Comments on: Beware – Amazon.com Offers NO Price Protection!

By: verbal

verbal — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:35:34 +0000

I’m going through this with Amazon right now on an HDTV. The price dropped 25% within two weeks after ordering, and this is not from a Marketplace competitor but Amazon’s own price! In order to realize the savings I have to order a new same HDTV and send it back the old one to them. It’ll cost $50 for shipping from me, but 25% of $$$$ is a lot of difference. Luckily their ‘white glove’ service has them come and pack the HDTV for return.

But it seems silly to go through this charade when they can simply match their own price. Isn’t this costing them not just money but respect? It seems they don’t have sound business judgement.

Verbal

By: Chris H

Chris H — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:11:19 +0000

Hello John, I’ve been following your website for quite a while now, mostly from school. You’ve quite an interesting site here.

After reading this article I am start to doubt the capabilities of Amazon. I ordered several items a week ago, and I am start to get concerned. Although they are rather low cost (and I also doubt if the prices will drop for these items), my family is in a tight spot (due to the recession), and we would like to save every bit of money we can.

To the point, then. Do you trust any other sites other than Amazon.com to do online shopping at? No specialty stores, just a regular online shopping site where you can buy virtually anything.

- C

By: mailia

mailia — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 06:56:26 +0000

I purchased an at Amazon.com for $64.99 (U-Dance game) and within a few weeks it was only $20.00 that is $45.00 cheaper. I called they refused to budge. I was also hung up on a few times. I returned the item and brought the item from Wally world for $20.00 with .97 cent shipping. There are so many other stores with better return policies and great customer service. I will take my money elsewhere.

By: Shawn Horwood

Shawn Horwood — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:23:41 +0000

That is terrible. I am not sure why, but I have always just had a bad feeling about Amazon, so I have generally avoided them. Now I actually have a reason for avoiding them. I have had similar issues with customer service with Yahoo!. They froze multiple accounts for no reason whatsoever and they didn’t try to solve the problem they just tried to close the ticket. They completely avoided my questions and then just finally said that they would not give me my accounts back. They didn’t even tell my why they froze them!

Shawn Horwood

By: John P.

John P. — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:08:10 +0000

I’m sorry to hear about your experience Julia. Indeed my own experience with trying to get this printer just keeps getting worse and worse. I’ve found that the customer service people at Amazon are no longer interested in solving problems. They only seem interested in closing tickets.

I think that once retailers get to the point where their revenues are measured in the $Billions, they have little incentive to actually solve customer issues. After all, what is one more customer?

John

By: Julia

Julia — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:58:21 +0000

I will never use Amazon again due to the extremely poor customer service. The concept is great but Amazon’s customer service is so bad that it negates the experience. Not only did I use Amazon personally in the past, I started using it to order items in quantity to use at work too. This is where my most recent and frustrating experience occurred. At a glance, here it the issue. I ordered 30 digital photo frames to use as holiday gifts with plans to load customer photos. I placed the order and right away called customer service to change the ship to address–I was of course assured that they change the shipping address and this is supposedly noted in my record even; however, the 30 frames were sent to the original address instead which is in Colorado and these were to be sent to California.

So far, I spent a total more than 4 hours of time trying to fix this situation and get these asap to California in order to still use them for the holidays without spending more money personally to get them there. I even requested that they arrange pickup of the boxes and send overnight to the address requested. I was informed that to get new UPS shipping labels to do this would take 4 weeks. I ask how does this help me for the purchase I made to use for the holiday gifts. Wow, amazingly bad bad customer service! Now, I wait on hold at 8:30am for 40 minutes already for a customer service supervisor–still no answer so far but thankfully I have a speaker phone. I will not encourage anyone to use Amazon simply due to poor customer service.

I hope others read my story and learn rather than going through this same experience.

By: Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:04:45 +0000

I ended up here looking up amazon price reduction on google,honestly I didn’t read the whole thing.
I just saw and item I placed an order for 3 days ago for $130 , now price is $80! :)

I’m just dazzled and pissed here,any suggestions?

