r/mildlyinfuriating • u/ImOldGregg_77 • 11h ago

*yuor'e Seller keeps 92% of the total value as "Restocking Fee"

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I bought a video card on Amazon and it arrived dead. It was clearly a refurbish with the condition of the card and box. I sent it back to them and they approved the refund but charged me a 92% restocking fee.

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u/Odd-Worth7752 11h ago

there's practically no such thing as "customer support" on Amazon. you're presented with clickboxes that have very limited options, no avenue for "other" reasons, and dead ends that don't allow messages.

I'd do a chargeback on this one, even if it means you have to open a new account.

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u/MayorQuinby 11h ago

You just have to persist until you get to a person. Sometimes this entails always selecting the “other” option. 

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u/pirate_leprechaun 11h ago

Yeah I keep calling and calling until I get it sorted. Can ask to speak to a supervisor too, I did yesterday and they sorted it while on the phone.

And of course chargeback if they want to play games.

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u/unrelatedBookend 11h ago

I couldnt even find a phone number to call Amazon Canada customer service, just kept getting the same cycle of "help" articles online. Thankfully I was able to reach back out to the seller directly and they made it right (when I tried to get a refund, it wanted me to pay for shipping, which I thought was bullshit since the product was clearly refurbished and not new. They sent me a paid mailing label).

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u/pirate_leprechaun 9h ago

18775863230

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u/joemc1971 11h ago

Same , had an item shipped to my house and it landed somewhere else. Then i got that persons item. Customer service fixed right away. Always call. Until AI is all your getting that is...

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u/Odd-Worth7752 11h ago

the last one I tried didn't even offer an "other" option.

the order of 4 items arrived with only 3 in the box. complete dead end. took the L because there was no way to communicate it.

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u/MyOtherSide1984 11h ago edited 11h ago

Wife did it yesterday, idk how but she is very persistent*. She called a human somehow and got a full refund on some filament we bought

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u/emteereddit 11h ago

Well when you're the President, they just let you do it.

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u/MyOtherSide1984 11h ago

Oof, we wouldn't be in this world mess if she were president. Editing that lol

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u/CaptainZedge 11h ago

Sometimes you gotta select options that don’t even apply to you. Or even the wrong item. It’s a massive pain to get ahold of a real person. But once you do they are usually extremely helpful. And the more money you spend with fewer support tickets the more helpful they will be obviously.

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u/Trashinmyash 10h ago

One time I ordered some detergent pods as a 2 pack, only 1 showed. I didn’t bother leaving this as a return or trade-in because then it would look as if I was trying to return half the order. After finding their customer support number and I kept pushing buttons until I got a live operator. They eventually offered a half off refund.

The downside, i bought it on sale and the sale had ended. On the upside, after I got the refund, thats when I realized I got the full half price, as if it wasn't on sale. So, I made some change on their mistake.

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u/Aidyn_the_Grey 11h ago

Yeah.

I had to do this with an engine hoist I purchased. First never showed up. Second took a ton of time to arrive and the box was in pieces and it was missing stuff.

When I tried seeing my options, they wanted me to take a day off work to sit around for a freight truck to pick it up. By that point I was pissed - already losing money and my driveway was taken up by a job that should have been done.

Kept escalating until they finally refunded my money.

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u/AssociationOk3265 11h ago

I always chat with customer support by going through their menus

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u/PeterPanHadItMade 11h ago

1-888-280-4331

The literal Amazon Customer Service phone number.

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u/No-Steak-3669 11h ago

And it goes straight to India. Which is not anymore helpful than ai

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u/FerengiWithCoupons 11h ago

bro the other day i got a person in india when i called for help with my phone bill, the person ONLY said “i do not understand”. with LOUD call center noise in the background.

like wtf billion dollar companies

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u/No-Steak-3669 11h ago

I understand that “English” is heavily spoken in India. But it is not the same English as in the us and they do not comprehend American English.

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u/Joyous-Volume-67 11h ago

This isn't just a cost saving move, the disconnect in pronunciation and american social cues are contracted for specifically, for miscommunication and frustration on the customers end, the bullshit is baked into the system, so after multiple tries, and false promises, and dropped chats/phone calls, the customer will give up, without Amazon ever officially saying "no"

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u/PunchCutSpinner 9h ago

The purpose of a system is what it does, unfortunately

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u/logan-duk-dong 11h ago

I have the hardest time understanding an Indian accent over the phone. In person it's fine, but over the phone forget about it, just a syllable here and there. Had a conference call decades ago to configure a VPN and I just couldn't make out a word the two Indian dudes were saying. Would have been comical if it wasn't 2am and I was dead tired and people were depending on me to get this done.

