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Author Topic: Nice Things To Say About Amazon!  (Read 2381 times)

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Online andrewfi

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Nice Things To Say About Amazon!
« on: May 09, 2024, 07:15:02 AM »
Amazon may not be perfect, but over the years, as a customer, I have found them to be most excellent.

Today a thing happened that I thought might be an issue...

A few days ago, I bought a new smartphone. It arrived a short while ago from the UK. Lovely device. One problem, it did not contain the charger that was listed as being supplied with the device. But here's the thing, although it was listed on the sales page as being included, I know that it is not actually part of the standard package. Knowing this to be the case, I took the precaution of taking a screenshot of the page showing the URL and the entire page.

When the device arrived, of course, the charger was not present. The box even says that the charger is sold separately.

I contacted Amazon support chat. After a couple of minutes dealing with the automated responses, I got to live chat. The nice  person on the other end asked what the problem was. To help us out, they shared the packing list, which seemed to be copied from the sales page. Conveniently, it showed the charger. I was offered a partial refund.

I asked if they could send it out to me. That was not possible. So I said a refund would be fine as long as it was enough to cover the cost of buying the charger. They offered me £115, at which point I bit the support person's arm off. That's a 10% refund on the whole price of the phone. :)

For context, the official charger costs just £20.

It seems like a small win for the fat old man!

And, as the device was supplied by Amazon and not another seller, it does not even mean that the seller is out of pocket, although it may be that Amazon does a charge-back on the manufacturer.

One small extra point: Amazon in the UK now does the export-to-EU process properly. They charge the correct VAT for the sale, and it is paid at the point of import. It means I can buy stuff from the UK without any messing around. Delivery prices tend to be lower than buying from Germany, and delivery is fast too. Buying from the UK saved me a couple of hundred pounds as compared to buying here and they offered me a year of interest free credit.
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Online Markje

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Re: Nice Things To Say About Amazon!
« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2024, 12:30:27 PM »
Fine for customers, but i will never buy there because of how they treat the workers and resellers
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Online andrewfi

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Re: Nice Things To Say About Amazon!
« Reply #2 on: May 09, 2024, 12:57:59 PM »
That's a choice.  :8)
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Re: Nice Things To Say About Amazon!
« Reply #3 on: May 10, 2024, 11:08:42 AM »
Fine for customers, but i will never buy there because of how they treat the workers and resellers

For other reasons I am not a big fan of Amazon, that noted they pay there workers well and fairly. (10 to 25% above state minimum) They are a firm that cultivates a mentality of everyone is entitled to a second chance.
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Online Markje

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Re: Nice Things To Say About Amazon!
« Reply #4 on: May 10, 2024, 02:21:20 PM »
Fine for customers, but i will never buy there because of how they treat the workers and resellers

For other reasons I am not a big fan of Amazon, that noted they pay there workers well and fairly. (10 to 25% above state minimum) They are a firm that cultivates a mentality of everyone is entitled to a second chance.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64384287

Just one, you can google the rest yourself. (And think for a minute what kind of worker-mentality you need to have to do this kind of thing)
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Online andrewfi

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Re: Nice Things To Say About Amazon!
« Reply #5 on: May 11, 2024, 05:32:10 AM »
Mark, to be fair, not everyone can do the type of work that you do and that you find fulfilling.

Another version of the reality that you see is that Amazon is one of the few large businesses that regularly provides work for those who have no qualifications, no skills, and only their muscles and compliance as tradeable assets.

Many years ago, I worked for a time in a factory that processed vegetables directly from farmers and produced the cleaned, boiled, and frozen output in the form of pallet-sized blocks of ice with the veggies locked inside. I found the work boring, tiresome, and stressful. I had no input into how to do the work, I could not choose the tasks I carried out, and my wages were, by my standards of the time, far from good.

However, many of the workers there were relatively content with their lot. They had worked there for years and enjoyed a low-responsibility, fixed working hours regime with the option for overtime if they chose it. However, they could easily be prodded into a moan about the factory and work.

