Real Life UX: Returning Items to Amazon Makes Me Smile

Amazon is the most amazing company I've ever dealt with.<p>Once, I've had a package stolen from my doorstep, and they replaced it free of charge (fortunately it was just $5 guitar strings).<p>Last year, I bought a camera with a 18-35mm lens ($500) a week or so before leaving for vacation. It arrives 2 days later (thanks prime), but unfortunately Amazon Warehouse had shipped me the bundle with a 15mm lens. I contact their support right away— they propose that I return the camera and they send me the original 18-35mm bundle, but I tell the lady that I'm leaving in 3 days and would like to have the camera for my vacation. She talks with her supervisor, and 2 days later I get the 18-35mm lens in the mail (~$200 value) and they tell me I can keep the 15mm lens.<p>I spend a couple of hundred dollars at Amazon each month (research books are expensive), which is probably why I got such a great treatment— but I was pretty blown away.

&#62; So I bought both - confident that I would return whichever one was inferior or the more expensive one if the cheaper one showed up on time.<p>And people wonder why there's global warming.

Amazon has amazing customer service.<p>However browsing items for a particular category on their site is not so easy.<p>When you go to a specific item, you should be able to see what categories it's stored in, and then browse those categories directly (like breadcrumbs). But that's impossible on Amazon.<p>They seem to have the ability though - if you pick a part that is not for your particular car, it will show you what categories it's in. They should make that option for all items.

This guy is ripping off Amazon. You are supposed to pay a cost when your return is not due to Amazon's fault or item's defect.<p>If a significant amount of people keep doing this, Amazon will have to raise the price for all of us.

Amazon really blows me away with their end-to-end experience. The funny thing is that their site's UX leaves much to be desired, but it's highly functional and they still have a world-class brand even without a world-class frontend for Amazon.com. We obsess over our web app's front-end design, but often neglect the end-to-end experience.

I worked for Amazon, and focusing on the customer experience is something that permeates its culture (at least in fulfillment).<p>It's not even just having good customer service/returns, ensuring the best customer service even permeated through our code.

Amazon is fabulous, but that sort of real-time return policy workflow is for relatively low-mass &#38; low-expense items from high-volume retailers.<p>Try returning custom car parts or, really, anything close to $1k USD which essentially mandates shipping insurance.<p>That said, I love-love the instant UPS-label "pick-up at your office or home" return workflow for the majority of stuff I buy from them.<p>The item is here in two days (Primed) and if I need the rare return, it's, at most, about 5 minutes worth of my time &#38; attention. It's such a total win over the typical retail process for non-bespoke items.

Amazon has a great returns policy, and good, fast customer service.<p>Amazon lacks in the following areas (covered in another post):<p>1. The price filter doesn't really work.<p>2. Sorting doesn't work unless you choose a category (many items are miscategorised or match multiple categories)<p>3. Backwards shipping policy "What the heck, let's order it for tomorrow" on an ordered item often doesn't work because it's too late.<p>4. The ratings system gives too much weight to lightly-reviewed items.<p>5. Often the dispatch date for an order is shown on the checkout page, the expected delivery date would be better. Amazon AA batteries? 5 week delivery. Ouch.

Once I bought the most expensive Vita bundle on Amazon and a day before shipping they included some free stuff with the cheaper bundle (I think it was a Sony decision because other stores did the same). I sent a email to them simply asking why this was the case and they sent me $50 credit with no questions asked.

Not to derail all these comments about Amazon, but I think Jason's reminder that UX is just a subset of overall "CX" or customer experience is a good one. I spend a bunch of time reminding folks that they can't just look at one page, or one set of functionality in a vacuum, but instead need to see the cohesive whole, from the first ad a person sees to the quality of some autogenerated confirm message. It all counts. Functionality and design, btw, can be awesome, but if it's wrapped around a defective business process, you will still suffer. Making users jump through hoops, even hoops of diamonds and gold with ergonomic handles, can still suck.

What is amazing in this?<p>Returning goods bought by mail order or online is the most basic service sellers have to implement. Refund if the product is not open and is returned at most seven days after purchase is guaranteed by law. If it is open a reason such as "does not fit" should be enough to be refunded.<p>Or is it the fact that the customer was refunded before amazon received the parcel? I am not impressed as my bank account is debited once a month, which means I usually still have my money when I send an item back to the seller!<p>It was already like that when I was buying things (especially clothing) through mail order twenty years ago. Or is it only in my country?

It's amazing that actually nobody noticed, including the author, the real problem which are vague descriptions of delivery dates, especially for international shippments. This made him to order two different items at the same time as he had no option to either evaluate shippment time in a more precise way or make a conditional FIFO-driven order. And this is the actual flaw in Amazon UX.

Or try think this way - your doorstep is part of Amazon's storefront. Even though you have to make a deposite and wait much longer than real retails before perusing the goods at hand, you think they have great customer service. Genuinely interesting, with no sarcasm.

Sounded good at first but then started sounding like an advert written by a social media promotions company

I wish Jeff Bezos quit being such a dictating dick when it came to the home page. I mean seriously, I fucking love amazon, why the hell is it so fucking unintuitive and feel like a time traveling 95 site.

+1 for TLDR.