Amazon - Most unfriendly company 2013
26.02.13 Filed in: Opinion
I’ve been on a roller-coaster ride with a company that - up to now - I’ve been highly satisfied with. This is also a company that has one of those “striving to be the most customer-friendly company in the world” type of banners in their email messages.
I’m talking about Amazon.
Here is how this all started:
On January 24, I’d purchased something on the internet, not via Amazon.de (the German subsidiary), but via a different web shop. This web shop offered Amazon Payments as a payment alternative, and since I’ve never had issues before, I decided to use it instead of Paypal. The transaction went smoothly, I received my items a day later. So far, so good.
The payment was set up as a debit from a bank account I use for my consulting business that’s been around since 2001. Since there isn’t much traffic on this account lately (I’m employed full-time by BancTec and don’t have any time left to do work on the side), the balance had slipped my mind. When Amazon Payments tried to debit my account, it wasn’t covered. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, as I had a revolver on my last account that would have compensated the difference. I’d just switched banks a few weeks earlier, however, and a revolver hadn’t been set up.
Subsquently, Amazon wasn’t able to deduct the amount. Oddly enough, I didn’t receive an email from Amazon about this - I noticed it by chance when I checked through my account transactions. So I went to amazon.de and tried to log into my account. No go - it had been locked.
A day later, I received an email from Amazon stating that “as you have read previously” (nope), I should transfer the missing funds and all would be well. Unfortunately, _that_ email had no further information in it, such as what amount I owed, where it should be transferred to, etc.
What followed is an aria that shows just how bad Amazon’s customer service processes are set up. Without being able to log into your account, you can’t get in touch with Amazon Payments. It’s that simple. Once you’re locked out, you stay locked out.
Via the German financial commission BaFin, I was able to get Amazon Payments’ HQ contact data - they are, as is often the case, located in Luxembourg - for tax reasons. They don’t have any personnel in Germany. I wrote them a letter (yep - snail mail!!!) describing the situation. I’ve reproduced it here for your reading pleasure:
-------------
Amazon Payments Europe S.C.A.
Customer Service
5 Rue Plaetis
L 2338 Luxemburg
Dear Madam or Sir,
luckily, the German BaFin was able to send me your address, as I have had a severe issue with not being able to communicate with your customer service department responsible for the German Amazon Payments program in several weeks. Now that I have your corporate address, at least I can use “old fashioned” mail to detail my problem.
On January 28, due to an overdraft on my company account, an attempted debit by Amazon Payments of €287,79 was refused by my bank (-). The purchase had been made from my Amazon account “-”. Please accept my apologies for this inconvenience - my company account isn’t used that frequently, and I hadn’t made certain that it would cover the debit in a timely fashion.
I learned of the overdraft by chance, while looking through my online bank statement two days after the fact. On Feb. 2, I received an email from Amazon Payments, stating that this was a reminder to take care of the outstanding amount which I had been informed of previously. Please rest assured that I had NOT received a previous email, or I would have taken care of the issue immediately.
I tried to log into my account to get any information at all on how to rectify the situation (i.e. a bank connection where I might wire the money to) - unfortunately, my Amazon.de account (see above) was locked, and has been ever since.
Thus, links to the Amazon Payments customer service won’t work, as they require a login in order to contact customer service. I contacted Amazon.de customer service on Feb. 3; they replied almost immediately, but indicated that they had no connection to Amazon Payments and wouldn’t be able to help me with my problem. He did, however, promise to forward my issue to Amazon Payments customer service so that they could respond. Needless to say, I did not receive a reply from you.
On Feb. 6, I decided to take it one step further: I opened a chat with Amazon.de customer service and told the very friendly lady my problem - also, that Amazon Payments customer service had not responded. She told me that she wasn’t able to help me, as there was no connection between Amazon.de and Amazon Payments (as before) but that she had forwarded the issue to you so that you might respond to my problem quickly. I waited - but, as before, I received no signs of life.
On the next day, I decided to try the phone. Amazon has a “call me back” feature, and I used it. The call came almost immediately, unfortunately the result was the same as the two times before: the lady indicated that she couldn’t help me, but would forward my issue to you to get back to me. Again, as before, no response. And yes, I checked my “junk mail” folder daily to make sure any response didn’t get lost.