We are not all equal and, in terms of our labours, not all worth the same. Amazon, as far as I can tell, pays above minimum levels, and they expect people to be performant in their roles.
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Offline Manny

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Re: Nice Things To Say About Amazon!
« Reply #6 on: May 13, 2024, 11:44:06 AM »
Fine for customers, but i will never buy there because of how they treat the workers and resellers

This.

I am just preparing a court case against Amazon. They owe me £8000 as they have stolen some of my stock in an FBA centre. Not lost, STOLEN.

Horrendous company for sellers. They hover over your business like a malevolent force. Their pricing is very opaque, even I cannot figure out the exact percentage I pay on average. With fraud, it's at least 20-23%. Any excuse for secret charges, fees for this and that, zero VATing sales that I wouldn't, and of course they LOVE to refund people my money on a whim as above. And if that's not bad enough, they give business customers a month's credit at my expense. Added to the cash grabs where they freeze your account for weeks on end demanding documents that don't exist (I just forge them now) and even receipts from your suppliers (good luck with that, I forge those too).

I've dwindled my listings there down to about two dozen from hundreds. Each week there are emails, "account frozen", "Listing deactivated", "information needed", "inauthentic item", "IP claim" - It's just a time sink as it's usually bollox flagged by AI. There is no seller support, its all Indians copy-pasting and AI. No account managers or anything. A pal of mine who is a big seller there has had to employ a woman part-time just to deal with their BS. That is all she does.  :eeekk:

When I've sued them, they'll probably close my seller account anyway. Then they'll probably try and steal any money they hold on that day, and I'll sue them again.

God help the poor buggers who rely on it as their only channel. Their support forums are full of people crying in the dark.

Why buyers choose to pay 20% more for their stuff than they could shopping direct with the same seller is beyond me. We even put a leaflet in with packages educating people on that aspect. Don't feed the beast, people. Amazon is why our high streets are now full of kebab shops, "Turkish barbers" and charity shops. They have sucked the life out of the high streets of the world and pay almost no local taxes.

Parasitic company.
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Online andrewfi

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Re: Nice Things To Say About Amazon!
« Reply #7 on: May 13, 2024, 11:59:32 AM »
Yeah, sadly, the advantages that I see as a consumer are, at least in part, paid for by platform vendors. In my case, the phone was sold by Amazon and not Honor, although Honor has a store on Amazon in the UK.

One thing I noted over the weekend, the price of the smartphone I purchased has been reduced. In effect, Amazon gave me a refund, which works out as giving me the same price as if I had purchased when I made my claim. Better for them to do that than have me return the item only to repurchase it at the new, lower price. (And yes, I am the man who has done that in the past—and for another high-priced smartphone.)

It is clear that Amazon has a huge amount of power in the market, and it is quite possible that they abuse it with respect to their platform vendors. As a consumer, I also know that the prices they offer are often not the lowest available. We also pay for the convenience and platform costs.

If I were in the UK, I would not have made my purchase through Amazon, but here, in Estonia, Amazon in the UK is often the best or only option. Amazon in Germany is often more costly than in the UK. Being a small market, many items are just not available.

My new phone is one such product. But I have recently purchased a Blu-ray player and a bundle of disks from the UK. I saved about 25% compared to Amazon.de and, again, the player is not sold in Estonia.

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Offline Manny

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Re: Nice Things To Say About Amazon!
« Reply #8 on: May 13, 2024, 12:48:56 PM »
Yes, there are more EU regulations German sellers must adhere to, so that must put costs up on .de. This week's new rules pertain to items with batteries in.  (:)

This from today.

Quote
This page outlines some of the requirements of the EU Batteries Regulation. This material is for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal advice. If you have questions about the laws and regulations concerning your products, we encourage you to consult your legal counsel.
Introduction
The EU Batteries Regulation is being introduced to update and replace the EU Batteries Directive. This regulation will introduce requirements for batteries and waste batteries offered for sale in the EU, primarily concerning product safety and the circular economy.

