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A comment on Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement Order Scam.

Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by citricsquid on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @12:04AM (#4936144)
I suspect this is a result of their attitude towards re-orders due to delivery issues, it would make sense that if CSR's are told "if a user wants a re-order, just do it" that they'd not really consider the implications of allowing them with a new address, because their attitude is do whatever to keep the customer happy.

I had a delivery of a game go missing (~$60 cost) so I opened a live chat and explained, then they shipped me a brand new order (which arrived!) without any hassle or confirmation that my prior delivery had really been stolen. This seems like a trivial thing to abuse (and I'm sure many do). After my free re-order was placed I thought "that was cool, I'll order from Amazon in the future just in case...".

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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by robflynn on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @01:38AM (#4936335)
The same thing happened to me. Afterward, that prompted me to sign up for Amazon Prime. I had decided that if they were going to take care of me like that then I may as well dive right in. My Prime renewal is coming up in a few weeks and I will be renewing it. Hell, my girlfriend and I order light bulbs and various trivial household items via Amazon now. They've made it so easy for me. It sucks that people are taking advantage of that.

I once ordered an item by mistake (oops, one click shipping!) I should have paid attention. I requested to return the item and fully expected to pay the shipping costs back. I explained that it is MY fault. They still told me that it wasn't a big deal and that they would cover the shipping back.

I'm not sure what the proper solution is. I don't want to lose that helpfulness, but I hate for them to get ripped off, too, due to assholes. They've been very good to me and have quickly addressed any issue I've ever had.

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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by Semaphor on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @06:01PM (#4940132)
When my kindle broke (within one year though only barely) I asked if they wanted a picture of the error (frozen screen). I was told they don't need it and my brand new kindle (with added 3g, the broken one was wifi-only) should arrive in the next 2-3 days. So yeah, I hope their service stays as awesome as it is.

On the other hand, the stuff recommended in the blog posts would be easy to implement without really making it more of a hassle (only ship to places already listed, ask for more than name, mail and address, collate chats).

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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by city41 on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @12:10AM (#4936156)
I'm sure that is what they are counting on and once it happens to people they probably become very loyal customers. At a previous place I lived my neighbors stole two Amazon packages from my doorstep. Amazon had no problem not only sending out replacements, but sending them to my work address instead. It made me very much want to order from Amazon from then on.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by hysan on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @12:50AM (#4936237)
This customer service model, where the CSRs go above and beyond to help the customer with as little hassle as possible, is what built the initial customer base for Newegg. Those customers have largely remained loyal even though other online retailers have caught up in price. This is also what made Zappos very popular (eventually bought out by Amazon). So the strategy clearly works. I assume Amazon has calculated that the number of frauds is greatly outweighed by whatever business is generated from returning customers and great PR.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by dalke on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @07:41AM (#4937193)
Your model should be made more dynamic, to include that Amazon can adjust to new fraudulent methods. Once a method is discovered for making fraudulent purchases, it will be reused and broadened. Like the story of the Dutch boy and the dike, it will get larger and larger until it collapses. Amazon no doubt figures that they can plug the hole early enough, and reports like this are part of that detection system.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by joshfraser on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @01:00AM (#4936266)
I ordered a TV from Amazon last week that never showed up. I don't know if UPS messed up or if it was stolen off my front step. Either way, I appreciated Amazon trusting me and dropping another one in the mail without making a big deal out of it. While it seems like Amazon have ignored this issue to date for all the right reasons, they may need to start addressing it since it obviously affects their real customers with worrying emails & the chance of being viewed with suspicion later on.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by StavrosK on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @04:44AM (#4936778)
How can they afford to just give away TVs?
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by mhaymo on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @05:43AM (#4936939)
One tv isn't all that much to pay for a customer's loyalty on a site where he might potentially do all his shopping for the next 50 years.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by mseebach on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @05:58AM (#4936983)
Also, either they or UPS probably have a pretty good insurance policy.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by gmac on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @06:28AM (#4937065)
Surely not. A company the size of Amazon/UPS doesn't need to pay someone else to shoulder the risk of them losing $500 now and again. But it must be factored into their margins.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by mseebach on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @07:06AM (#4937137)
Well, yes and no :) Even when you're self-insured (which is what you are when you've got risk factored into your margins), you're still insured.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by nwienert on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @12:00PM (#4938349)
That's a ridiculous twist of words. That's not self-insured, it's just planning for loss, which is exactly what it's called (Unplanned expenditures).
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by mseebach on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @12:26PM (#4938492)
No it's not. If you book it under "Unplanned expenditures" then you're not insured. If you try to determine your risk in such a way that you can budget a fixed sum for coverage and reasonably expect not to exceed it (ie. not an unplanned expenditure) in the same way an insurance company would do it, they you're insured.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by nwienert on Thursday December 20, 2012 @04:26PM (#4950131)
It's literally a line item in the budget for unplanned expenditures. Sounds ridiculous, but you are planning for the unplanned. I'm just saying calling that "insurance" dilutes the meaning of what insurance actually is, which requires a transaction between two separate companies.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @08:25AM (#4937347)
Speculation: They probably force the supplier or courier to foot the bill. Maybe sack the delivery driver with a carefully vague intimation that they've been stealing?
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by tomkarlo on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @07:51PM (#4940613)
Well, that's super-paranoid. Amazon uses major name suppliers like UPS. So it's not their employee to sack. And I doubt UPS would allow Amazon to go around randomly accusing their employees of theft.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by line on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @10:05PM (#4940941)
They are not. Amazon can file a lost package claim with UPS and get reimbursed.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by hef19898 on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @03:27AM (#4936587)
What Amazon does after first time shipping adress changes (in Germany as of yesterday) is to re-ask for your full credit card number. After that the new shipping adress is part of the account and valid.

But what I confirm is great customer service. Last week my sound card broke down after almost 2 years and it took about 5 minutes to get the return information and the according refund once the item showed up at amazon. No hassle what-so-ever with waranty issues and replacement of the original item, just a plain and simple refund.

That's what customer service should be like. And that things like that can be exploited is true, but that's equaly true for almost all other things. If it's a calculated trade-off from amazon's side there shouldn't be a problem.

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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by dman on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @10:52AM (#4937995)
I am surprised by your sound card story - I bought a graphics card last year where the initial batch had a lot of lemons, I got three broken graphics card in a row and each time Amazon refused to help me insisting that I should go through the manufacturer RMA process since the 1 month return window was over.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by glogla on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @01:02PM (#4938643)
In most of EU, retailers are required by law to provide two year warranty on goods you buy as a consumer.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by hef19898 on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @02:27PM (#4944251)
Maybe thats the difference. I've been pretty surprised anyway since I didn't have the warranty slip ready (sometimes tidding up isn't that a good idea).
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by michaelt on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @04:51AM (#4936797) 

  This seems like a trivial thing to abuse 
  (and I'm sure many do).
I can't speak for Amazon, but at my employer, when a customer phones up or e-mails the customer service rep immediately sees certain details - number of orders by address, lifetime spend, spend in last 6 months, age of account and address, percentage refunds, fraud flags and so on.

Needless to say, the more legitimate an account looks, the easier it is for them to get no-hassle refunds.

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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by alxndr on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @10:27AM (#4937881)
Corollary to that: the more legitimate an account looks, the more free stuff a scammer can get by pretending to be that account holder.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by nmcfarl on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @10:32AM (#4937911)
Heck, this happens at my company, and we're 2 co-founders and a CSR. This was literally one of the first things we built - as I imagine it must be for any biz that ships products to customers.
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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by line on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @05:06PM (#4939861)
Thats true but I'm sure Amazon has some form of blacklist somewhere in their risk management process. Or maybe that is not tied to csr changes and only in order processing.

Having shipping patterns change especially to a ship forwarding sites is highly suspect. There are databases that can help flag these either done commercial or collected internally. I'm sure Amazon has a pretty extensive list.

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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by yardie on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @08:16AM (#4937309)
This seems like a trivial thing to abuse (and I'm sure many do).

I used to think the same of Netflix DVDs when I had the 5 out service. For the life of that subscription I had 2 never show up. I talked to the CSR and he assured me they keep track of these things.

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Re:Two-for-one: Amazon.com’s Socially Engineered Replacement... by tomkarlo on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @07:40PM (#4940580)
I suspect that part of what they do is look at your (likely very long) order history, and make the calculation that it's better to just reship rather than risk losing you as a customer. It's the benefit of having so much order activity over so much time - they know exactly how much a customer is worth to them. That's part of why this scam works - it trades on the existing goodwill / history of a longtime customer to get Amazon to do something un-economic.
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