At this point, I’m extremely frustrated, as you can imagine. I’ve been a loyal Amazon.de customer for many years and have valued Amazon as a reliable vendor with excellent business process management. Unfortunately, this doesn’t ring true at all for the Payments section.
I would thus ask you to get back to me on the issue ASAP, ideally via email (either the account email or via x@y.com). All I need is for you to supply me with bank account details that I can forward the outstanding sum to.
Also, I would ask you as a one-happy Amazon customer to seriously look over your business processes; locking out an account if this account is the only communications medium a customer can use to get in touch with you is ridiculous.
I’m also appalled that nowhere on any Amazon website is there an address listed where one can get in touch via email, phone or regular mail.
-------------
This letter finally resulted in a standard email - likely the one I should have received when the debit issue came up with in the first place - on Feb. 20, 4 weeks after the fact. This one, as I would have expected a month earlier, detailed the amount and account information where to transfer that amount.
I transferred the money on Feb. 21. As of this writing (Feb. 26), my account is still locked out. I used the “call me” function to get in touch with Amazon once again. You could immediately tell that this wasn’t an Irish lady as last time but a German one, the tone was just that touch more annoyed (or should I say “annoying”?).
She stated once again that because Amazon Payments is a separate unit, she wouldn’t be able to help me, but would send me an email with details on how to get in touch with Amazon Payments once I verified some contact details. We nearly got stuck with my “User name”… something I wasn’t aware of even using with Amazon, but as it later turned out, this was just my name… whatever the point of that was, I’ll never know.
The email I received was identical to one I’d received all the way back when I sent my first email. Unfortunately, nothing has changed. You still need to be able to log in to contact Amazon Payments (which I can’t) and using the supplied URL https://payments.amazon.de/contactus leads to the contact site for Amazon.de (not payments), which - you know this already - can’t be of help with Amazon Payments issues.
The issue this throws up is this: I’m now at a point where I am close to terminating my customer relationship with Amazon forever. I’m completely annoyed by being tossed around like a piece of trash, just because this company isn’t able to properly set up its customer service processes. That is, of course, somewhat problematic - I have a small Kindle library accumulated, which would end up in /dev/null if I kiss Amazon goodbye.
If anyone at Amazon reads this: if you need a company that can help you with your processes, get in touch with me or someone at BancTec USA. Whatever you do - change this deadlock process as soon as you can, or I won’t be the only customer that you’ll lose for all eternity.
I’m talking about Amazon.
Here is how this all started:
On January 24, I’d purchased something on the internet, not via Amazon.de (the German subsidiary), but via a different web shop. This web shop offered Amazon Payments as a payment alternative, and since I’ve never had issues before, I decided to use it instead of Paypal. The transaction went smoothly, I received my items a day later. So far, so good.
The payment was set up as a debit from a bank account I use for my consulting business that’s been around since 2001. Since there isn’t much traffic on this account lately (I’m employed full-time by BancTec and don’t have any time left to do work on the side), the balance had slipped my mind. When Amazon Payments tried to debit my account, it wasn’t covered. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, as I had a revolver on my last account that would have compensated the difference. I’d just switched banks a few weeks earlier, however, and a revolver hadn’t been set up.
Subsquently, Amazon wasn’t able to deduct the amount. Oddly enough, I didn’t receive an email from Amazon about this - I noticed it by chance when I checked through my account transactions. So I went to amazon.de and tried to log into my account. No go - it had been locked.
A day later, I received an email from Amazon stating that “as you have read previously” (nope), I should transfer the missing funds and all would be well. Unfortunately, _that_ email had no further information in it, such as what amount I owed, where it should be transferred to, etc.
What followed is an aria that shows just how bad Amazon’s customer service processes are set up. Without being able to log into your account, you can’t get in touch with Amazon Payments. It’s that simple. Once you’re locked out, you stay locked out.
Via the German financial commission BaFin, I was able to get Amazon Payments’ HQ contact data - they are, as is often the case, located in Luxembourg - for tax reasons. They don’t have any personnel in Germany. I wrote them a letter (yep - snail mail!!!) describing the situation. I’ve reproduced it here for your reading pleasure:
-------------
Amazon Payments Europe S.C.A.
Customer Service
5 Rue Plaetis
L 2338 Luxemburg
Dear Madam or Sir,
luckily, the German BaFin was able to send me your address, as I have had a severe issue with not being able to communicate with your customer service department responsible for the German Amazon Payments program in several weeks. Now that I have your corporate address, at least I can use “old fashioned” mail to detail my problem.
