Today my love affair with Amazon.com diminished by a sizable notch. In one fell swoop they moved from my preferred shopping site to being on par with everyone else. It happened when I learned that Amazon.com offers customers no price protection whatsoever. And that makes it not such a good deal after all.
You see, after weeks of searching for a new printer I finally settled on the Brother MFC-9840cdw Color Laser Multi-Function Center with Wireless Interface
. Basically everyone had it for $649-699, but I decided to get it from Amazon.com because they have been my favorite retailer for a while since I paid the $79 per year fee to become a member of Amazon Prime, which gives you free 2 day shipping on all your orders.
Well, even though the printer doesn’t arrive until Monday, I saw ads from two different major retailers this weekend that this printer has dropped to $549.99. Instead of being upset, I was actually glad because I figured that Amazon would match the price! But when I contacted them my joy turned to disappointment.
At first I sent in the following e-mail request to their customer service department:
—————
11/30/08 09:55:23
Your Name:John Pozadzides
Order Id: XXXXXXXXXXXXX
ITEMS: Brother MFC-9840cdw Color Laser Multi-Function CenterComments:I have not yet received this printer, but I now find that it is on sale for $100 less than I purchased it for at both Costco and Office Depot. For example, you can verify the price ($549.99) on Office Depot’s site:
http://www.officedepot.com/catalog/txtSearchDD.do?jopa=X9VGHKxyebJtOj7bXUOeWw8&norefinement=true&searchTxt=470975
I would like to know if you have a price matching policy that protects me, or if I need to return the printer and purchase it elsewhere.
Thank you.
—————
The cryptic response that came back appeared as though they either didn’t read my message correctly, or didn’t understand what I was talking about. As if I was dealing with someone in a country like India which doesn’t have any such thing as a “low price guarantee”.
Greetings from Amazon.com.
I would like to sincerely apologize for any disappointment this may have caused.
However we are not responsible for prices or savings posted without our permission on other websites.
As you may know, the price and availability of items at Amazon.com are subject to change. Please note that placing an item in your shopping cart or finding the item on another website does not reserve the price of that item. It also will not reserve your copy of that item.
Prices of items at Amazon.com will necessarily change on occasion, as the discount we are able to offer for any item can also depend on availability.
Also, there may be times when Amazon.com runs out of stock of an item that is also offered by one of our partner merchants. You may see it displayed on our website as available, but from a different merchant and with a different price than you saw previously. Our merchants set their own prices.
If you have further questions, please visit our online Help pages:
http://www.amazon.com/help
Again, we are very sorry for any inconvenience you have experienced.
Thank you for your patience and understanding. We value your business and hope to see you again at Amazon.com.
Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:
If yes, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-y?c=XXXXXXXXXXXXX
If not, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-n?c=XXXXXXXXXXXXXPlease note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.
To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our web site.
Best regards,
Vikram Loganathan
Amazon.com Customer Service
==============================
So, when I selected the link that I was NOT satisfied, it gave me the option to receive a call back – which I did, and I was promptly speaking with a customer service agent. An American one by the way.
I explained the situation, at which time he informed me that Amazon has no price match guarantee. He went on to tell me that not only did they not match other stores prices, but they do not even protect purchases made on Amazon.com against price drops.
He told me that up until September of this year, they did have a policy that if you bought something from Amazon and the price decreased, they would refund the difference. But that even that policy had been removed.
So, although I have not received the printer yet I informed him that I wanted to cancel the order and I’d purchase it elsewhere and save the $100. The guy I talked to did some research and then told me that he was making a note for the returns department and that they would get back to me once they figured out how to accomplish the return. The tricky part is apparently based on the fact that the printer is being shipped via a special carrier or something…
Oh well. I guess that everyone should be cautious about purchasing any high dollar ticket from Amazon, because if the price has a significant drop you are going to be SOL. This makes BestBuy, Costco, and other retailers a much, much better alternative. For this reason, I will be buying a LOT less from Amazon until they decide to modify this archaic policy. The only business I suppose they’ll be getting from me will be when I see an unbeatable deal. But that won’t do their margins any good…
EDIT 12/2/2008: So, the saga actually continues.
