Book Order Rant

I placed an order with Amazon.com. My daughter wanted to order a particular book as a joke for one of her very good friends. I will not embarrass either of them by telling you what the book was. Wish I could, because it’s pretty funny.

Amazon’s online order system was wigging out and though I changed the order to ship to my home it apparently didn’t take. You can imagine my confusion three minutes later when I saw an email from Amazon thanking me for my order to the Naval Base telling me how quick my order would get there with 2 day shipping.

Well, crap. I didn’t ask for 2 day shipping and I didn’t ask for the order to go to the Naval Base where my son no longer was and certainly NOT where Meg’s friend lives. Immediately upon seeing this, I went back to amazon, clicked on the order number and the option “I need to change this order” button.

After going through the steps to change the order – mind you, this was within 10 minutes of placing it – amazon’s website stated, “Due to an internal error, we are unable to process your changes. Please try again later.” Bullsh*t. I located the customer service number.

Rea in India answered the phone. I was required to give her my order #, and then verify my billing address. I explained the problem.

“I’m sorry ma’am, but we are unable to process the change at this time.”

“I just placed the order, how can you not be able to change it?”

“Because your order was placed as 2 day delivery, we cannot make a change. It is already prepared to ship. What has to happen is that the order will be delivered to the other address, they will not accept it and the order will be returned to us at Amazon. We will refund you your money once the order is returned. You may go ahead and place the order again so it ships today.”

As if their credibility wasn’t an issue.

“Rea, you can’t tell me that the order is on the truck. I just placed it. I just need the address changed.”

“We are sorry, but because of the volume of orders, we are not able to make a change like that.”

I was not pleasant. “Your website made the error in the first place. Then it gave me the option to make a change, but that didn’t work either. This is extraordinarily poor customer service. May I speak to your supervisor?”

“What? What? I can’t hear you.”

“You are telling me I have to place this order again and wait,…”

“What? What? I think we got cut off. I can’t hear you.”

“Rea?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Let me talk to your supervisor.”

“I can’t hear you ma’am. Hello? Hello?”

I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP.

I hung up and called again. I got someone else in India who gave me the same answer but without the fake “Hello? Hello? I can’t hear you.” line at the end. I was on hold for the supervisor, but decided that I didn’t have a lot of options, India was unwilling to help me and amazon had lousy customer service. I let it go.

Not the only pig in the pen guys. Barnes and Noble is just as good, and their shipping is less expensive. Later.