Passion for Learning

I read, a LOT.  I actually give credit to books for making me the person I am today.  I didn’t go to university, I went to the school of “hard knocks”.  It worked.  Today I’m successful all because of books.  I’ve spent many an afternoon at the local Chapter’s store but prefer to buy all my books online at Indigo as they offer great discounts and free shipping.   Recently I was asked to complete a survey and was given the equivalent of $36 CDN as a gift certificate for Amazon.ca.  The other online vendor.  Having not used amazon for years I figured why not, and they had Rod Machado’s IFR manual which I really was interested in.  

So on January 19th the order was placed.  2 books totaling $41.12.  $36 from the gift cert and $5.12 from my Visa.  Within a day I received an email confirming the shipped books.  Excellent!  This sounds like a good company so far.   That was the last good thing I can say about this company that has effectively stolen my money and provided nothing but grief since.

I check my mail weekly and had this shipped to a business address to ensure that there would be someone to sign for the package that never arrived.  Weeks passed, I got busy at work and almost forgot about the thing until I saw the line item for the $5.12 on my Visa statement.  I REALLY wanted to read that book.   So one month later on Feb 18th I called them and was told, “sir the order has been refunded”.  I said “Really, well I do not see any refund on my Visa and I do not see any credit balance on my account.”   I was told that the order would be addressed and I would hear back from them by Monday the 23.  

They didn’t bother to contact me so on the 25th I wrote to them suggesting they just send me my books and forget all this technical issues with refunds.  Here is their response.

02/25/2009

Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.ca.

I’m sorry to hear this package did not reach you because of a problem with the shipping address. Although the tracking may not state this, I have checked your account and confirmed that this order did get returned to us as undeliverable and you were issued a full refund for the amount of $41.12 on your Visa card ending in ****.

 You should see it as a credit on your next statement. Orders being returned to us as undeliverable may happen for a number of reasons. You can contact Canada post to find out why.

 We’re unable to reship orders that are returned to us as undeliverable that have already been refunded. If you’d still like to purchase these items, please return to our website and place a new order.

 

Best regards,
Crystal
Amazon.ca

So I wrote back explaining that not only did I not receive the books, the refund was missing as well.  They did a 180.

02/25/2009

 

Thanks for contacting us at Amazon.ca concerning this problem.

I’m sorry to hear that due to technical error your refund has not received you yet.

I do understand your concern in this regard and from your previous email message I understand that you wished to receive the items instead of refund.

We do want to make sure you receive the items you ordered. Before we can proceed, however, we need you to verify the shipping address for this order, in case this is the reason for the missing shipment:

 My proper address went here

Please confirm this address or provide us with a new one.

 

Rajasekar R.

 

I got excited, I was going to get my books after all.  I gave them my home address to alleviate any issues with Canada Post.  They promptly did a switchback!

02/25/2009

 

Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.ca.

 I’m very sorry to inform you that due to technical error we are unable to create the replacement for this order. I do understand your concern in this regard, please accept my sincere apology.

 At this time, I kindly request you to place a new order for these items with express shipping and write back to us with the order number using the following link, so that we will refund or waive the complete order cost:

 http://www.amazon.ca/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html

This link does NOT allow anyone to place an order, it simply redirects to the help page! 

Once we receive the details from the above link, we will take appropriate action.

 For your reference here is the page for these item:

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0741413515

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0971201501

Again, I would like to apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced and express our gratitude for the patience you’ve displayed thus far.

 

Rajasekar R.

So now I don’t know truth from fiction.  Can you or can you not resend the order?  Would you please just send me the credit?  I decided to sleep on this and see what came up.  Turns out it was a rehash of the original email that didn’t get me anywhere.  It got worse when it started to sound like a sales pitch!

02/26/2008

 

I am sorry to hear that you have not yet received the notification of your refund to your e-mail address.

 However, I have checked our records and found that the refund got stuck due to a technical error on our automated system.

 Rest assured that this issue was raised to the appropriate department for further investigation. Therefore, since we need to research this a bit further–we will write back with an answer in the next 3-5 business days. Please write back to us, if you do not receive an e-mail by March 05, 2009.

 I understand that you are upset, and I regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. Unfortunately, we will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

 In addition to our large selection, one of the benefits we’d like to offer our customers is convenience, and I realize that we have not met that standard in this case. I hope that you will give us another opportunity to prove the quality of our service to you in the future.

 

Rajasekar R.

So that was it.  Today is March 5th.  No call, no email.  I decided to call them back to see what’s up.  They have a great system where they will call you when you want support.  One of the few things that actually works on amazon.ca.  I had them call me and spoke with a pleasant lady that confirmed, “We have failed you at every step of this transaction” yet could she do anything about it?  NOPE!!  The answer is that there is a “technical issue” and therefore the refund is stuck.  The same answer I’ve heard for two months now, must be one hell of a glitch!  I went back to my original offer, “I am never going to do business with Amazon again so please just send me the books I ordered to satisfy this order.  The gift cert is useless to me“.  She really seemed to care, talked with her supervisor and offered that she could have easily resent the books and wondered “Why didn’t the first guy do that?”  I offered in return that although all the others promised to contact me with a resolution, no one did.   The option is now left with them to decide and action.

So what can I do?  Nothing really but as a person who is strong willed I cannot stand to be helpless.  So I’m doing what I can.  I am writing this in hopes that all who read my blog will think twice before ordering from amazon.ca and will maybe use a service that works, like indigo.  I also want to uncover the complete lack of customer service that these representatives offer.  ”We are sorry and we care, but we’re not doing anything to fix it”.  

That’s it.  I’m in a holding pattern until they contact me again.  If I do not hear anything within the week I will contact Visa and report the fraud committed by Amazon and at least get back my out of pocket expense.  It’s really amazing in this case, the amount of money is trivial.  The problem is the complete lack of service and the utter lies told by the reps that simply did not follow thru with their own words.  

caveat emptor! 

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Finance, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.