Saturday, October 13, 2007

Your Amazon.com Order!

So, for the first time in a long time, I had a little issue with Amazon. I decided I'd fill out their "help-a me!" page and ask them about it: "should I cancel and buy it from the dude down the street, or will you be shipping this item sometime soon?"

In response, I got a letter. The first paragraph was: "I understand your concern that you would like to know that availability of the item, so that you can make the appropriate arrangements."

I said, "okay, hey, that sounds pretty carefully targeted. Maybe I'll get lucky and this letter will help! Plus, their grammar is really clumsy, so maybe it's an actual person!"

"I've checked your order #[redacted] and see that the
availability item "[redacted]" you ordered is listed on our
website as "Usually ships in 1 to 3 months"."

Oh, YOU checked, did you?

"It means it typically take up to 1 to 3 months to obtain and prepare
for shipment, but can occasionally take longer."

Because you're a dumbass, "ships in 1-3 months" means "ships in 1-3 months". Except it doesn't: it's a leftover "cover our ass" clause from before the product was published. Usually, you ship immediately, no matter what your ass-armor says. I ignore ass-armor, because I'm not a fucking lawyer. Your prior performance sets my expectations.

It's such a tiny issue. Not worth getting upset over. So:

"Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:
If yes, click here: [redacted]
If not, click here: [redacted]"

Well, let's go to the "your form letter didn't help" page and fill out their "your form letter didn't help" fields with calm, polite info about how your form letter didn't help to answer this very specific question and then click the "your form letter didn't help" submit button.

An hour later, I get the EXACT SAME FORM EMAIL.

Well, I wasn't irritated before, but I'm irritated now. It's "signed" by "Lavanya".

A fictional person, I'm sure. Because no real person would be DUMB enough to sign their name to a proactive form letter. Lavanya checked the status of my order, did she? "I'm not a __FORM LETTER____, you can tell because I personally ___CHECKED YOUR ORDER__. Please have a nice _____AFTERNOON___."

It's a tiny issue. But I just can't help but feel insulted. What poor customer service, to send a form letter that pretends to be more, then send it again after the customer fills out the "your form letter didn't help" form.

The only thing I appreciated about the letter was that it told me where to go to cancel my order.

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