NevDull’s Take On Things

Amazon Screws Up the Customer Experience

December 18th, 2006

Our second installment in the Businesses that Suck category — Amazon.com

Now, I’m a pretty loyal customer, and you know, I just may stay that way. Which is precisely why not to piss me the F off. I got an Amazon Prime membership last December when I had a bunch of gifts that I wanted to order that were really heavy, and where I really wanted second-day shipping. The cost of the shipping would have exceeded the $79 membership fee, so I decided to go for it.

Since then, I’ve ordered plenty of things from Amazon, more than any other online retailer…

So I got an e-mail a few days ago that they were unable to charge my credit card for the renewal. Today I hopped on the site to see about some additional gifts. A little bannery-thing-a-ma-jig showed that my Amazon Prime benefits were on hold because they couldn’t charge my default credit card. So I told it to try another that they had on file. No dice. Same for a total of 5 cards.

If I had 5 cards which legitimately all didn’t work, I’d either be up to my limits on everything, or have had some kind of fraud alert or have been declared an enemy combatant or something.

So… I spoke to them with their “call me” thing, which I’ve figured out must simply be a way to not give out a phone number, since I was still on hold for several minutes. Why bother having an automated system call me to have me hold? Seriously, WTF? Why not have a system by which they call me back when someone’s available, or at least when there’s a 30-second or shorter queue?

So then this woman with some kind of speech impediment (maybe she’s Indian and trying an American accent, maybe she’s developmentally disabled, or maybe she’s just got a speech impediment — I couldn’t tell anything but that she was hard to understand AND that she didn’t seem to “get” that I’m neither an idiot, a deadbeat who hasn’t paid his bills, nor a first-time orderer) who refused to understand that the problem was with their system in some manner.

After watching a movie (I was too pissed at the asswipes to deal with it), I decided to change the e-mail address on my account and create a new account. Of course, I got signed up and charged on the first try to sign up for Amazon Prime.

Amazon is well-known for its customer experience quality. I wonder how this kind of crap happens. I suppose they increase the staffing for the holiday, and some of the people are less-than-stellar.

Of course, it makes me wonder what the customer experience is like at $WORK. I’ve never called their customer service. Maybe I should some day…

Entry Filed under: Businesses that Suck