Count me as yet another person that have been a very happy customer of Amazon for over 10 years now ... but who is increasingly getting worried by the recent moves Amazon has been making.
The whole KindlePID incident and how they treated MR was the first shock and totally against what I believed about their policies !
Now after reading this thread, I did a lot of research on this whole incident of Amazon banning people over returns ... and Boy ! is there a horror story here or what ???
I have absolutely no problem with a company having a strict return policy and limiting returns/replacements. The part that does not AT ALL sit right with me about what Amazon is doing is the the deliberate non-clarity into the whole process. It feels nothing but hypocrisy and cheating (or at least, misleading) customers.
No where in their stated policies I find any reference to "we will only accept a certain amount of returns; after that we will have to request you to not do business with us". On the quite contrary, the few instances where I have had to return my Amazon purchases, I have been extremely pleased with how polite the customer service reps have been and how easy they made the whole process ! Ease of return is a HUGE part of mental peace ... especially when making big purchases ... that I consider when buying something. I gladly pay a bit more for the assurance of knowing *if* something goes wrong, the company will stand behind me and let me return my purchase. It rarely happens, but because of this assurance, the company gets more business from me. Amazon and Costco has been two best examples in this regard that I can think of.
Now Amazon seems to be suddenly realizing that they have been perhaps too lenient on their return policy. Fine, that is understandable. But what I would have expected is Amazon to clearly notify this change in policy and let customers know that going forward they will not entertain returns as easily as they used to do. Costco did the same with their electronics returns some time back where they put certain restrictions (which are STILL *very* generous, if I may add) ... and because of that Costco will continue to gain my business.
But I am TRULY sorry to say that because of the current underhanded practices Amazon seems to be employing, they have entirely lost my trust and I will be EXTREMELY cautious about giving them any more of my business. I used to purchase several thousand dollars worth of various items from Amazon ... going forward I can see that dropping to close to zero.
While it may sound like I am threatening Amazon, it isn't really that way. I am just extremely disappointed that a company I used to love so much doing business with is heading in the exact opposite direction of why I used to like them. They sure seems to be acting like they have become too big to care about individual customers ... most of whom helped them become who they are today. The perfect recipe of the start of a downfall, or so it seems to me
