A flea on the butt of the multinational megacorp - Amazon!

 

I have discovered a new way to kill someone.

Try getting a refund from Amazon for a partialshipment that never arrived. Make that two partial shipments that neverarrived.

Amazon owes me $613.47 and they refuse to refund mymoney. It’s a devious, untraceable way to kill a person.

My blood pressure and pulse rate soar every time I open another unhelpful email from their “customer service representatives.” Amazonis trying to kill me by proxy.

The trouble started in early September when I decidedI would participate in several holiday gift markets, I enthusiastically ordereda total of 655 copies of my 10 mystery novels.

For my Canadian murder mysteries, Death in theVineyards, I ordered 250 copies of CORKED. 200 copies of SMASHED. 150 copies ofCRUSHED. These were given three separate order numbers on my Amazon account.(You’ll understand later in this article why this is important.)

For my Mexican murder mysteries, Isla MujeresMysteries, I ordered just 55 copies of the seven books because my Canadian fansprefer the Canadian series. These 55 books were given another order number onmy Amazon account.

The boxes started arriving on September 25th.Lots of boxes. Many boxes.

My books weigh about one pound, or 455 grams which isabout half a kilo. No sane person would ship an order that weighs 250 pounds inone box. Which means that the orders arrived in 22 packages. Some boxescontained 43 books, others 39, or 16, and oddly a few arrived in separate paddedenvelopes containing just one book.

And now the trouble began.

A box of 39 copies of CORKED was posted on my accountas ‘Undeliverable.’

Then a box of 43 copies of SMASHED met the same fate. ‘Undeliverable.’

There was no explanation from the delivery company whythe boxes were undeliverable. All of the other packages arrived safely from thesame printing company to my address.

Checking my Amazon account the message said to wait afew days to claim for the missing merchandise. On October 10th Itried to do a ‘request for refund’ on my account but discovered I couldn’tbecause I didn’t have anything to return.

So, I called the Customer Service line, and the realfun began.

My first conversation included an interesting bit ofadvice: “You have to return the entire shipment if you want a refund for partof the shipment.”

So, that means that I have to find the people that Ihave already sold books to, refund their money, then package up all of thebooks, and send them back to Amazon, who will then send them back to the printer.Then I have to re-order the books from Amazon, and hope that nothing goesastray this time.

Wow! That is an amazing Amazonian solution. (Not!)

Earlier in this article I said, you'd understandlater in the article why the three separate order numbers were important.

And here is the reason: When a Customer ServiceRepresentative receives a request for a refund, the Order Number and the TotalInvoice must match. There is no accommodation for multiple invoices for oneorder number. Crazy but true.

Amazon does not know how to process a partial refund.

I have been in contact with Amazon via phone calls oremails every single day from October 10th until today. Every single communicationsaid, “I was unable tofind the order you have issues with so I would request you to provide thefollowing details for better assistance.”

Recently I found the email addresses for several of thetop Amazon executives and tried sending them a letter begging for assistance.And guess what? They referred me back to the Customer Service Representatives,and their computer-generated form letters.

I have several times sent detailed letters withattached supporting documents printed from my Amazon account showing the fouroriginal orders, and the various separate invoices listing the contents of eachbox.

No joy there. I still get the standard computergeneral replies, “I wasunable to find the order you have issues with so I would request you to providethe following details for better assistance.”

So, now I am wondering.

Does anyone in this multinational megacorpactually read letters from their customers?

Does anyone know how to compose a letter without theassistance of AI bots?

Does any of the upper management know how to solve a simpleproblem that is outside the parameters of their accounting system?

I will persist...if they don’t kill me first.

Cheers, 

Lynda