was still under warranty. After contacting the Logitech support centre they gave me a code to give to Amazon for a replacement.<p>I ended up on live chat with someone who did not understand what a warranty was - telling me &quot;You have used it, so the warranty is void.&quot; 2 hours later he passed me onto someone else who immediately came across as &#x27;not inside an Indian support centre megabuilding in Dheli&#x27;. Sorted it out in 2 minutes.

This has happened to me twice at brick at mortar stores. Now, I open packages before I check out where practical (like over the counter at a camera store) or as soon as I exit the store otherwise.<p>In one case, at Best Buy, I purchased a camera and at home I discovered a less expensive camera in the box than the one I paid for. Best Buy took care of it even though I brought it back around an hour after I purchased it.<p>My other experience was much worse. A local computer parts store sold me a tape drive and the box contained a cheaper model. They simply wouldn’t let me return or exchange it.<p>In general, my experience has been that the big box stores like Home Depot or Best Buy will take returns for something that doesn’t function properly without question while a small local store will sometime refuse. I’ve lived in the same city for decades and there is a ceiling fan store that I will not shop at because of an experience I had there twenty five years ago —- maybe I should drop the grudge at this point.

As a former amazonian, I am actually a bit surprised to read this.<p>Am outside on mobile, so I have to be brief.<p>During covid, there was this mercy period for delayed deliveries, as it wasnt really amazon causing the delay, but rather the last mile service or the whole supply chain.<p>They used to absolutelly always refund no questions asked and depending on the service they would send return labels.<p>If you have worked at amazon, then you will know this can only happen due to comingling(usa issue mostly) or malicious sellers in for a quick buck.<p>To make money with bad products its pretty hard on amazon, they will simply refund the orders the buyers request a refund for and additionally hold the sellers fund in reserve until account health metrics are sorted out.<p>That, or amazon has changed their overall strategies making refunds now harder, but all their internal rules speak against that.<p>Their first level support is so so, their second level and seller support is sonething of the best in the world.<p>Keep in mind, the final buyer is not their customer, the seller is. But brand pr comes before sellers, make no mistake.

&gt; Some victims were denied refunds until the BBC put their complaints to Amazon.<p>So people complained to the BBC instead of involving lawyers or reporting Amazon&#x27;s fraud to the police?<p>I get it that media coverage can help but refusal to replace fraudulent deliveries calls for law-related actions, not asking if Amazon can graciously inspect things on their end. WTF.

Stop using Amazon if they treat you poorly, or if you see them treating others poorly and reasonably expect the same. Without much trouble at all, I&#x27;ve cut my Amazon usage ~98%.<p>A tip to HN readers: With the Internet, a nearly free, global, wide-area network, you can connect to any business in the world and buy there.<p>Seriously, you may be accustomed to using Amazon and so it&#x27;s immediately easier. But imagine Amazon went out of business. You will quickly become accustomed to other retailers and forget all about Amazon.

This reply from amazon says everything you need to know:<p>&quot;We are sorry that these customer experiences did not meet the high standards we expect.&quot;<p>I somehow read this as - the customer is guilty ;)

A few years ago, the package I received contained a bottle of water instead of the phone I ordered. Amazon promptly refunded me and I was quite pleased, because I was a bit concerned by how I would sound to the customer service representative telling this story

I had this happen years ago, an order above £1k in value replaced with nappies.<p>It was sorted relatively quickly. I do wonder what happened along the chain and whether it was investigatwd.

Is this just a mistake (the person responsible for picking and labeling got the wrong box) or did wharehouse workerw figure out how to steal items somehow?

Xray&#x2F; of products being warehoused &amp; weighing&#x2F;laser scanning until delivery would be a way to deter the drivers from doing mischief as well

I bought a Pixel 7 Pro from Amazon because Google doesn&#x27;t sell them in my country. Amazon was the best of many bad options. It&#x27;s a high value purchase just like the one in TFA... I hope nothing of the sort happens to me.

So customers need a BBC news story to get good support. Great. How does this scale?

Had a switched gfx card on a warehouse purchase. Essentially a weaker one. Pretty sure that was an unethical customer not Amazon though

Amazon? Oh you mean AliExpress of the west?<p>It’s sad what became to this company. Myriad of cheap Chinese knockoffs, counterfeit items even when sold by “Amazon”, delivery times in weeks now, and always the possibility of getting scammed if you are not careful enough, aka “third party sellers”

ordered a lot from amazon 100s, never had a problem.