'Warning' email from amazon.co.uk

This was a very polite email saying I'd made a lot of returns recently, and was there anything they could do to make shopping with them better?
I replied that all of my returns were the result of poor manufacturing/quality control, and I was quite happy with their service.
They replied in turn with nmore waffle about wanting to please me, and this was where their first mail was described as a'warning'. Careless and tactless use of language or passive aggression? I'v e hear of US forumites being de-registered from amazon.com. What do you guys make of my experience?

 

Are you sure that wasn't a Pfishing mail? I got a phony Amazon.de e-mail this week - an internet search revealed that many others received the same phony mail message.

 

It has become one of the major problems for internet companies, that people order things, use them once and then returning them. Whether it is clothes or media....it was just recently in the news in Germany. So if you return a "certain high percentage" of your orders and give poor manufacturing as a reason, while no one else has these complaints, I think you may get on their "list" - even if it is done just by a computer.

 

Well, vinyl manufacturing without proper QC will mean that discerning buyers will return LP´s that have deficencies. That other buyers do not have these problems when they would play these on their Crossley vinyl-crunchers is not relevant.
The one issue here is that if Amazon themselves would check vinyl then we would not discuss this. Whole vinyl batches have issues and in this case people will return these more than once. This is my main gripe against buying online. Stuff never gets checked.....

 

Best way to avoid email related issues is to never open your emails at all I find.

 

How many times have you made returns lately? You have me worried that I may get the same email.

 

Thess emails you mention are curious. Amazon U.S. has indeed been known to close customer accounts for too many returns without warning, and I'd imagine that Amazon in other locations would have essentially the same policies. Over the last few years I've seen a few long threads about this account cancellation problem, at different forums, and not one person ever posted that they'd been warned prior to having their account closed. Not one. So I'd be suspicious about the legitimacy of this email.

 

Quite a few, but then I order from amazon maybe 4 items a month. Maybe be one item in 4 has an issue and has to go back. It's only their use of the word 'warning' which really concerns me. Although I may be overreacting, and the first is just a computer generated email. As I say,I'v e heard of US amazon just 'firing' customers for repeated returns.

 

The fact that I got a seemingly genuine reply to my own email suggests to me the first one was genuine. It's possible amazon in different parts of the world have slightly different policies vis a vis customers.

 

If you're returning approx 25% of your items you're pretty much done and in all honesty I don't blame them. Having to process and deal with a 25% return ratio is just not something any business is going to put up with for long. Not saying they are or are not legitimate returns..but in terms of cold hard numbers 25% returns means you're just not worth having as a customer.

 

Are you speaking from experience of working in retail/online sales? I have n't such experience, but my reading of the situation is that they, amazon,k do their utmost to please customers and to retain them, and overall, in the long run, this pays off. I don't know whether amazon as they say 'eats the cost' of all returns, but I doubt it, ands imagine the returns thing is factored into their whole business plan - ie, ovrerall it's worth it from their point of view.

If I say replace on item for a replacement, and am happy with the replacement, which I nearly always am, although'zon pays for my return postage costs and perhaps loses something though having top calim back from their soiurce, they've still sold me an item.

 

I'm sure Amazon -- like every other business -- has the cost of returns as a normal part of their cost of doing business. But do you think any business could be profitable if with a 25% return rate? It only makes sense to me that a business would look at a customer with a return rate that high and determine that it would be better to not have their 75% of accepted orders in order to not have the costs associated with the 25% of returns.

 

If every single customer was returning a highish percentage of orders, I could accept they'd be losing out, but overall it's not like that. My thinking would be a business as vast and profitable as amazon can carry a very small number of frequent returners.

 

Also by the same token...why would anyone deal with a company that only sends them an acceptable product 75% of the time? Sounds like you and Amazon both have legit reasons to go your separate ways.

 

In the past two years I have purchased over $4,000 worth of LPs. (A few online, most locally) Only one was slightly defective. (i kept it anyway.)
I guess I am insanely lucky.... Or, I am not as 'picky' as some folks might be...
Not to complain. I am stating what I did and how few 'returns I had. As I said, I must be insanely lucky... I guess.

