Amazon's entire customer service philosophy is basically will give you store credit out of good will.

For example I once couldn't figure out how to build a table right, and I hopped on the phone with their customer service department and they refund it half of the price of the table. The same thing happened where I had a monitor which 8 months after I purchased it started having problems, they just refunded half the price.

I'm pretty sure this only works for me because I spend at least $1,500 a month via Amazon, but even then it's business genius to operate like this. Many retailers would rather leave you out to dry, for example I purchased some shoes found they didn't fit and I was shocked when I simply couldn't return them. Guess I'll never go to that store again.

> I'm pretty sure this only works for me because I spend at least $1,500 a month via Amazon

What are you buying such that you're spending at least $18,000 a year on Amazon?

The short answer is as a single person with a significant amount of expendable income, I buy a lot of toys. The long answer is I buy almost everything except for food off of Amazon. Need a couch, get it off Amazon, want a shiny new video game controller, Amazon, clothing, Amazon.

Now to be fair, 1,500 might be more of an outlier month, with the average month being closer to 900 or 800$.

I used to do this, but now I check aliexpress.com first - usually I can find things at a third of the price, sometimes 10x cheaper, and I haven't really felt a lack of quality (just shipping speed).

Yeah but good luck returning something from AliExpress.

I'm more into getting the stuff I want fast, and making sure it does what I want.

I got close to that after buying a house and filling it with whatever things I figured out I needed but didn’t want to drive to the store for (tools, cleaning supplies, kitchen stuff, holiday decorations, non food consumables, etc.)

I can’t see sustaining it indefinitely, but for a year or even two wouldn’t shock me if you’re not frugal and have a big empty house.

My guess is that Amazon is in such a strong position with its suppliers that they don't have to care.

I know a story of a guy who tried to sell a product via MediaMarkt. (A somewhat big German retailer) You have to take everything unsold back. They only pay you after 6 month. The world for a small retailer is usually the other way around. Pay upfront and sit on unsold stock. MediMarkt is small in comparison to Amazon. That is why they don't care if you tell them 10 month later that you don't like your "new" TV. It's not their loss.

When sound cards were still a thing even in mid-level PCs I once tried to call Dell for a driver issue related to the sound card that the high-end PC had come equipped with.

I got zero help with the software issue, but they sent me a new card. I sold it on Ebay for ~$70 though so I did not complain. I solved the driver issue myself.

I feel the same way. I don't spend nearly as much as you but I'm an Amazon Prime user and I haven't ever had an issue getting a refund on a product and in some cases where I ask to cancel a delivery after speaking to a representative, I get credit to use on my next purchase.

I got a refund on something that explicitly said no returns, no refunds when I bought it. Was a $800 automatic driveway gate opener.

They’ve started trying to see if the can help you use/install the product but that’s the only inconvenience

I had the same experience w/ my Apple AirPod pros. I thought I lost my pair, so ordered replacements. The first time, they only sent 1 of 2 headphones. I called, they shipped 2 new ones. I called Apple to return the extra bud, some wires got crossed, and they sent 2 more.

At this point, I obviously found my originals. So I called Apple to try and send back the 3 extras they sent me (I would still have my originals + the replacements I paid for). They were unable to coordinate a return, told me to keep all of them.

I now have 7 apple airpod buds.

Anyone know if Apple counted this as the sale of 7 units?

Only the first pair counted as a sale, 1 sku of 2 units plus a case. The rest were replacements with their own SKU (probably) and are "sold" through a different channel. Revenue from Apple Support is still revenue, but it's not direct retail sales revenue like you're thinking.

Also, I had a similar problem where I wanted a replacement airpods and a replacement case and had to wait for 3 boxes and ship back 3 boxes, and at one point got an extra bud sent to me and at another point got an empty laptop box with an empty airpods box sent to me. The whole experience of dealing with Apple Support by mail completely turned me off doing anything support-related by mail. At least Amazon figured out that store credits don't need anything to be mailed back! Apple seems a lot more competent in-store when these kind of supply chain goofs can be hidden away by store staff. It makes me wonder how often supplies are sent to the wrong store or need to be counted again, etc.

