Amazon's Epic Fail Comedy of Errors

[Bob Schroeck]

This has just (sort of) resolved in the last twenty minutes, so I figured I'd share it with everyone as I threatened Amazon.com I would.

So... two weeks ago I made an Amazon order.  A one-pound box of freeze-dried mushrooms, four bottles of sugar-free vanilla syrup (for Peggy) and four bottles of sugar-free butterscotch syrup (for me to make ersatz butterbeer with).

What came five days later was a pound of freeze-dried mushrooms, four bottles of vanilla syrup... and four bottles of raspberry syrup.

Okay, no problem, contact Amazon customer service. "Oh, you can't return it, but that's okay, keep it and we'll order the right stuff for you. However, we can't expedite the order, it won't arrive until early July." Well... that's not acceptable because as I noted in another recent thread we're going to be elsewhere in early July, but I negotiate a delayed shipping arrangement that will drop it on our doorstep the day we get back and think, cool, all resolved.

Until suddenly I get a notice in email a couple days later that my butterscotch syrup has shipped and will be arriving on Monday the 21st. Bwah? Well, okay, that's cool even if they told me they couldn't do that. Gotta love the efficiency of the Amazon machine, right?

Come Monday, the package arrives, I open it up... and find a box two-thirds the size of a box of syrup bottles, with six-inch-wide "Oregon Chai" logos on several sides. It's holding six cartons of... you guessed it... Oregon Chai. On one of the sides without a logo is a one-and-a-quarter-inch long inventory sticker with a bar code declaring to all the world that despite its labeling and contents this is actually a box of four bottles of no-sugar butterscotch syrup.

i disbelieve, and contact Amazon customer service again.

"Oh dear," they say. It can't be returned, but I can keep it, and they'll ship the right thing out to me. Sadly, the order can't be expedited, it'll have to come at its own speed. I'm not surprised -- it's almost exactly the way the first contact went. What I am surprised about this time is that now it can't be delayed, either. They can't make any kind of special arrangements at this time, and I am told that I'll just have to wait until I get an email saying it's been shipped, call them back and then change the shipping instructions.

Well... okay. I want that damned syrup, it's been out of stock for months and dammit, I paid for it. So imagine my surprise when yesterday I get an email telling me that my butterscotch syrup has been shipped and will be arriving late today.

Not only that, imagine my surprise when it arrived about half an hour ago, and I open the box to find that inside is... Butterscotch-Caramel syrup. A very similar but not identical product to what I ordered.

Back to Amazon. Oh, they're very sorry. Do I want them to reorder? I very bluntly tell them I have no faith that they will ever get this order right. Refund my fucking money and I will never again bother them about sugar-free butterscotch syrup. And tell the boneheads in the warehouse to actually pay attention to what they're putting in the smiley-face boxes.

Oh, and I'm going to share this story on social media. (Which I will, when I get around to taking pictures of all three wrong products standing side-by-side.)

Now I'm just waiting to find out if they're refunding me the cost of just the syrup, or of the entire order it was originally part of. The way this has gone, I would not be too surprised if I see a near-$80 credit on my bank statement instead of a $25 one.

[hazard]

Oi Bob, have a spot of pity for the guys doing the work in the warehouse.

They're overworked and underpaid, so they have neither the time nor are they paid enough to care. All they know and have to do is grab things from the shelf they're send off to, grab the stuff they are told to grab and stuff it into a box, at a fast pace and with only a single, short break for lunch IIRC.

[Bob Schroeck]

I would be far more forgiving, given how hard it is to actually read the flavors printed on the syrup boxes, if the damned Oregon Chai box wasn't smaller, brown instead of white, and had "OREGON CHAI" on it in solid black inch-high letters as part of a huge logo. There's no excuse for ignoring that just because the inventory sticker has the wrong product on it.

[LynnInDenver]

I would be far more forgiving, given how hard it is to actually read the flavors printed on the syrup boxes, if the damned Oregon Chai box wasn't smaller, brown instead of white, and had "OREGON CHAI" on it in solid black inch-high letters as part of a huge logo.  There's no excuse for ignoring that just because the inventory sticker has the wrong product on it.

Well, no, there's not, although a big part of that is Amazon making it structurally difficult for the employees to A) care and B) have the time to try to correct it.

[classicdrogn]

Honestly, I doubt they take the time to read the package at all, no matter how blatant the logo. If the hand scanner gives the happy "bloop" to say it found the right barcode, it goes on the cart and into the box, no questions asked because reading a logo takes time, questions take time, reporting a problem takes time, and there's not enough of that to spare for a bathroom break let alone double checking actual product against what the computer says it is.

Likewise, don't order collectibles from Amazon if you care about the package quality, because the rough handling to get everything processed on schedule means there will almost always be a couple of crushed or scuffed corners, and frequently the tape making up the Sealed in Mint In Sealed Box or the bubble for Mint On Card will have been damaged if not completely popped open. I'm not one to leave my toys chained up in a box, never to be played with, but even I do keep them for storage and find it disappointing when a side is crushed or a flap torn before even reaching my hands.

[Dartz]

Amazon workers are living in a paid hell. It's not their job to read the box - just pick it and scan the label. Label and barcode says Go Here Scan This -- that's what they do. Every instant they spend thinking or questioning 'is this right' is an instant they will be reminded about when the performance metrics show they're picks per hour, or what have you, have dropped below the target level.

They're basically being reduced to meat robots rather than people.

No use getting pissed at them - they're basically doing what they need to do to survive.

[nemonowan]

Exactly that. They are there because Amazon hasn't quite managed to develop robots that can do the same job for cheaper yet.
But the warehouse protocols are being designed so that they can replace humans with robots with no disruptions.
So we get to the current working conditions: hours of wandering around warehouses following the directions on a screen, grabbing the package with the matching barcode and rushing to the next one. There is no place for humans foibles like thinking about what you are doing, fagging issues, taking care not to get injured, accomodation for medical limitation on how much weight you can carry, toilet breaks, etc. Robots don't do any of that, so workers musn't do them either or else the protocols for seamless robot transition couldn't be perfected.
Therefore, don't blame warehouse workers for sending you something obviously wrong because they neither know what you wanted nor what they are sending, all they know is that they were ordered to send you a package that was in a certain shelf with a certain barcode. If you must blame someone, blame whoever messed up the inventory entries for no-sugar butterscotch syrup.