- Amazon would have paid the seller of that motherboard 12k, out of pocket
- the seller of the motherboard would have made money as if you had ordered the motherboard
- Amazon would be out 12k
- You'd have a 12k mobo you can resell
- Amazon would be out 12k
- And also, Amazon would be out 12k
I doubt anyone would buy a 12k mobo from someone off the street. In fact, I doubt anyone would accept a _free_ 12k mobo from someone off the street - if you need that kind of hardware, the risk of questionable sourcing is probably higher than the cost the board.
Well someone just tried to sell one on Amazon... no idea if it stayed there for long, but it was there. Same goes on Ebay. I don't think he could sell it for 12k, but he can certainly sell it for quite a bit.
The humans I've gotten have unfailingly been helpful and effective at solving my issue. Every time. I don't care where in the world they're located; I care that my problem gets solved and they've been 100% track record on that (or as close as possible to that; if I needed something today and the package is late, they can't magic one up onto my doorstep tonight, but anything short of that, they've solved).
It's also maybe 1 in 100 orders that give me any cause to contact them in the first place.
Again, not addressing this personally to you but just responding here.
As a free-market capitalist, I feel funny having to go back to communism 101, but: management is not your friend. Ever.
I asked a rhetorical question which targets the issue of wasteful exploitation being the default where cooperation would have a lot of upsides.
In the best interest of a whole society, sometimes you have to cooperate to end wasteful competition (e.g. form utilities), and sometimes you have to compete to end wasteful cooperation (e.g. break up monopolies or cartels)
That's wrong (from a non-Prime member). I've had certain cases where I had to revert a refund I got for an untracked item that arrived several weeks after the ETA.
Just thinking about what a process managed by Google for that would look like gives me cold sweat.
It's not the customer who actually bought it because amazon will always refund them or reship (as we see in the article) and I bet you amazon has some EULA or TOS that absolves them of responsibility. so now some random seller has to absorb the lost revenue/profit of amazon's mistake.
They told you not to do it. You did it. Now you’re pissed that doing it wasn’t a smooth process. Ok.
Should Amazon just take it back?
Suppose I order a watering can from the garden supply store. When I get home from work, I discover that instead of a watering can, they've delivered 2 tons of mulch in a giant pile in my driveway.
I'm not sure how you could make the argument that it's now my responsibility to get rid of the mulch that I didn't want or ask for?
2 Get mulch in erroneous delivery
3 ... [0]
4 Profit!
[0] https://www.craigslist.org/ :-)
p.s. I actually agree with your point. Just occasionally you can turn a wrong into something good.
If they delivered, instead of two tons of mulch, a single unit of scotch tape, would you still give a shit about whose responsibility disposal is?
We can go ahead and treat these cases as distinct, because they're distinct. You recognize that implicitly, which is why you made your example two tons of mulch, and not 2 ounces of plastic.
It shouldn’t be on the customer to get rid of something sent in error even if other people might think it’s complaining over something petty.
Bare minimum effort:
1. Contact Amazon
2. a. Giving it back to a shipping carrier
b. Dispose of it
In the case of "2 tons of mulch", or by definition anything "bulky to store, impossible to sell and costly to dispose of", the amount of effort isn't the same at all between disposing of it and letting a shipping carrier dealing with it. This make it complaining about it, not something petty.
Thought experiment.
A billionaire sends you $12K in cash. You call her and offer to return it. She tells you sorry and to just keep it.
Should you be angry?
This is a little worse than cash, but not quite as bad a two tons of mulch.
IMO. You’re of course welcome to see the burden of throwing out a motherboard as higher than I do.
The customer asked for one thing but the company delivered something else. Don’t make your customers deal with your mistake.
You seem to have some concerns that being left with a $12K server to dispose of any way she pleases would be a burden.
I believe and her actual experience suggests that the rerun will be more trouble.
Ok same values, different views on likely outcomes, we disagree.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0181-unordered-merchan...
Yes, Amazon has the responsibility of return and disposal. But where disposal is a completely trivial "drop it in the trash can, forget it exists," let's not pretend that this ia Amazon doing him some kind of massive disservice.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0181-unordered-merchan...
It seems that if you made this mistake, it would ruin your own business, but it is not the case with them.
If you want to help Amazon get more money, let’s all order subj boxes, because for mass-enough wrong shipments they’ll take care and fix it. Someone could do a small short-lived business even, receiving these boxes, relabelling them correctly and reselling under the right markings. It is called arbitrage and there is nothing wrong with it. You take advantage of some inconsistency and make it so explicit that it either is fixed or left to you as a reward for fixing it.
That's not been my experience at all. I've had occasion to call them 3 times in the last 6 months or so, and in all cases I've had no trouble getting to someone who quickly resolved my problem.
1. I ordered an Echo Dot on Prime Day last year. The two colors I liked best were listed as out of stock, with no estimate of when they would be available, so I ordered my third choice.
That one then was delayed and the other two became available so I called to see if they could change my order to one of those colors. I went to "Help"/"Need More Help"/"Contact Us" and on that page selected "We can call you", and filled out the form.
In less than 10 seconds, my phone was ringing and when I answered I was talking to a person. (It turned out that she couldn't update my order, though, so I did end up with my third choice color. Turned out OK, though, because it also turned out that the place I had thought I'd put the Dot was not very good. The ideal spot, it turned out, was a spot where that third color fit much better).
2. I ordered some pants and shirts about three weeks before Christmas. I got a notice on a Friday that USPS had delivered them, saying that they had been left in the garage or some other outbuilding. I could not find them. Amazon's site says that sometimes you can get a notice notice up to 48 hours before actual delivery, so I waited until Monday. Then I went to the USPS office, and they told me that it had actually been left at my neighbor's and that USPS would retrieve it from the neighbor and bring it to me.
I went and checked with the neighbor and they had not seen it. We even checked her garage, since the delivery notice mentioned a garage, but nothing.
So I called Amazon. Again, less than 10 seconds after submitting the form I received a call from them. I explained what happened, and the person offered to send replacements. I requested a refund instead, since I didn't actually need this stuff for Christmas. It was just coincidence that I ordered near Christmas. I'd rather have a refund, and then just re-order the items myself later after the Christmas shipping madness ended. He immediately granted the refund which was processed within a day.
3. A week after that, the missing package showed up in my mailbox! So I again called Amazon. Yet again, less than 10 seconds from form submission requesting a callback to getting that callback.
I explained what happened and asked them if they could re-charge me for the order, or if they wanted me to ship the items back, or what. I was put on hold for maybe 30 seconds, and then told that they couldn't really re-charge, so just keep the items for free.
This sorta thing has been a problem for a long time.