As I stated previously, the guy who I last talked to was supposed to have someone get back to me about canceling the order. However, no one ever had the courtesy to do so. As a result of not hearing from them, I haven’t ordered the printer elsewhere because I didn’t want to get stuck with two of them somehow.
In the meantime one day after the guy refused to give me a price match, Amazon actually dropped their price on this printer to $599! AND they have someone selling brand new ones including free shipping for $530! But again, no one contacted me about price adjustment or canceling the order, and meanwhile I’ve been checking the delivery date in my Amazon account every single day. It has been due to arrive on December 2 for well over a week now.
So I come home tonight and guess what. No printer! But, and here’s the kicker, when I log into the site it now says that the printer was delivered yesterday – 12/1!
So I call the Amazon customer service department (the number is 866-216-1072 since they make it impossible to even freakin find now), tell my whole morbid story all over again to a nice young lady, who eventually informs me that she really doesn’t know if it was delivered, or if it was canceled! Meanwhile, she says that the guy who I previously talked to only put the following note on my order: “Customer wants to cancel.” That’s it! Nothing else!
But wait, it gets better… you see, after all of that, she apologizes and then informs me that she can’t help me. You see, I have to call back tomorrow and speak to someone in the “hard lines” department about the order. And they only work till 5pm CST.
(And for the record, I have not been issued a credit on my credit card though I disputed the charge now and Citibank will take care of me).
This is the worst experience I’ve ever had with Amazon, and is second in “badness” only to my miserable experience with Abe’s of Maine.
Oh well, I will take solace in the fact that this article now ranks number 10 or 11 on Google searches for “Amazon Price Protection“. At least I’ll spare some other shoppers from the headache.
I was an Amazon fan till today but the recent experience has changed my thinking and i will be very careful in ordering anything at Amazon. They are nothing but price gougers.
I selected an acer laptop – it was priced at 399 $. I placed it in my basket and next day when i am trying to complete the order lo and behold the price has jumped 100 $ to 499 $. Since i needed the computer i still ordered it and also complained to the customer service and got the standard reply – price is nto guranteed.
Okay, i accepted it. But to my surprise when i loked at the price a few days after the arrival of the computer, it had again dropped to 379 $$
All my complaints to the customer service are getting the boiler plate, response given in your article above. I dont know if AMZON is legally allowed to do this?
Most other stores in the world gurantee prices and also do not vary prices so rapidly up down up.
The policy is still the same as of today, Feb 7, 2010. The price dropped 20% and no adjustment is available. “sorry for the disappointment”. Micro Center had same product, at the same price, with 30 day protection. So, do Frys, and Newegg.
I’m going through this with Amazon right now on an HDTV. The price dropped 25% within two weeks after ordering, and this is not from a Marketplace competitor but Amazon’s own price! In order to realize the savings I have to order a new same HDTV and send it back the old one to them. It’ll cost $50 for shipping from me, but 25% of $$$$ 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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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..
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.
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)
Both of these posts can make amazon rethink about their policies atleast once :)
Just like amazon, E-bay is also same.
I prefer other e-shops that e-bay or amazon.
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
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.
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.
That’s truly shocking.. Frankly I didn’t know about that at all.. Thanks for sharing!
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.
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.
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!
Sorry about the problem. However, I do have that printer and you will be very happy with it.
if they continue to give you a hard time about the return, perhaps you could just refuse the delivery when it comes. that’s worked pretty well for me a few times. also saves you getting gouged on having to pay for the return shipping yourself.
might teach amazon a lesson in proper customer care!
That’s very dissappointing from Amazon. Thank you for the tip.
I’m selling my amazon stock…no way they hit their targets without your business.
Thanks for the inside tip…
I agree with you, that’s really weak. I’ve largely shied away from buying expensive items from Amazon, although I still get a lot of books and CDs from them.
Just try your best to get your order cancelled and save up your money which can invested back in the accessories. Amazon does not offer service in India, in one case good for me :)
What shocking news. I use Amazon Japan (I live there) and they have price protection so I don’t know why any other Amazon wouldn’t. I would raise hell like there is no tomorrow. If it were me I would go find the cocky sob who emailed you back and introduce him to Mr. Baseball Bat. OK maybe that is going a little to far, but I hate when multimillion dollar businesses can’t provide the simplest of service to its customers.