Customer service

My turn to rant about the collapse of civilization as evidenced by Amazon customer service. I had some money ($20) in my Amazon account that I wanted out, transferred to my bank account. I'd done this before, no problem, fill in a couple fields and hit go. This time the page had changed, the new default for transferring money was to buy an Amazon gift card. I don't know why anyone would want a gift card, they just seem to me to be a way for a store to get your money and force you it spending it with them. In fact that is exactly what an Amazon gift card is, a way to lock you into spending with them.

When I realized my mistake, I sent them a request to back out the transaction using the feedback form and called them on the phone too. Amazing how hard it is to find a phone number of these sites isn't it. I actually found it in someones blog who had had a dispute with Amazon and posted the number in case others couldn't find it. I spoke to a nice lady in India who assured my that this was no problem and it would be taken care of right away. Fine, I slept happy that night.

The next morning I received an email from Amazon saying flat no. Can't be done, too bad. So I sent another message and called too. Got hung up on 3 times while waiting to talk to a supervisor. The last time I told the rep that she should stand up in her cubicle and shout and wave her hands and get a supervisor to come over and I wasn't going to be put on hold again. That sort of worked, I talked to someone else who had me talk to someone else who assured me that there is no phone number to the payments folks and that all he could do was send them a message which he did.

The next day I got a call from someone in Seattle. He was a bit vague but assured me that he would look into this. And indeed there is no number for payments so all he could do was send them a message on my behalf. I wasn't too pleased by this time.

The next day, I got an email apology from Amazon. It seems that page where the transfers are made had been changed so that the default was to buy a gift card. I wonder how many other people got caught by this? The page has been redesigned and my money was refunded. I immediately transferred it to my bank.

I suppose it's just another tale of our times and should surprise no one. But come on people, why does everything have to be so hard? Did you know that the arrow in the Amazon logo that points from A to Z represents complete customer satisfaction? I feel better already.