The first requirements of the EU Batteries Regulation are similar to those set out in the Market Surveillance Regulation. The responsible person requirements are applicable as of February 18, 2024, and the CE marking requirements will become applicable on August 18, 2024.

The EU Batteries Regulation will fully replace the EU Batteries Directive in 2025, when the circular economy requirements become applicable.

For information on other requirements for selling batteries in our EU stores, go to Selling batteries or products containing batteries in the EU.

Note that the EU Batteries Regulation will not apply in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales). It will, however, apply in Northern Ireland, under the Northern Ireland Protocol. For more information on the Northern Ireland Protocol, go to this European Commission web page.

Batteries in scope
The EU Batteries Regulation covers standalone batteries and batteries contained within a product.

And it goes on for PAGES.........

I probably get 10 similar ones a week. All you need to know is it will cost you money.

They are constantly inviting me to sell on .de, .it and even .jp. When you investigate, you should pay for local VAT numbers and a whole host of other add-ons. And who wants to deal with questions and returns in German? Especially when the seller gets shafted with the return costs - even from abroad. What a scam that is.  :chuckle:

Amazon returns run at 10-20% for most people. Clothing can be as high as 60%. And most of it arrives back - if it's even the same item - unsaleable.

You could return your old phone, or a bar of chocolate, get a refund and probably nobody would even check. They just don't care as it's not their money. How nice to build a platform where customer service rules OK, and the sellers pay any and all costs relating to all of it and the returns. It can be even a year after, someone will kick up a fuss on the phone and you'll get deducted £30 for something you sold in 2023.
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Online andrewfi

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Re: Nice Things To Say About Amazon!
« Reply #9 on: May 13, 2024, 01:31:18 PM »
 Well, all I can say is that, from my perspective, it was a bummer when Amazon.co.uk became unviable for me over here, and I am happy that everything now works pretty much as before.

It takes a couple of days longer due to customs clearance, and I have to pay Estonian VAT, which is now higher than the UK.

I get all the issues with using Amazon and you're probably doing right by moving away, but the reality is that there are scads more businesses now than a few years ago. An opportunity has opened up. OTOH, I wonder how many retail businesses in the UK have closed due to online shopping (not just Amazon, of course).
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Online andrewfi

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Re: Nice Things To Say About Amazon!
« Reply #10 on: June 06, 2024, 01:22:40 PM »
Just to share (overshare?).

The thingy I bought from Amazon was a new phone. My first foldable. OK, i tried to buy one a few years ago and got ripped off. But I pretty much expected it. It was a gamble to get the gen 1 Samsung foldable for silly money.

Now though I took a different route. I bought the Honor Magic V2. I'd been hanging my nose over one of these since this time last year but they took their sweet time to launch it in Europe.

It is the thinnest and lightest foldable on the market and it's a cracker. If you're thinking about a foldable - just get this one. Pay the money and be happy.

Now, to be fair, I pretty much exist in the Honor/Huawei ecosystem with a combination of Huawei and Honor laptops, tablets and phones. It's a very comfortable place to be. For example, I have the Huawei wireless monitor. A 27" beast that connects to my phones, tablets and laptops wirelessly. Just tap the base of the monitor and 'bingo bango' I'm connected. The Magic V2 even has a desktop mode so I can run my Android Apps including Microsoft Office with a keyboard and mouse like on a desktop machine.

It's so slim, barely more than my previous phones and just slips in my pocket. The crease on the inner display is hardly noticeable in normal use and the external display is the same size as my previous Honor phone so I don't need to open the screen unless I want to.

They are not cheap, although there's some good deals about. I got mine almost for free. Amazon gave me 12 months interest free credit and I'm paying it down from my crypto stash. So, I don't even notice the money and, of course, the payments in bitcoin terms are going down every month.

Is the Magic V2 available in the United States?
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