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Originally Posted by ZodWallop
I'm not an Amazon fan. But buddy, they're better than Walmart to me.
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(Pardon the rant.)
They used to be, anyhow. Their Amazon Marketplace is a joke. Amazon claims to "guarantee" their sellers, but they don't appear to even vet them. My niece bought a phone (it was one of the Moto E4s that had Amazon branding). Her and her sisters had bought four of these earlier (from the same seller) and they wanted a fifth for a friend. But when the phone arrived it was the Verizon branded one (that you could get on Best Buy for about $50 — half the price) and it wouldn't work on the Sprint network (as the phone they ordered would). Apparently the seller ran out of the original phones and tried to slip this one in. "No problem" right? Amazon "guarantees" their sales. My niece requested a return, followed the instructions to the letter, PAID for the return shipping and tracked the phone to the seller's personal lock box. And she waited for her refund ... and waited ... and waited. Finally she got hold of Amazon, they received the tracking information and said that the seller would issue a refund within five days ... next day they get a notice that the seller had appealed, saying he "never got the phone." My brother countered the appeal, showing – again – that the packaged phone was tracked to the seller's personal lock box. Amazon denied that appeal, said he should have gotten "signature" confirmation. My brother appeals again, saying that his daughter followed the instructions to the letter – they did EXACTLY what Amazon requested they do. Again denied "our decision is final." I think there may have been one more appeal – again denied. So, at this point, the last I heard, my niece is out $100 for the phone, plus about $16 for the original shipping and tax, plus about $10 more for the return shipping. All because a lying dirtbag apparently can rip off Amazon customers at will and Amazon will do nothing about it. (This cheat still sells on Amazon's Marketplace.)
I've "bought" three items on Amazon's Marketplace (mechanical pencils, small purchases) that never shipped. (In this case, since the shipping never happened, Amazon did not withdraw the money from my account.) But I was left in limbo – were they sales going to go through, or not? Should I look elsewhere for the item? Since the sellers are promoted by Amazon you would think they take some responsibility in the matter. Nope. What they do is give you the contact information for the unresponsive seller and let you wade through the muck. I don't know what these sellers' game was, I'm guessing they wanted me to contact them directly to negotiate the sale and bypass Amazon. One of them "moved" their "location" from New Mexico, to Italy, to Spain in the time it took for the sale to eventually be cancelled. Can you say "fraud?" I'm now leery of buying anything from the "guaranteed" Amazon Marketplace. And, if you look online, I'm not the only one.
Amazon, itself – the real Amazon, not one of their bogus "guaranteed" marketers, often slips on promised "guaranteed" shipping dates. They change the arrival date and list the packages as "On Time." The old "on time" arrival date goes down a black hole somewhere. Several times I've paid more for the "Prime" ("guaranteed" two day delivery) item because I needed the part right away. A guarantee is supposed to be a guarantee.
And then you read stories about Amazon delivery people, every move tracked by Amazon and so overworked that they're going to the bathroom in people's driveways.
Yeah, I'm beginning to not like Amazon.
Meanwhile Walmart has a new CEO (a year or two ago) who's starting to treat their employees better and is actually hiring enough people to stock the shelves and clean the stores. He also understands he needs to compete with Amazon online. I don't know if he'll be allowed to fix Walmart, or if the stockholders will begin grumbling about the cost, but at least there are hopeful signs. Two years ago you could hardly drag me into a Walmart. It's still not my favorite place in the world but I go there now (sometimes). And I'm definitely interested in them competing online against Amazon. Someone needs to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
Maybe. But even so, there have to be some sort of decent device sales in the stores to help push those online book sales.
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Yep. It would be good if Walmart / Kobo came up with something to directly compete with the Kindle Basic (like Kobo's old Touch).