By: Vikram

Vikram — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:27:28 +0000

Hey, thanks for this wonderful information. I was also an amazon fan before some time, but now have reduced a lot at amazon coz of kind of services there, and prefer to go at locak warehouse n pick up the things!
Anyways, did u had any luck on ur printer? do let me know..

By: John

John — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:35:38 +0000

Well, I bought a professional style mixer made by KitchenAid last week. I watched that price on Amazon for this particular color fluctuate up and down for two weeks. I finally purchased when it went as low as I had seen it (List 449, Paid 359 w/ 50 dollar rebate) Well, this morning, that color dropped 90 DOLLARS. Wow! I called them and they told me sorry, our pricing policy does not allow for this so I said, that is fine, I would like to then take advantage of your 30 day return guarentee and reurn this mixer so that I can buy it at the lower price. She said, let me see what i can do for you, then credited me the 90 dollars. So, just so you know, it can be done.

By: DiscoverySound

DiscoverySound — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:22:06 +0000

WOW!!! I take back part of my previous comment. Use the baseball bat. I love the part you said about going to hell and back to find a number on their website. That is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
I am just glad that shitty customer service hasn’t rubbed off here in Japan. One thing that really gets me about amazon from any country is the packaging. I order a memory stick and it comes in a box big enough to put my monitor in. LOL

(Comments not seem to be posting…if I am missing something please let me know)

By: Amit Patel

Amit Patel — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:34:53 +0000

Both of these posts can make amazon rethink about their policies atleast once :)

By: Chetan

Chetan — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:39:32 +0000

Just like amazon, E-bay is also same.
I prefer other e-shops that e-bay or amazon.

By: John P.

John P. — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:44:09 +0000

Yeah, the whole thing is ridiculous. And it gets worse! I’m actually about to edit the post with the latest revisions to this story. It keeps getting better and better…

John

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:59:17 +0000

Thanks John, this is definitely good to know heading into the holiday season. I wonder how much this will end up costing them in return shipping, etc…given that even at the lower number they would have likely turned a small profit. I’m surprised their fancy computer system didn’t tell them to stop being stupid and credit you the difference.

By: MJ

MJ — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:19:39 +0000

Wow…hard to think Circuit City is better then Amazon when it comes to price matches.

And to make matters worse…that printer is now $531.30 on Amazon as of 12/2/08 @518pm.

By: Erwin Tan

Erwin Tan — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:57:40 +0000

That’s truly shocking.. Frankly I didn’t know about that at all.. Thanks for sharing!

By: Stanwick

Stanwick — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:32:17 +0000

I agree with Aaron Hall. Amazon has simply become so large that they no longer need to uphold their image as “the worlds most customercentric retailer”. I’ve been using them since about 1996 and remember them bending over backwards to make the customer happy. Nowadays, they are terrible by comparison. While they are still one of my favorite e-tailers I no longer consider myself a LOYAL Amazon.com customer.

By: Aaron Hall

Aaron Hall — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:56:42 +0000

That is disappointing. Amazon seems to fit into a trend I have noticed: as retail stores become more popular, they tighten their return and price policies. I suppose this improves their profit margin because returns and price protection involve direct costs (that benefit the consumer) and hidden costs, such as additional tracking, sorting, returning merchandise, and customer service time. The question is, is the profit worth the consequence of upsetting consumers, especially in an age when one frustrated consumer might blog about it to thousands of consumers.

By: Lisa Marie Mary

Lisa Marie Mary — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:27:26 +0000

Crazy! This is the second post in a few days I’ve read from someone who, it would seem to me, Amazon would want to work harder to keep happy. Darren Rowse posted An Open Letter to the Amazon Associates Program just the other day.

If you ask me, John and Darren are two people that a company ought to, maybe ..I don’t know – listen to?

Sheesh!

By: Steve S.

Steve S. — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:17:43 +0000

Sorry about the problem. However, I do have that printer and you will be very happy with it.