 

Amazons profit margin is extremely low and often in the red per quarter....they sell piles of stuff and have huge amounts cash coming in and going out however at the end of the day they dont make enough to pay for a high rate of returns.

 

Yes, it's possible. Just doesn't seem likely to me, that's all.

The reply you got might not have been legitimately from Amazon, though. Considering everything I've read about this issue, from how they permanently suspend users with no warning, to the fact that almost every appeal has been denied (I can only think of ONE who managed to get their account reinstated), I get the feeling that once a customer reaches the invisible threshold for returns, Amazon has no interest in figuring out how to do better to save the customer.

Have you passed your mouse over the links in these emails to see if they point to a legitimate Amazon domain? Or have you signed in to your account to see if these communications are available there? They should be if they're legit.

 

I've no gripe with amazon up until now. I'm just a music buyer at the end of a long chain who has issues, as many on this forum do, I'm sure, abut quality control in the manufacturing of physical media, and I'm trying to deal with it in the most effective way possible. In my experience contacting music companies direct is pissing into the wind. They ignore you mostly. Remember too, we still pay a good bit more for our CDs and vinyl ove r here.

 

Go read the locked Amazon US thread for answers to all your questions.

"Acceptable" is an entirely subjective word. There is a MAJOR difference between QC issues that are Amazon issues and QC issues that are manufacturer issues that you have a problem with.

Oh, and in today's world, Amazon eats the cost of returns because manufacturers/distributors no longer accept them as a matter of course. The profit margin on the sale of CD/BR/DVD is razor thin.

There is no such thing as "computer generated email". If the one you received is not legitimate, it was generated by a new breed of hacker that has been cropping up. One immediate way to tell if your email was not received from a legitimate source would be to check the spelling, grammar and syntax in it. If it doesn't smell like English, it isn't. That being said, be careful about opening emails that you suspect aren't legitimate.

 

I understand the difference between amazon's own qc issues, and qc issues with manufacturing only too well. Nearly all of my returns hav ebeen mad e on the basis of defects in manufacturing: amazon know this and have acknowledged as much. Furthermore, under UK consumer laws, responsibility for inadequate goods lies with the seller. This is even more so under the Distance Selling Act, I believe.

I'm as sure as I need to be that the email is genuine. Although the writers of 'zon emails would get no marks for fluency, they're correct as to grammar (mostly) and spelling.

 

Maybe it's time that we (as the music buying public) petition Amazon to cease selling the product of specific manufacturers? (said tongue-in-cheek)

Seriously, this is a no win situation for all sides. All I can recommend to you is to stop buying product made by who you perceive to be the worst offenders.

Had this been released during the height of the internet retail age, I shudder to think how much blame Amazon would have received:

Bill Evans Complete Verve "Tetanus-inducing" boxed set

 

From what I can gather, the people who get cut off from Amazon US are usually well below a 25% return rate.

As for the legitimacy of this: how could a spammer benefit from sending you this message, and how would someone know you are returning a lot of stuff to Amazon? Sounds totally real to me.

 

Maybe the spammers are taking note that this issue has become more prevalent? AND they can benefit by putting some wording in their emails that say something like: "Open up the provided link/pdf and log into your account". Once that's done, they've got all your personal and credit card information. This trick has been done for years now, and if it wasn't successful at least some of the time, the hackers would have stopped wasting their time with it long ago. I have gotten tons of spam that is Amazon (and other retailer)-based. Usually it has something like "order no. xxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxxxx" in the header. Easy to spot for most, but there are many naive people out there.

 

Call Amazon customer service during business hours and ask to speak to a supervisor. Mon-Fri 8-5. Discuss the issue and they will help you.

 

They could, but why would they? If any individual customer is a money-loser, it should make no difference to them whether the rest keep them in the black overall. They can increase profitability (bit of an ironic word to use in a conversation about Amazon, I realize) by dropping the one.

I'm not being critical here. I'm only making an analytical point, not a normative one. I return plenty of items to Amazon myself, as their packaging is often quite poor.

I would not be suspicious of the warning message. Some American customers have gotten warnings, though most have simply been shut off without warnings for what was deemed an excessive rate of returns. I would take the warning seriously if you'd like to remain an Amazon customer.