Whenever you contact a business’
customer service call center, you do so in
the belief that they are going to “fix” the problem you are calling them
about—at least once you get around their menu “options.” I find that one way of
getting around this is just shouting into the phone the words “customer
service” over the interminable yada this and that. If you have a “technical”
issue, like the bank putting a hold on your account because of “suspicious
activity” or have computer issues that you are too enfeebled to find out how to
fix yourself (I stopped calling computer “tech” support because I usually found
I actually knew more than the “tech” guy did), then customer service may be
something actually useful.
But if you have questions about
the shipment or delivery of an item you ordered—particularly if the item isn’t
ordered, packaged and shipped from a location that also has “in-house” customer
service—you might have some “problems” that the level of cooperation between
customer service and customer has nothing to do with. Sometimes it takes a
while for you to discover this “awful truth.”
Take, for instance, Amazon. Now,
I know that some people may be frustrated by the fact that whenever they
contact Amazon customer service, they are usually patched in to a call center
in India and encounter people who do not understand American “idioms”—especially
ones that denote significant levels of displeasure. You can make an inquiry
regarding the current status of a “prime” shipment that has been “shipping now”
for 24 hours, and instead of helping put the “now” into the now, they “assist”
you by offering to cancel the order and issue a refund, prompting some pulling
of the hair about the “misunderstanding” between what the customer asked and
what customer service “understood.”
If you wonder why an AMZL “prime”
package that is supposed to be delivered on that day, and it still has not
moved from the distribution warehouse after 14 hours, you can decide to “chat”
with someone who does just one thing: read the same tracking information that
you have access to, and if you demand more “help” they have someone from a
“logistics” center call you—who says nothing more than what you have already
been told by the other person, or what you already read yourself on the order
information/tracking page. And if your phone number has been put on an Amazon
“block” list, you won’t even have the “satisfaction” of hearing this bullshit
in person.
But if you think that speaking to
a “native” American will improve the quality of customer service, think again,
because that is the person you are forwarded to by the Indian call center, and
is also just as “helpless.” Take this wonderful experience that has been
repeated ad nauseam. If an AMZL (which is Amazon’s “in-house” local delivery
system) package is to be delivered in Seattle, it goes to a distribution center
in Renton, where it is sorted and loaded onto a “prime” truck or given to a
“freight forwarder”—usually just some guy in his POV. It is important the time
that the package actually arrives at the distribution center; 2 AM is the
“optimal” time for a package to go “out for delivery” relatively
“early”—meaning between 7 and 9 AM. If a package arrives in Renton “early” it not
only won’t necessarily leave with the first loads, in fact it is more likely to
be buried somewhere beneath the mountain of other packages. If a package
arrives too late—which is a frequent occurrence when an order originates from
the Kent Fulfillment Center just down the highway—then you can just wait and
expect something to happen, or not.
Often, not.
I discovered the truth about how
low one’s expectations should be when they deal with Amazon customer service
recently when I simply became fed-up with the uselessness of their “chat”
option, and what the “alternative” was. After 14 hours of a package sitting in
Renton and still not out for delivery, I went online to try the “chat” service
to get things moving along, since there was a finite time where eventual
delivery was possible. I should have known it was pointless, but I had to vent
my frustration to someone. As usual, I began the “chat” by explaining the
problem, and then someone with an Indian name eventually responded. After the
“apologies” I was prompted to supply my phone number to be “connected” with
“logistics,” and the customer service person went off-line, figuring they had
served the “purpose” expected of them.
Except that I never receive the call. I stay on the chat line and repeat
this over and over again; when I tell the next people that I was not connected
to logistics, and never am, and ask them why they don’t find out what the issue
instead of making the customer “fix” the problem, I am told their hands are
tied, and they abandon you, if I choose not accept that as the final “word,” I
can stay on and allow the next customer service person in line to not handle the problem.
One day I decided that the
complete pointlessness of the “chat” option required a different action,
meaning calling them directly. I was prompted to provide my phone number,
whereas I discovered why I never seemed to get connected to logistics via the
chat option: Amazon had blocked my phone number from receiving calls. I had
only been in contact with “logistics” a few times, and apparently it had been
determined that I was someone who they didn’t want to talk to anymore, because
I just wouldn’t accept incompetence as a “solution.” I was then prompted to
call a general service number, and someone actually answered the phone. This
person at least betrayed some surprise that there had been no updated tracking
on a package that was supposed to be delivered on that day for over 14 hours
and well after the first deliveries went out. When I asked him about the
various methods he could deploy to at least “expedite” the process, this is
what he told me:
1. Amazon customer service is not
equipped to investigate irregularities in the shipping and delivery process;
they can not personally contact the facilities or warehouses an order
originated at or was sorted for delivery, not even via email addresses, let
through alone phone contact numbers. They only have ability to replace or refund orders
determined to be lost or damaged.
2. When the initial customer service
person agrees to send you to the “next level,” they are essentially just “passing the
buck” to someone who will merely tell you what you already had been told—which
is exactly what you read on the tracking information on the order page. What you could read yourself is all they know
too. The Amazon “logistics” call center that is this “next level” for shipping
and delivery inquiries in regard to AMZL shipments (USPS, UPS and Fedex have
their own customer service), also has no direct access to the points of
shipment or the delivery processing warehouses, so they too can do nothing to
find out why a package is late, or if it is “lost.” They too can only respond
to an issue by either authorizing a replacement or issue a refund after the
fact—when all you want is to get the damn order on the “guaranteed” delivery
date.
What this all means of course is
that it is completely pointless to contact Amazon customer service about any
concerns you have about an order except cancel it before it gets into the shipping process; after that, it is out of yours and customer service's hands, and only when an order is determined to be “lost” can anything anything “useful” be done--and sometimes even more damage can be done if someone
from an Indian call center “misinterprets” your inquiry. Still, something “positive”
did of course arise from this last particular contact: that I need not further waste
my time wasting time talking to Amazon customer service. What a load off my
shoulders; now I can just simmer and stew knowing there is absolutely nothing I or anyone
can do about it.
Amazon does have one other
“option” for non-delivery problems, which is the modify “delivery instructions”
module, which surely must be read by someone at the delivery warehouse, and I have
found this to be a “useful” avenue in which to vent frustration, and a few
times it may even have worked. Or not.
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