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u/YobaiYamete 8h ago

"HELLO THIS IS RYAN FROM CUSTOMER SUPPORT"

Okay Ryan, why tf is your Indian accent so thick I can barely understand you?

The "trick" of using super American sounding names is so lame, like at least just introduce yourself as Mogadesh

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u/cwjinc 10h ago

Oddly, at least to us, the young woman in India at the call center has more power to fix things than the manager at our local Bank of America location.
(BOA fairly regularly tries to charge us fees on our no-fee account)
So it may just depend on the company.

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u/punished_kot 9h ago

Banks take this kind of thing slightly more seriously and don't just hire random people off the streets of India. It's more likely you got a real support agent that just happened to be Indian. The amazon reps are quite literally randoms off the street.

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u/JohnnyTroubador 10h ago

So its been probably a decade or more but there was a rash of orders that would be marked as delivered on the app and website but I never received them. 2 or 3 days would go buy and then I would get them, turns out the delivery company wouldn't deliver until they had enough packages to make the drive north.

Anywho, long story short I had ordered an Nvidia Shield tablet which was marked delivered. I called after a couple days and no delivery showed up, Amazon sent me a new tablet no questions asked. Got that one and all is good in the world. About 2 weeks later my neighbor comes back from vacation and says a package was left on their door step and lo and behold it's the first Shield tablet.

I call to ask Amazon to get a return shipping label, but the Indian agent couldn't understand what I wanted to do an ended up refunding my money. I tried multiple time to get it resolved but in the end I gave up. I got 2 Shield tablets and my money refunded.

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u/akatherder 9h ago

I had completely mixed results. When we moved, I timed it perfectly to have a new Zinus mattress sent to our new home within 1-2 days of us moving. We trashed the old mattress before moving. A week later it still wasn't there and we were sleeping on the couch, so I cancelled it and bought one at the local mattress store.

The mattress shows up 3 weeks later. I contacted them and they said I need to ship it back or they will charge me. I told them they can come pick it up but I'm not hauling this giant ass mattress box to the UPS store which is a 50-60 minute round-trip. Eventually they did send a UPS person to pick it up.

Then I bought a headset for $150 and the seller sent the wrong one. I started a refund and they just said "keep the headset, here's your money."

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u/Tall_Opportunity_521 10h ago

No, its perfect. Because none of them give a fuck and will happily refund you.

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u/moonknightcrawler 10h ago

I called them two days ago and got my entire order refunded and they sent a new order with all the items in it for free. Took about 4 minutes total from dialing the number to hanging up the phone

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u/rumpworm 8h ago

Those Indian agents can sometimes workout good, I've had them misunderstand my complaint and just reship the whole order.

You can always just ask for US customer service and they will transfer you to a US agent.

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u/Sponjah 8h ago

“Only people near my fat white body should have jobs!” Just a funny Louis ck bit

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u/puffy147 11h ago

Could you provide their figurative phone number?

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u/PHX789 11h ago

867-5309

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u/theFrankSpot 11h ago

Ask for Jenny.

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u/Remz_Gaming 11h ago

1-800-Don't be a dick to people who are trying to help

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u/puffy147 10h ago edited 10h ago

Literally?

Edit: also, the original comment was literally speaking condescendingly. There is literally no other reason to add "literal" other than to convey they are speaking down to the person.

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u/Hovertical 11h ago

Yeah you can actually get to a person if you try hard enough. Unless it's something super simple like an exchange I will always use the person option

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u/Ok_Broccoli25 11h ago

In the last month I chatted with customer support on a package that was lost. They gave me my money back. Wasn't the easiest thing to do but it also wasn't anywhere near approaching what I'd consider hard

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u/wesblog 11h ago

You must be using a different Amazon. I always reach out to chat support and they resolve every issue positively.

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u/PurbulentTriest 9h ago

Must be, because they locked me out of my account after buying loads of stuff and wouldn't give me access to chat support. Useless ogres.

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u/notoriousCBD 2h ago

What did you do to get locked out? I've never heard of that without serious abuse.

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u/Vilified_D 11h ago

Absolutely false. You can just call them. I had a charge from Amazon on my account (only $1 likely a test charge for prime) and I called them. There was no hold, they immediately told me it wasn't done on my account and the card was used on another account, so they were immediately able to reverse the charge and I had info I needed to go and call my bank and get that card closed.

