I’ve been a customer at amazon since 2006. I was spending an average of 4 or 5 hundred dollars per month with them. For many years the customer service was excellent, but for the past year, way before the pandemic started so that’s no excuse, customer service has eroded to nothing. Every single time I have a problem with an order, I end up talking to someone who doesn’t speak English well enough to work in a call center. I have to repeat myself constantly and they have no useful information for me as they are reading from a script or they didn’t understand what I said at all.
After I went through this the last time, I asked to speak to someone located in the United States. The “team lead” person they connected me to did speak English but she was rude, unhelpful and dismissive. She must have been annoyed because I insisted on speaking to someone who is a native English speaker, and she actually had to help someone because she gave me no help or any kind of solution at all.
I was complaining because the two day prime shipping was not taking two days but nearly always 3 or 4 days. If you can’t provide two day delivery, you shouldn’t be allowed to charge people for it. I was also complaining because the customer service people can’t speak English well enough to help anyone.
After this call, it dawned on me that I was buying almost exclusively from Amazon when there are dozens, if not hundreds, of retailers online who actually do care if you receive good customer service or not. I immediately cancelled my Prime membership and my Audible membership, which Amazon also owns, and now I vow to only order from Amazon if no one else on the Internet sells what I’m looking for. So far, I haven’t had to order from Amazon again and I intend to keep it that way.
The only time I go to Amazon these days is to watch one of the hundreds of videos I unfortunately bought from them. I have opened an account with Apple and now buy and stream movies exclusively from them.
Why do business with someone who obviously doesn’t care if you buy from them or not and who can’t be bothered to hire people who speak English? It feels great not to have to put up with their poor service ever again.
Since I’ve quit Amazon, my last order from them arrived on June 30, 2020, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quick shipping I’ve gotten from places like Walmart.com, samsclub.com, and target.com just to name a few.
I’ve ordered a lot of stuff from Walmart.com and I couldn’t be happier. In most cases, though they don’t promise this, my orders have been arriving in one or two days. All of them have also been delivered by FedEx in the morning.
There are many great alternatives to Amazon that ship much faster and who employ much friendlier customer service if you have problems.
Amazon needs to remember:
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou