The only thing keeping me there is the no-nonsense, helpful, customer support.

Any issues i have are always resolved, so it still seems to be working over here.

That was when I canceled my prime subscription which I had almost as long as it existed here.

It's illegal under German law, EU law, and I'm sure it's also explicitly called out as illegal in at least 5 trade treaties Germany signed.

Needless to say, like everything in the EU, it's only enforced against local companies, in this case German ones.

Say ... what was Amazon's initial reason for success? Being cheaper by exploiting the interstate commerce clause to avoid paying sales tax when it's competitors weren't allowed to do so? You don't say. Amazon is famous for losing money on their delivery business (up until recently)? It's constantly repeated in 10+ years of their financial statements ...

So either Amazon has completely changed tactics and become truly brilliant and we still don't understand the plan ... or they're up to their old tricks, being slightly cheaper, now with less legality!

In the US these laws have been dismantled since the 70s (if I get the text correctly, I'm not expert on US labor law). And in Germany there is a chancellor who is pushing to increase the 40 work week (which still meant up to 50 hours) to a 48 hour work week - that's the change necessary to have Amazon (and others) treat their drivers and warehouse workers with more dignity. /s

Just think about Media markt customer service for example…

Amazon changed that by introducing US-style no-questions-asked 30 day returns etc… but nowadays they are slowly chipping away at that, 14 days is the the norm now, (which is the hard limit anyway, since being set into law a couple years ago)

But yes the customer friendliness is slowly being cut down, due to growing costs. Zalando (an online fashion retailer) has also reduced their return policy recently.

Never buy from Amazon, especially not .de. Germany has a bunch of alternative online shops that are better.

Such as?

I never ran into such problems with Amazon, but I would like to know the alternatives.

As it stands, I will vote negatively for any CSR interaction that doesn't resolve my issue immediately while the conversation is still active, irrespective of whether they say they have addressed it.

When an item I ordered is delivered as the wrong item or when it never arrives, I can only select from a list of items in order to inform them about the bad delivery and none of the items lists "item never arrived" or "wrong item arrived".

And there is no other way to complain about the delivery/item--no help chat, no email I can contact.

(At least, in the UK. Like sibling comment to yours it's the amazing support and returns that makes me shop at Amazon (.de in their case) - I don't recognise the disaster described elsewhere in thread and I probably wouldn't shops there!)

To get to chat, there are maybe 20 clicks to do. It's a series of menus and the wrong answer at any point leads you back to the prior purchases page.

If you finally get to 'chat', it's a terrible AI which never helps. If you respond incorrectly, AI closes the chat or gives dead end answers.

Only after all of this, do you finally have the opportunity to chat to a person. Often this person has a poor command of the english language too.

I just call now. They've literally made it so calling is 1000x easier.

Amazon is just hilariously, horribly managed these days.

Unlike the author of the article, I don't believe it's possible to fix Amazon. He's talking about regulations as a remedy, but the U.S. is not likely to pass such regulations any time soon. The U.S. government is far more likely to threaten other nations for imposing such regulations or taxes on American companies operating in their jurisdictions. We saw this very thing happen when Canada was forced to delete its digital services tax.

If you don't think Amazon is delivering good value for your money, stop giving Amazon your money. Even though there is no direct competition for delivering Chinese junk to your doorstep overnight, stop giving Amazon your money. "Good, fast, cheap. Pick two." Amazon promised us all three, but failed to deliver just like all the rest.

Amazon told me to go hang, said I couldn’t return used goods, it would have to be unused in the box, and that I should contact meta.

I contacted meta, who told me to go hang, as they don’t officially support Portugal, which is where Amazon Spain happily shipped it.

So it’s just sat in a box gathering dust since, and I now avoid using Amazon whenever possible. I had already ditched meta so frankly I should have known that I was going to step on a rake.

I don't buy it. Don't we have actual consumer protection laws here in europe? We can return anything we bought online in 14 days time, full refund, no questions asked.

But this is Amazon - they don’t need to follow consumer protection laws - I think their specific get out is that they’re Amazon Spain, and I’m having stuff shipped to Portugal, and Spanish consumer protection regs (which implement the EU regs) only protect consumers in Spain.

That was meta’s get-out, too.

Not to mention the standard is 30 day returns, more than double the legally mandated 14 for distance selling.

I don't understand why you were even talking to support - if it was clearly defective within half an hour (much less than 30 days) you could have just created a return yourself without talking to anybody?

