Why I order PC parts from Amazon

[CanadaOne]

This happened a few hours ago on Amazon chat. My Purolator package was on my doorstep when I got home, looking like someone had stuck their hand up its backside. The story as follows:

 

Initial Question: Hello, the NVME drive was not in the box when delivered.

01:50 PM PDT Kimberly (Amazon): Hello, my name is Kimberly . I’m sorry to hear what happened. I’d be more than happy to help.
01:50 PM PDT Me: Hi,
My shorts, hat, and keyboard were in the box but not the NVME drive. I'm not sure what to do.
01:53 PM PDT Kimberly : Let me do some checks
01:54 PM PDT Me: Okay.
01:59 PM PDT Kimberly : Thank you for holding. I have requested a refund for you
01:59 PM PDT Me: Thanks.

 

That is some serious customer service.

[Jaws2002]

Until they send a replacement, you can plug your brand new shorts in the M.2 PCIE slot.

?

 Sorry. I couldn't resist. 

Sucks to have to wait for it again. At least they were good with the refund.

Edited July 4, 2020 by Jaws2002

[HappyHaddock]

A slightly different angle, but the best customer service I ever encountered also occurred when ordering tech/elec-equip from an on-line retailer.

 

15:50hrs - I placed and paid for an on-line order with an overseas firm for just a few hundred pounds worth of obscure/specialist manufacturing equipment for my business with an indicated ten day delivery period.

 

16:01hrs - I received an e-mail receipt for my payment.

 

16:57hrs - I received another e-mail from a member of sales staff who clearly had some initiative and common sense as they messaged to say that their European distribution centre was only about fifteen miles away from where I lived. They must have messaged that distribution centre and it turned out that one of their staff  lived in the same village as me. They wanted to know if rather than waiting up to ten days  for the order to go through the usual delivery channels would it be all right to just have this staff member pop my order in in his car and drop it at my door that evening on his drive home from work? That if I were happy to accept this form of delivery they could reimburse some of the high delivery/courier costs.

 

17:03hrs - I immediately replied to say yes but given that it was after office closing hours I thought it likely that they would not pick up my reply in time to actually do anything about it.

 

18:21hrs - There was a knock at the door and my goods had been delivered.

 

Given this age of entirely thoughtless automated systems supervised by disinterested staff I thought such initiative was above and beyond. How many sales staff have you encountered that would even think to look at a customer's delivery address in a foreign country and  wonder where that little place was in relation to their own overseas distribution centre. Then having found out that they were close together to then take the trouble to contact that distribution centre to see  anything could be done to speed up delivery? All told it took less than 3hrs from placing an international order to receiving it at my door!

 

Now that is customer service!

 

HH

[ZachariasX]

7 hours ago, CanadaOne said:

That is some serious customer service.

That is what they are supposed to do. I‘m sorry for you that you get defrauded when ordering from all competing sellers available to you.

 

A good option looks like this:

 

1) A company that does not systematically abuse its employees.

2) Gives you the option of paying per bill after receiving the goods.

3) Allows you to pick up the items somewhere near you and pay upon inspecting them.

 

 

[CanadaOne]

4 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

That is what they are supposed to do. I‘m sorry for you that you get defrauded when ordering from all competing sellers available to you.

 

Amazon could have said "We are contacting Purolator and will be in touch with you." But in less than ten-minutes with zero argument I get my $200 back. Probably took an hour for the $200 to be in my Amazon wallet. That's not bad. I re-ordered and am supposed to have the NVME tomorrow.

 

Assuming it's not stolen again.

 

4 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

A good option looks like this:

 

1) A company that does not systematically abuse its employees.

2) Gives you the option of paying per bill after receiving the goods.

3) Allows you to pick up the items somewhere near you and pay upon inspecting them.

 

 

 

I've heard about employees not being treated well but I admit I don't really know about it.

[ZachariasX]

2 hours ago, CanadaOne said:

Amazon could have said "We are contacting Purolator and will be in touch with you."

Or, they could have put the SSD in the shipment in the first place.

 

Imagine, if everything you could do would be what you were supposed to do.

 

About Amazon, just this: They have stomped the competition for a reason. In principle, their processes do work and in general better so than they do at their competitors. There is two sides to that. One, that in principle things work, the other is that muss less business insight is attached to an employee, making him more readily exchangable. If your employees become just more convenient meat robots (that might change rather sooner than later) than mechanic robots, things like this are the norm. Also, if you happen to come across an issue that is not in line withe their processes, but rather one issue that preys on imperfect process mechanics, I guess you'd swifty revise your opinion.

 

It's a big company. Things happen. Even myself, I am an Amazon customer (if I can't help it otherwise). It's sometimes just convenient to know who you're doing business with. And btw., if Amazon just stopped doing what it is mainly known for (shipping books and "things"), It still would make 80% of its revenue. It's amazing how many people think it's cheaper renting servers from Amazon than running one themselves.

 

As for here, what matters is that you got your delivery and your issues solved. That's a good thing.

 

 

[CanadaOne]

1 hour ago, ZachariasX said:

Or, they could have put the SSD in the shipment in the first place.

 

Imagine, if everything you could do would be what you were supposed to do.

 

About Amazon, just this: They have stomped the competition for a reason. In principle, their processes do work and in general better so than they do at their competitors. There is two sides to that. One, that in principle things work, the other is that muss less business insight is attached to an employee, making him more readily exchangable. If your employees become just more convenient meat robots (that might change rather sooner than later) than mechanic robots, things like this are the norm. Also, if you happen to come across an issue that is not in line withe their processes, but rather one issue that preys on imperfect process mechanics, I guess you'd swifty revise your opinion.

 

It's a big company. Things happen. Even myself, I am an Amazon customer (if I can't help it otherwise). It's sometimes just convenient to know who you're doing business with. And btw., if Amazon just stopped doing what it is mainly known for (shipping books and "things"), It still would make 80% of its revenue. It's amazing how many people think it's cheaper renting servers from Amazon than running one themselves.

 

As for here, what matters is that you got your delivery and your issues solved. That's a good thing.

 

 

 

I'm not averse to learning about Amazon's dark side, and I take your points. I'm an Amazon fan boy, but not to the point of being closed minded.

 

As for being a "meat robot", a lot of us are exactly that at work. At least those guys might have air condition.  

[Jaws2002]

Yeah...Amazon is such a great company that helps the little guy....

While milions are being laidoff and tens of thousands of small businesses are being killed off by government  lockdown, Bezos made 35 billions. 

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-wealth-150-billion-since-pandemic-2020-6

 

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/21/american-billionaires-got-434-billion-richer-during-the-pandemic.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 4, 2020 by Jaws2002

[unlikely_spider]

This may not apply to you CanadaOne, but for those of you who are in proximity to a Micro Center, I would very highly recommend them. They do online shipping too, but shipping times are impacted lately due to some certain global issue that I've heard people talking about in the news.

There are some items that they will only sell in-store, such as most Intel/AMD CPUs. If you are lucky enough to be able to pick up in-store (I am, in Maryland) their CPUs are constantly the cheapest place I've ever seen them - most often better than Amazon or Newegg. And you even get an additional discount added if you buy a motherboard in the same transaction.

I've also had good exchange/return experience with them when encountering opened items that were defective.

I really can't criticize consumers who take advantage of Amazon's customer service and ease of use, but when presented with a choice, I generally try to use the non-Amazon option when I can.