Reply from a seller in a language I don't speak?

Ordered 2 items from a dealer named marvelio.ca via Amazon Canada. One did not arrive within the notified time frame, so after another week I sent a message about it yesterday via the link provided on the Amazon site, and this came back today.

I'm thinking it's Spanish and that I'm being told to specify whether I want a reimbursement or a another shipment of the same item. Am I correct?

And not sure how I tell Marvelio what I prefer. Thoughts anyone

Estimado/a comprador/a:

Tu pedido ha sido expedido a tiempo y hasta ahora no fue devuelto por destinatario desconocido. Contactaremos con el correo por lo que concierne a esto.

Te rogamos te asegures de que el envío no haya sido recibido por un vecino o esté guardado en tu oficina de correos. Por favor, tennos informados acerca de este asunto.

Si no consigues localizar el artículo de ninguna manera, te enviaremos un reemplazo con cargo a nosotros o, si prefieres, efectuaremos el reembolso de todos los gastos de la compra.

Entretanto, esperamos que tu pedido aún llegue.

Saludos,
-Marvelio

 

This is what Google Translate makes of the reply.

"Dear buyer,

Your order has been shipped on time and has not been returned by an unknown recipient. We will contact the mail regarding this.

Please make sure that the shipment has not been received by a neighbor or is stored in your post office. Please, keep us informed about this matter.

If you can not locate the item in any way, we will send you a replacement at our expense or, if you prefer, we will refund all the purchase costs.

In the meantime, we hope your request arrives.

Greetings,
-Marvelio"

 

As for what to do, I'd contact Amazon about this. No way should you be expected to use services like Google Translate to communicate with the buying party. If they cannot properly exchange with a buyer in English, they don't have much right to be selling anything on Amazon.ca.

My 2 cents.

 

No good deed goes unpunished. Short story - after some confusion Amazon.ca, with the ordered item being about 2 weeks past the expected arrival date, notified me that they are crediting my account.

Then 3 days later the missing shipment arrived. I notified the seller and Amazon via the route provided, offering to pay again. The seller said that they were not allowed to do that, and I would have to go to Amazon.UK through a link provided by the seller. I replied that I had bought from Amazon Canada, and got a reply directing me to an Amazon.ca link.

At that location I found a link that promised I could live chat with someone to get things sorted. My intention was to authorize a payment so that the seller, wherever he is, would get paid after all.

That's when I really entered some of the rings of hell. Fortunately, although I have never done a Chat with Amazon over a problem before, I did ask to be sent a transcript of what happened. Including the message which I initially sent the record of that transcript is now 3 pages long in my word processing record of the event. And included 9 different Amazon personalities, many of whom repeated this obviously stock phrase "Please give me a moment to review the previous correspondence" and then passed me on to another. There was much repeating of requests for information that I had already provided. This process took about an hour. As no solution had been suggested, I closed with : 02:30 PM PDT __ _____: When this is sorted out, could I please be advised by email. I cannot stay on this any longer, I have to go out now. Thanks John B"

 

Rings of hell is right, except that you got credited to your account. At least there's that.

 

Doesn't it beat all hell when you try to do the right and honest thing, so that no one gets ripped off -- and then you have to deal with a lot of crap and still the prob doesn't get resolved! Good luck on your efforts... I remember trying to give money to Apple Computer waaaayyyy back in the day after ordering direct from them. Item shipped to me, was never billed, kept trying to pay, couldn't get anyone to take my money: ended up with a free $500+ printer! But the reason I kept trying (at least for a reasonable amount of time) because I was worried about my account being tagged for bad credit and not being able to buy from Apple again in the future (though I never did anyhow...).

 

FWIW, Marvelio and this other big-box places ship via DHL, which has no tracking and takes anywhere from 3 to 75 days to get on the road. Half the time, it never gets delivered. I had a package from MovieMars sit in a DHL warehouse for either 8 or 11 days (memory is failing, was two years ago) before DHL "damaged the shipping label" and returned it to the seller. This is the norm rather than the exception.

These large volume sellers use it for international shipping - I believe DHL is the postal service of Germany - but for domestic orders, DHL just delivers to USPS. As far as I know, the difference in cost between DHL and straight USPS is either negligible or possibly even more expensive (having to go through two different couriers)... makes you wonder why they don't sort orders into two piles and save the headache of customers assuming the product they ordered two months ago is lost.

 

It's gotten worse.

My last post on Chat was as shown in my post above : "02:30 PM PDT __ _____: When this is sorted out, could I please be advised by email. I cannot stay on this any longer, I have to go out now. Thanks John B"

Three hours later I got this email message

"Hello,

Greetings from Amazon Customer Service.

I'm glad I was able to assist you today.

If you have any other queries, please feel free to contact us:

To contact us, visit Amazon Sign In and follow the prompts.

If you can't access this page, our customer service phone numbers are as follows:

- Calling from within the U.S. or Canada: 1-866-216-1072

- International: 1-206-266-2992

We hope to see you again soon.

We'd appreciate your feedback. Please use the buttons below to vote us about your experience today.

Best regards,
Vijay N
Amazon.ca "

I will try to solve this by a phone call to the Amazon Canada number, because I don't think Marvelio should be out its sale because Amazon itself can be very difficult.

Almost needless to say, I had to answer Vijya's question - Did I solve your problem? with NO.

 

I don't think it necessarily bad that the seller would be out of a sale. Most people don't learn anything if they're bailed out, somehow. It's pretty stupid of a seller to believe that a buyer from Canada will interact with him in Spanish. To me, it's as ridiculous as a seller expecting somebody from China to communicate with him in French. It's plain stupid.

This experience will either trigger the seller to either accommodate the speaking language of his buyers or simply pull his participation away from Amazon Canada. Either way, it's a good thing, IMHO.