It’s basically the Amazon uk returns process from 20 years ago.

I think your mistake might be that they are sticking to the letter of the law. Don't ask for your 14-day cool-off period, because strictly I think the product needs to be sealed (though many sellers are more lenient):

https://business.gov.nl/regulation/cancellation-period-sale/

Instead ask for a repair under warranty, which they are required to do as a seller. They cannot point you to the manufacturer, the seller is responsible for handling warranty for the first two years:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/product-g...

No one needs to follow consumer protection laws if you don't sue to make them.

That’s part of their calculus, too.

(A company can have someone represent them, but if it's a lawyer, they must also have a rep. from the company there. and there can be no legalise, and the judge must explain anything to you if you ask)

There is no forced discoverability. EG, the other side cannot ask for all sorts of documents. You just include your evidence in the filing.

There is no ability for the company you sue, to compel costs if you lose.

For $150 you get a lot of joy out of hassling a company behaving like this. And amusingly, they still consult lawyers, and spend on a lot on lawyers. They can't be used in court, but they of course as a company consult legal experts.

I napkin mathed it, the one time I sued a company. I figured it cost them $25,000 to defend when I spent $150. If even a small percentage of people take them to task for breaking the law, they'll turn around quick.

Always use your enemies strengths as a weakness against them.

You should look at the process, but view if from the perspective of a hobby.

doesn't seem likely

How strange to try to claim the legal system has no reconciliation process for tourists or EU passer-bys. You're allowed to say you just couldn't be bothered to go through the trouble.

Amazon Spain are Spanish, and are not subject to the Portuguese livro de reclamações.

As to making a chargeback - I like having a bank account, and being able to pay for things online - any time you do one you take a risk your bank will decide to throw freezes and KYC at you until you give up.

And given you've already said things that are not true, I'm highly skeptical that there are not other means to handle this. I bet there are ways to access authenticao.gov without being a citizen. I bet there are ways that you don't have to go 200km. You can probably send the forms by snail-mail, by post or courier. I bet you're just leaving things out again, or haven't researched properly, as you've shown this to be the case with prior comments.

In terms of what Amazon is subject to, you can get a court judgement in one jurisdiction, and have it enforced in another. You're in the EU too, and I would be astonished to discover this isn't super-easy there. And legislation likely enhances cross-border cases like this. And if companies ship into another country, they can be blocked until recourse happens.

Point is, you're just (again) saying "Oh well!" without really knowing. You're just saying that's the case, because you're presuming that's the case. You don't know. you just say it is so.

Chargebacks are a part of online life. They are common. I've never, ever heard of a bank ever being hostile over them. The very premise is weird and absurd. It's just a part of banking, nothing unusual, nothing surprising, and a process we all have to go through from time to time.

You can only use authenticao.gov if you have a citizen card. This is a fact. The offline process involves physically going to the office in Porto, which is 200km from me. There are no forms you can just mail. I have been through this. Shit, go try the process yourself if you’re so sure.

You also evidently know nothing about EU law. The EU issues directives. Member states implement them. They are national pieces of legislation, not transnational.

As for chargebacks, the last time I did one, over a hire car that didn’t materialise, my bank put me through the wringer, and I no longer bank with them.

Anyway, thank you for your enlightened fucking comment.

https://www2.gov.pt/en/locais-de-atendimento-de-servicos-pub...

It's surprising to see you say this, since the PT gov website is honestly pretty clear on it.

And I highly doubt you're 200km from any court clerk. Especially since, you know, Portugal is only 220x550km...

And yes, believe it or not, Trás-os-Montes exists. I know you think Coimbra is the northern limit of the country, but people do live up here, and the nearest service desk for many things is Porto.

Anyway, you go vote chega, or whatever it is you do.

IANAL, but I don't think it matters. Any webshop in the EU must sell to all EU customers and they should provide the same warranty, etc. to all EU customers as if you were buying it in the country they are selling from (Spain in this case). The EU is a single market.

https://www.eccnet.eu/consumer-rights/what-are-my-consumer-r...

Amazon is violating EU consumer protection law here, but they probably do it because most customers will feel helpless and not sue them. If you do not want to sue them, the best thing is probably to file a complaint with the Portuguese consumer authority. It's really important to do this, because only when enough people do such a thing, a pattern can be established and they can warn or sue Amazon.