On January 28, due to an overdraft on my company account, an attempted debit by Amazon Payments of €287,79 was refused by my bank (-). The purchase had been made from my Amazon account “-”. Please accept my apologies for this inconvenience - my company account isn’t used that frequently, and I hadn’t made certain that it would cover the debit in a timely fashion.
I learned of the overdraft by chance, while looking through my online bank statement two days after the fact. On Feb. 2, I received an email from Amazon Payments, stating that this was a reminder to take care of the outstanding amount which I had been informed of previously. Please rest assured that I had NOT received a previous email, or I would have taken care of the issue immediately.
I tried to log into my account to get any information at all on how to rectify the situation (i.e. a bank connection where I might wire the money to) - unfortunately, my Amazon.de account (see above) was locked, and has been ever since.
Thus, links to the Amazon Payments customer service won’t work, as they require a login in order to contact customer service. I contacted Amazon.de customer service on Feb. 3; they replied almost immediately, but indicated that they had no connection to Amazon Payments and wouldn’t be able to help me with my problem. He did, however, promise to forward my issue to Amazon Payments customer service so that they could respond. Needless to say, I did not receive a reply from you.
On Feb. 6, I decided to take it one step further: I opened a chat with Amazon.de customer service and told the very friendly lady my problem - also, that Amazon Payments customer service had not responded. She told me that she wasn’t able to help me, as there was no connection between Amazon.de and Amazon Payments (as before) but that she had forwarded the issue to you so that you might respond to my problem quickly. I waited - but, as before, I received no signs of life.
On the next day, I decided to try the phone. Amazon has a “call me back” feature, and I used it. The call came almost immediately, unfortunately the result was the same as the two times before: the lady indicated that she couldn’t help me, but would forward my issue to you to get back to me. Again, as before, no response. And yes, I checked my “junk mail” folder daily to make sure any response didn’t get lost.
At this point, I’m extremely frustrated, as you can imagine. I’ve been a loyal Amazon.de customer for many years and have valued Amazon as a reliable vendor with excellent business process management. Unfortunately, this doesn’t ring true at all for the Payments section.
I would thus ask you to get back to me on the issue ASAP, ideally via email (either the account email or via x@y.com). All I need is for you to supply me with bank account details that I can forward the outstanding sum to.
Also, I would ask you as a one-happy Amazon customer to seriously look over your business processes; locking out an account if this account is the only communications medium a customer can use to get in touch with you is ridiculous.
I’m also appalled that nowhere on any Amazon website is there an address listed where one can get in touch via email, phone or regular mail.
-------------
This letter finally resulted in a standard email - likely the one I should have received when the debit issue came up with in the first place - on Feb. 20, 4 weeks after the fact. This one, as I would have expected a month earlier, detailed the amount and account information where to transfer that amount.
I transferred the money on Feb. 21. As of this writing (Feb. 26), my account is still locked out. I used the “call me” function to get in touch with Amazon once again. You could immediately tell that this wasn’t an Irish lady as last time but a German one, the tone was just that touch more annoyed (or should I say “annoying”?).
She stated once again that because Amazon Payments is a separate unit, she wouldn’t be able to help me, but would send me an email with details on how to get in touch with Amazon Payments once I verified some contact details. We nearly got stuck with my “User name”… something I wasn’t aware of even using with Amazon, but as it later turned out, this was just my name… whatever the point of that was, I’ll never know.
The email I received was identical to one I’d received all the way back when I sent my first email. Unfortunately, nothing has changed. You still need to be able to log in to contact Amazon Payments (which I can’t) and using the supplied URL https://payments.amazon.de/contactus leads to the contact site for Amazon.de (not payments), which - you know this already - can’t be of help with Amazon Payments issues.
The issue this throws up is this: I’m now at a point where I am close to terminating my customer relationship with Amazon forever. I’m completely annoyed by being tossed around like a piece of trash, just because this company isn’t able to properly set up its customer service processes. That is, of course, somewhat problematic - I have a small Kindle library accumulated, which would end up in /dev/null if I kiss Amazon goodbye.
If anyone at Amazon reads this: if you need a company that can help you with your processes, get in touch with me or someone at BancTec USA. Whatever you do - change this deadlock process as soon as you can, or I won’t be the only customer that you’ll lose for all eternity.
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