The Amazon that Stole Christmas |
13 Comments |
For those who celebrate Christmas, this is a special time of year. It’s been a slightly disappointing Christmas for me. I ordered a few of my wife’s gifts from Amazon.com. Despite having the order in by December 12th, Amazon had a mix-up and didn’t send the gifts on time. One of the items that I ordered takes 3-4 weeks to ship, so Amazon decided it would wait until that was ready. The morning of December 22, I started to get nervous about them not showing up in time. When I logged in, I found out that they were scheduled for shipping on January 14th. I realized that it was still early enough in the day to order with one-day shipping to get the items in stock. I happily called up customer service and explained my situation. They realized their error and upgraded my order to the one-day shipping.
Fast-forward to yesterday after it didn’t come in the mail. I called Amazon and they assured me that UPS will make a shipment on Christmas with the items. I doubted this and it seems like I had good reason to. Everyone has opened their gifts hours ago and there’s been no shipment of gifts. I got lucky that the majority of my gifts were bought elsewhere. My wife is very excited to see Jersey Boys. If I hadn’t mentioned the whole Amazon debacle, she probably wouldn’t have noticed.
I learned a few valuable lessons in all this:
- If you have a gift that is time sensitive, it’s best to make sure that it ships with plenty of time. If I had looked at the shipping page early enough, this could be avoided.
- Diversification isn’t limited to your investments. By buying gifts from a variety of merchants, my wife didn’t lose all her gifts.
- Amazon customer support can be very understanding. They realized that the damage is done and apologized a few times, but gave me a $10 credit on a future purchase.
- Everyone knows that Christmas isn’t about the gifts. It has been a fabulous Christmas with great music and everyone’s favorite foods. People are happy to be around those that they love. That said, I don’t think I’ll take off my new Tom Brady shirt until next Sunday.
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December 30th, 2007 at 7:55 am
I hate to rub it in, but…
about a week before Christmas (12/16 in fact), I ordered several books from amazon.com, including two from third party buyers. I received them all by 12/22! I was sort of surprised — one of the third party buyers even upgraded the shipping just to be nice.
My secret? None of them were for gifting purposes!
I guess the trick is not needing them there by a certain date.
December 28th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
I had a very similar problem. I ordered 4 gifts on Amazon about 2 weeks before Christmas. On the 24th, when they hadn’t arrived yet, I called. There was some sort of screw up and I didn’t receive them until the 27th. I had to print pictures of what I got for everyone and wrap those. I didn’t get a credit though.
December 27th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Lazy Man, not to beat the horse to death. I understand about amazon advertising receiving before xmas, etc, etc, and normally they are very good about processing and shipping faster than their estimate times. it sucks amazon’s default option is to group items when you use the super saver shipping method (Amazon notes that it does so to reduce shipping costs, and amazon lists choosing grouping when supersaver, because you might have to pay extra if wanting items separately if your separated delivery doesn’t amount to more than $25 to qualify for free super saver shipping); however, the first page in checkout after selecting your shipping address and as your first choice, Amazon gives you the option to choose between grouping or receiving items separately. It is actually highlighted in bold on every page that talks about supersaver shipping the 3-5 business days for processing and 5-9 business days shipping time for supersaver items. it seems that when you checked out you didn’t see the option to group items in as few shipments as possible or ship items separately option. i’ve made the mistake a couple of times in my haste and when using the 1-click orders method (this is why i don’t use the feature anymore), and I’ve ordered considerably more through Amazon than you.
really, amazon is very forgiving and will often take the blame even though it wasn’t their error, which is why i like them so much. I’m glad things will work out in the end for you. I just wanted to highlight the grouping versus wanting items faster choice in checkout, which can create the problem that you had.