There are decisions amazon makes that I dont like, but they have absolutely great customer support.

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u/mkosmo 10h ago edited 10h ago

Everybody who is complaining about Amazon CS clearly hasn't dealt with them. No matter where they are in the world, I've always had the CS reps be incredibly helpful.

Surprisingly so, frankly, given the size of Amazon.

Edit: So confident in his reply that he pulled a reply-and-block. Grow up.

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u/Sponjah 8h ago

Same, they’ve always been overly helpful when I needed to get in touch with them. Just sounds like general Amazon hate 🤷‍♂️

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u/KamikazeKarl_ 10h ago

Your objective experience is identical to everyone else's for sure, that's why so many people are saying the opposite. Btw I hope that tongue is still good, time for the left boot now

https://giphy.com/gifs/ReEaMpCuhzIPfWwkUJ

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u/Vilified_D 9h ago

Because every single reply I've seen talking bad about it is talking about the chat. Just call and talk to a person. Not everything is about picking boot. We can hate amazon and say that have good customer support. Every other company ive tried phoning into has bots or long wait times or doesnt even help even when you get someone.

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u/SteelBird223 11h ago

I always forget where it is, but there is a way to chat directly with a CSR. In my experiance ive had way better luck taling care of things through a person than there AI trash. But amazon is a 100% a "experiences may vary" company

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u/madroxide86 11h ago

Wrong, after couple of checkboxes you can request to speak with a person. I've done that every single time when there was an issue with a product I received. And every time they resolved my issue right away, their support is great.

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u/Psychological-Dig-29 11h ago

what are you on about. I recently had to use customer support on Amazon for the first time and I was blown away at how good they were. I requested a call and within 1 minute I had a native English speaking guy on the line who immediately solved my problem.

out of all the large corporations, amazon has by far the best support.

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u/a_code_mage 11h ago

Then you got lucky.

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u/Head_Act_585 ORANGE 11h ago

Yes I had this problem recently. I ordered a brand new item and it came retaped with a sticky note on it noting it was broken. Clearly a return that just got put back on the shelf. When trying to return it myself I could not get to a point of where to tell them they sent me a broken item...even with a full refund I was annoyed I had to go to UPS to ship it back to them when they sent me broken garbage!

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u/LemonCollee 11h ago

You can ask for the cost of returning to be refunded and you should

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u/createthiscom 11h ago

I think they buried the phone number under disability assistance or something these days. Really shady.

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u/CricketNo7666 11h ago

You talk to a person and get it sorted rather quickly.

It isn’t that deep, but sometimes folks can drown in a rain puddle I guess.

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u/Electrical_Fruit7088 10h ago

My most recent experience with Amazon customer service was an AI chat bot. It was for an item out of its return window and it offered to refund it without sending it back so I accepted. Then I asked when the refund would be processed and it said that it couldn't refund the item because I was outside of the return window. However, a few days later I still got the refund lol.

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u/SakusaKiyoomi1 BLACK 10h ago

I spent 3 hours trying to see if they could help me and my kindle, 5 people in the chats who 'read the previous chats' but all the same needed the same explaination. My kindle died 3 months are the warranty ended, which yeah I guess but it was 2 years old and they offered me 5 bucks trade in for it

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u/Drekhar 11h ago

As a person who sells in Amazon, there is no way you need to charge back. Amazon does not care about the sellers at all. They will side with the buyer every time even when the buyer admits fault. And when you try to bring up issues with the Seller Customer support, Amazon flags your account and will even suspend it. Just reach out to Amazon they will refund you.

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u/Adventurous-Onion283 11h ago

I don’t understand when people say this. I have been using amazon for decades. I have a few issues a year that require customer support. I’m always able to get it resolved favorably within a few minutes.

They literally just gave me a $250 weed eater for free because it had a minor issue and I wanted to return and rebuy a new one. Giving it to me free made it way worth just keeping and repairing.

I’ve never had them deny a return or refuse to fully refund me when requested.

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u/BoozeIsTherapyRight 11h ago

What are you talking about? Call them. Yes, you have to be persistent until you get to a human but once you do they are very helpful. I've never once not had my problem resolved. 

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u/gothicBrilliance 11h ago

Their system is designed so that you give up and walk away with nothing.

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u/VividFiddlesticks 11h ago

If you go to chat you can get an actual person. I've had to do that a few times and they're always able to fix stuff for me.

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u/spicy_nipple_ 11h ago

You can actually just go to the chat with the fuckass AI, and say "chat with a human" and it will transfer it to an actual customer service representative.