Right now I'm waiting for a different part of Salesforce, Tableau, to get back to me about a licensing snafu where they billed me for the contract renewal, received my payment, but failed to have a system check if my licenses have expired and need to be re-issued, apparently. I suppose most people just reach out and ask for licenses keys to be re-assigned in advance, silly me for assuming it would be easy. This is definitely what enterprise means... Also my invoices from 4-5 years ago have disappeared from their system, and are the only evidence I have of what I purchased in the first place. Everything else lists a simple maintenance renewal sku and that's it. Feels like they forgot why I'm paying them a maintenance fee in their rush to ask for it.

> another point got an empty laptop box with an empty airpods box sent to me.

maybe this is some kind of keep alive. we don't have any parts for you yet, just checking in with you at the shipping-empty-boxes layer

Yeah, I think the intent was to ship me something to return a product with, except, of course, that each of the replacement products were their own containers to return the defective products...

A funny experience with DMV:

I sent my payment via regular mail. 1 month later still don't have my registration renewal, so I start worrying. I call my bank to block the check, and go to DMV offices in person and make a payment using a credit card.

After a couple of weeks I receive 2 letters from DMV the same day. One saying I double paid, and hence they are now include a check with my payment back. And another one saying my original check has bounced and that now I will have to make the payment using cashier's check and pay an extra $20 for the bounced check.

I get a cashier check for the amount plus the $20 and make yet another payment.

A couple of weeks later I receive another letter from DMV with a check returning the $20 penalty.

So overall in the end we did balance things out, but took a while :D

If you had missed that renewal payment deadline for the DMV, you get an automatic fee+60% fine on top and the only way to pay is via cashier's check, which you can find out by calling the most punitive phone tree/hold system I've ever experienced. I think it took something like 5 hours to actually reach a person, by which point it was after hours and they had gone home so the system hung up.

I had simply made a transcription error on the account number and the letter took 1.5mos to get back. That was a few days after the deadline.

They seem to do this kind of thing all the time. Just recently, I ordered a few low-value-ish things, like $75 total. Email and app said it was delivered, but no package to be found, even a couple days later. Spent like half an hour digging through their web UI to find the "package never arrived" option, and they just refunded me without even talking to a person or answering any questions. Okay then.

Then a couple days later, the package turned up after all. Turned out, the building staff hand-wrote the wrong apartment number in. I guess it took a couple of days for whoever was in the other apartment to get it, open it, realize it wasn't their stuff, send it back to the building staff, they figure out what went wrong, and tell me to pick it up.

So now I have the package and the refund. I spent another 10 or 20 minutes on Amazon trying to find an option for I got the package after all. Couldn't find anything. Gave up and left it alone. I guess Amazon would rather let me keep the money than bother building the infrastructure for that case. I have a feeling it would take even longer to figure out a phone number to call and wait on hold to talk to a person who had the authority to do something not on a pre-set list.

I had a similar experience but it was due to FedEx constantly delivering Amazon packages to the wrong address in my neighborhood. We were 398 but FedEx always delivered to 389 or 498. This continued even after we put a second set of house numbers on our mailbox.

We eventually had Amazon ban FedEx as a shipper to our address.

I had complained about LaserShip _so_ many times, and asked them to ban them as a last mile delivery provider - it took a while but finally happened (or, their own delivery vans just became more accessible in the area)

At the 1996 MacWorld there was a bin of floppies for Earthlink's dial-up service supporting the then-new World Wide Web.

They weren't prepared for the server crush. I made nine attempts to create an account, before succeeding. Each time the attempt hung in mid-session. Once I got far enough to see my preferred login was not available. In my frustration I gave that presumed stranger a referral credit.

Then I got billed for nine accounts. There were unique transaction numbers, but my credit card company didn't use them, and couldn't keep track of otherwise identical transactions.

To this day I want Earthlink to rot in hell for how they treated me throughout this conflict. They brought this on themselves. They accused me of fraud for the unintended self-referral. As Don Johnson once said in a less safe-for-work context, we all rely on the kindness of strangers.

They might have spent more on solving this than your couch was worth.

It was $1000 couch so possibly? I would imagine dispatching a freight shipper to pickup a couch was easily a couple hundred bucks though so I'm just surprised they never charged me again.

I got a free couch and over $200 in credit for my trouble from Amazon.

What couch?

This one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I52XHLO/