I guess most people value money over anything else, but if I take the time to help them correct their inventory problem, it would at least be nice if they fixed it.
I ordered some glassware, very fragile. It was packaged incorrectly, basically shoved in too big of a box with no padding or anything. Or if there was padding it was very, very minimal. It arrived broken, of course. It would have been nothing short of a miracle if glassware survived that packaging.
Told Amazon the item broken due to poor/incorrect packaging. They sent another packaged identically, broken.
Told Amazon, same thing, they sent another packaged identically, broken.
I tried one more time begging them to package it correctly and got another packaged identically, broken.
I just gave up and decided I didn't really need it, got a refund, and continued to drink out of dollar store plastic cups. There was absolutely no getting through to them what they problem was. I ended up feeling defeated with 4 sets of broken glasses.
Another "they don't read anything you write to them" story... Several years ago I sold a memory card via FBA. The buyer returned the card, they said they were returning it because of a defect, they said "card slows down significantly after it gets half full." Amazon's wearhouse receives the return, they mark it as sellable, and then sell it (as new) again!! Clearly its not new, the problem was evident only from using it! The new buyer didn't complain or ask for a refund, thankfully for me, but the card might have been commingled (I don't recall) so another seller might have been dinged if Amazon shipped out the used card to their buyer.
If the return reason is "defective," why would mark as sellable ever be possible?
Hope the next sucker doesn't catch it.
Something something, free market, YOLO.
Because customers don't always tell the truth, as in your perception of truth might be different from my perception of truth, meaning what's considered defective to you might be perfectly acceptable to me and to other customers.
However if your request is a little more specific and doesn't fit neatly in whatever scripts they're using then it's a bit of a mess. I mainly use amazon.fr so I've interacted with the french support but like you they had a rather thick accent and seemed to have trouble understanding me at times even though I did my best to speak slowly and clearly. In the end I could see that they kept reverting to the script and where a bit lost when I tried to steer things away from it.
I just wanted to complain about a transporter who kept failing to deliver my parcels so it wasn't a big deal but I think it would've been pretty difficult to interact with this (nonetheless very kind) person if I had something a little trickier and more important to figure out with them.
That's the one advantage of living in a tiny country (the Netherlands) that speaks a language hardly anyone else does. It's impossible to outsource customer support to low-wages countries because you simply can't find anyone there who speaks Dutch.
It's a bit like the difference between English and Jamaican Creole.
As for sellers, yes, it's obvious they're getting screwed.
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-i...
GO through the subsection
>Pulling the andon cord
I mean, the worst. Only matched by health insurance companies.
The huge problem with Amazon support is everyone I've ever interacted with (besides that one time I got forwarded to a supervisor) either have a fundamental lack an understanding of the English language or lack reading comprehension (or listening if phone support). They also won't or can't spend any significant time on any one customer inquiry, they need to move onto the next.
On the buyers side they understand how to refund an order which they do readily, ship items, say you can keep items that are errors, maybe some account stuff, and that's basically it. If you need them to do anything else that requires them to understand your inquiry it's an uphill battle.
Basically, you get terrible support if your inquiry can't be solved by quickly pressing the "refund" button or the "ship item" button. I guess most buyers usually only need those two buttons though.
I actually think that's part of why they have such a big problem with counterfeits (and other issues). If someone complains about a counterfeit some low paid employee who doesn't really understand the problem just presses "refund order," the customer stops complaining, and the systemic issues remain.
I have a nightmare Amazon seller support story, but I won't go into it for fear of spiking my blood pressure to dangerous levels. It was only resolved by me finally getting forwarded to a supervisor, who, finally, understood English.