When I contacted customer service, they told me I had to send them a copy of my ID to process the refund. I was really frustrated; I’ve had this account for over 20 years and never had any issues before. I spoke with several representatives, but they all gave me the same response, and a few were even rude and aggressive, something I’d never experienced with Amazon before.

Since I didn’t want to share my ID, I decided to go through my credit card provider (Visa) instead and filed a claim. Visa refunded my money, but shortly after, I got an email from Amazon asking why I’d raised a Section 75 claim (the UK’s credit card protection scheme) and informing me that my account would be closed for fraudulent activity.

I replied with proof that they had received my return and never issued a refund. That was the last I ever heard from them, and the last time I bought anything from Amazon.

You didn't explain why you didn't want to share your ID with Amazon, but it's not an unreasonable request from them as a way to combat fraud.

Amazon got so large they stopped paying attention to the details.

I wonder how much a 20-yr old Amazon account is worth on the grey market. Mine is about that old, and I have – legimately – returned thousands of dollars worth of goods (that were faulty or just didn't work the way I liked) and it is probably very difficult for Amazon to distinguish between my legitimate returns and a hypothetical alternative where I'm a fraudster that just purchased this old account and am laundering broken electronics through the returns system.

It's not only Amazon that has this problem btw. Lots of online stores do. Return fraud is so prevalent that you should expect to this to become more common. A few bad apples ruin it for the rest of us.

Payment details aren't enough to reliably establish identity in many cases. If fighting this stuff were easy they'd have done it already, they aren't idiots.

And crucially - Amazon doesnt do this tracking on purpose so they can have plausible deniability while screwing merchants.

Btw, if Amazon is a fault, where they can't shift the loss onto a seller or third-party, the delays will go on for weeks, if not forever. You have to do a chargeback.

"Aged" accounts are a thing you can buy on the black market, as well as hacked accounts of users with long chains of legitimate activity. It's not as strong of an anti-fraud signal as you might think.

They can use common sense for the refund. They are just choosing not to.

Source: I work in LP, but not for Amazon.

They should inspect their returns more carefully before refunding.

Amazon can't verify everything, but for it's own Fire devices it does check S/Ns. Also Apple has it's own system, they do not mess around. I suggest not buying Apple products from Amazon.

Why is there another time? I don't understand why someone would continue purchasing from a shop after the first experience.

So if you want a certain item, your options are, if you're lucky, find a physical retail store that sells the item, or order it from Amazon. If you're not very lucky, they don't sell in retail stores, only online. Only on Amazon.

My family has vastly reduced our purchases from Amazon over the past several months, but there are still some things that we basically don't have a choice in, especially given that we live in a rural area without ready access to many physical retail stores.

I once ordered a new pair of Jeans, expensive ones because I wanted them to last, from Amazon and got an obviously used and ripped pair sent to me.

I sent it back, noted that in my reason for sending it back only to receive an email from them with the same sentiment as you got. Luckily I kept all the receipts (figuratively) and took a lot of photos and screenshots.

Reaching out to support they apologized profusely to me but still it left a very bad taste in my mouth and I'm sure it'll happen again sometime in the future.

It's not like Amazon is an actual monopoly for clothing.

In the context of buying jeans (or really anything), if I go to a retail store, it's a multi-hour, multi-store event that usually leaves me empty-handed. My solution to that was to go directly to Levi's with the model and size of the last pair that fit, and buy a few pairs of them. I recently went back to buy to restock my supply of jeans, only to find that the style that fits has been discontinued—yet another form of enshitification.

Retention is the next program they’ll have to initiate, but no reason to finance this now as there are no competitors just yet.

Listen, when it was said that corporations are amoral and sociopathic, it was not a joke.

If anything it feels like the second CSR who actually told you the truth was acting more in defiance of the system than the first one.

The research is also completely useless nowadays. 90% of what you find is just people reselling stuff they bought on AliExpress and reviews are all fake.

I have a similar story, they "delivered" when I was out, hidden behind a wall in my garden

when I found the package two days later, the expensive books had been ruined by the rain

I explained to their CS, they issued the return authorisation

then after they received the return they threatened me for not returning in "original condition"

I was a customer since the early 2000s, a prime member since it started, with something like 2 returns total in that time, with tens of thousands of spending (to this exact address)

I deleted my account

This was over chat? You have the transcript? I find it hard to believe they would say this. Amazon CSR have a very strict script they have to go by. But they do lie, get everything in writing.