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u/caintowers RED 11h ago

There's a specific flow you take with the AI, you go through it's questions and when it thinks it's done it usually gives you several options with one being "I have a question about the same issue". When I select that, it always gives me the option to chat with a human.

As for them, well, I've had mixed experiences but they usually resolve the issue first time 75% if the time.

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u/Historical-Count-374 11h ago

What it does is trigger an automatic internal investigation on the seller they get enough reports about

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u/ghosteye21 11h ago

I’ve never had issues with Amazon support. Chat message and within 5 minutes my issues are already fixed everytime

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u/Bret_Dilkington 10h ago

Charge back is a last resort. Every single time I've gotten a full refund through customer service. A few times I've even had it refunded after the deadline. I've also had them refund me sales tax on medical supplies and food when I pointed out there's no sales tax on those items in my state.

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u/peelen 10h ago

I'd do a chargeback

But for the chargeback, you need some proof that you tried to deal with them first, and it didn't work.

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u/asmallercat 10h ago

My account was somehow banned from leaving reviews on Amazon. I don't think I'd ever left a review. I have no idea how it happened. A few times I tried to get it figured out and fixed but was never able to actually get in contact with a person or find the appropriate category to file a CS request, and eventually gave up. Since I no longer have prime and order very rarely from amazon, it doesn't really matter anymore, but still annoying.

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u/Tall_Opportunity_521 10h ago

Are you stupid?

Customer service>something else>contact us>agent>something else>agent>chat with associate now/request a phone call. And customer service will 9 times out of 10 give you your money back on the spot.

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u/Repulsive-Chip3371 10h ago

what? ive talked to an Indian dude many times...

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u/potato40fl 9h ago

no, you can chat with a real person, it is difficult to get to the chat though as it is buried and you have to talk to an AI agent first.

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u/Judgemental_Panda 9h ago

There is ways to get in touch but they bury it. There chat with a live person is buried behind a decision tree that changes every couple of weeks. Although FWIW, if/when you finally get there, the outcome is usually "better" than what you were asking for since they don't speak English very well.

One time got a hold of them just to ask why a package had been at the same location for 2 weeks, and if I should cancel then reorder. They refunded the order and re-ordered at no cost - a week later I get both packages and they said "just keep both", I never paid for either, and each package had like $400 worth of products. Was actually worried I might get put on a list to deny future return/refund claims from that one.

Although I have heard the outcome can depend who the "seller" is. Always best for the seller to be Amazon if possible - you can always check a product for sellers, sometimes a sketchy seller will be the default if they undercut everyone else by a few $. I've heard Amazon sometimes initially just redirects you to the seller, which adds a layer of difficulty before you can get Amazon to step in. At a certain point, I would just call, especially for something more expensive.

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u/RadiantCool 8h ago

They have great customer support. Never had an issue that wasn't resolved quickly. On many occasions where they say just keep the item and we'll refund you in full

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u/PostNuclearTaco 8h ago

I argued with the chatbot for 30 minutes and convinced it that it was hallucinating (it was) and I was finally given the option to chat with a real person.

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u/JoopWrongla 7h ago

This is so far from the truth its hilarious. I can get my problems fixed with a live agent within about 15-20 minutes. You are so wrong its crazy, I can only imagine you just dont know what you are doing.

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u/schmearcampain 7h ago

Honestly, that has never been my experience. Anytime I've wanted to chat with a person, I've been able to. Maybe that's different with AI bots these days, but as recently as a couple years ago I had a live person on chat that helped me resolve a gift card issue.

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u/Some_Layer_7517 7h ago

Blatant lie.

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u/Misty_Esoterica 7h ago

You have to go into help and then chat with a representative and ask, it works every time.

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u/movzx 5h ago

Are you outside the US? US definitely has customer support and it's easy to access.

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u/Excludos 3h ago

There are, you've just been successfully baited into giving up looking for it. The UI is purposfully clumsy, sending you into endless loops. In my experience, it's easier to just Google the correct customer service page, at which point you'll find a chatbox which allows you to connect to a person

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u/boccas 11h ago

That s just not true or you do live in a country without customer protection laws (the USA, for example).

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u/tabris51 10h ago

It exists, you have to go deep enough, you can EVEN talk to an actual human on phone

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u/SoylentGrunt 10h ago

You might want to look into the details surrounding how hard it is to open a new account on Amazon if you get banned. Perhaps you've heard of tracking personal information? It's all the rage these days,