Complaint Review: Amazon.com

I’m going to include some photos to show some of the many things Amazon.com does to scam their customers. A few will be edited to remove personal information like credit card numbers.  That being said, be careful of Amazon.com.

Amazon.com who is one of the biggest online retailers is basically one of the biggest online scammers as well. A company this large is prone to making mistakes, but many of these mistakes are actually intentional and many a repeat customer who has picked up on these scams and has prevented Amazon.com from repeating these scams, well Amazon.com has made changes to their systems to continue these scams right under their customer’s noses.

By the way, the pictures you will see are not in the order of each issue I describe, and not all issues have pictures. Let’s start with their famous vanishing item scam: When ordering several items, right after you complete your order and it gets split into multiple shipments, it no longer shows exactly what items are in each shipment. It lists order numbers, an item with each order number with a comment on each one that it has more items in that order, but does not say what. When your order arrives, you will notice quite often an item missing and when you go back to the order you placed, most likely unless you took a snapshot or record on your pc like I do, will never know what that item might be unless it was important to you. This also seems to happen with smaller priced items. I have yet to see it happen with an expensive one. Quite often, when placing a multi item order, let’s say its 7 items, 6 will ship and the order I placed that showed all 7 items, now not only shows 6 items, but that the total that had shown at checkout, stayed exactly the same yet the order only shows 6 items now. Amazon has given the excuse that items prices can change without notice. If I pay a price, and the system says these items will ship after they charge my card, I will never accept price changing. Amazon to this date has never once written me of a price change, but always the prices of each item in my order go up to exactly my total order and they ship it hoping I wont see this, plus modify my original order and take out the item and only way I know this is because I took pictures prior and after order so despite the many orders I place, if something is missing, I have snapshots to show it.

Now lets get to the free shipping and date changes done after order is placed. I’m sure many a victim of Amazon.com’s scams has had the miss fortune of placing orders above the $35 requirement, even to go as high as $300. Each item would have a promised date and that it would be delivered free. Then at checkout half the dates would be different and many of the free dates now have a price. Im sure many of you like me would go into chat with a rep and either they promise to fix it after you process the order and don’t, or come up with some strange unwritten policy of why they can’t fix it which actually many a times is because they don’t know the system and hope you won’t notice and that you give them great feedback before realizing too late they did nothing at all. Amazon has been losing sales due to this, mostly because customers like myself do not trust them and abort the order and go elsewhere. Amazon made a few changes that now these issues show up not at check out, but after you complete the order and pay. All PRIME members who think you got free shipping, go back and look at your invoices online. Most likely you will see S&H charges caused by Amazon splitting orders or changing shipping dates after you paid.

Amazon.com has joined the ever growing list of tracking scams. Tracking scams are when a company does not ship what you ordered, or only part, and then use the tracking number to show your bank they did a delivery,  when in fact they did not and instead of being able to have your bank charge back for the rip-off, they use the excuse the company gave a tracking number that shows a delivery was in fact made. My bank last year almost sided with them over a computer monitor they never shipped and what they did ship was a pair of earrings in a padded envelope. When I brought the envelope to my bank which had the tracking tag on it, my bank knew immediately that Amazon.com lied and did a complete charge back. I’m sure Amazon has gotten wiser and is why even a small T-shirt now a days comes shipped in a box two feet long and one foot wide.  

Last but not least is Amazon.coms Prime membership Prime Pantry scams. Amazon pulled a doozy tonight and put me into a screen that I could not close, abort, cancel in any way but to change quantities or request chat for order assistance. I may not know fully how Prime Pantry works, but I do know when a rep is trying to scam me. Many items I buy or bought through Amazon, the prices were ok, and saved me a trip to the store. But lately, Amazon has figured a way to scam even more money from their customers by moving many of these items that were available through regular Prime membership, and move them to what is called Prime Pantry. Before I continue, when the rep tried scamming me, I quickly logged onto my other pc and transferred all funds from two accounts to one that has no debit card access, then slammed my other PC down in hopes the unabortable sale would not complete, or if it did manage to somehow complete, that it would get declined due to moving all funds out of accounts it had access to. When buying from Amazon now a days, to prevent those price changes from happening after I complete an order, I check the total and only transfer funds that the system says my total is. If they try charging even a penny more, it gets declined. I got tired of orders increasing as much as $200 more and made separate bank accounts for places like Amazon only. Unfortunately it doesn’t stop them from shorting me an item and readjusting the entire sale to the exact amount.

Now back to todays issue. Amazon Prime Pantry now has just about every item that was once just available to Prime members. They advertise buy 5 qualifying items, and get free shipping. I thought my Prime membership covered the free shipping over $35. Guess not. While selecting qualifying items, which by the way was over the 5 qualifying item. It was actually 67 items. The Pantry box has a % that tells me how much more needs to be filled to qualify. Since the 67 items seemed to keep it at 98.2%, I go into checkout which was when I got trapped in a webpage that I could not abort. Not even the old ctrl-alt-del and end task worked. I went into chat because it was telling me I had to pay $17 in shipping. So much for getting cheaper than the local store. The rep kept going afk at 10 to 15 minutes each time. They told me they would take care of it after I placed my order. I told them, put a credit in that I can see for the S&H and I’ll place the order. It was then he/she told me if I added an extra item, it should fix the issue. I added a pack of paper towels. Next thing I know, the box gets split into 3 separate boxes with each its own %’s which averaged about 28% per box. The S&H then changed from $17 to $43. The rep apologizes and says he will give me a $5 courtesy credit. I asked him $5 on top of the $43? It was then he/she tells me they can’t wave $43 and that I should have picked something else, and that trying to force the page closed would most likely cause the order to process, which was when I used my other pc to make sure it didn’t and slammed down the one I was on with Amazon.

Another shipping scam Amazon is now doing is not mentioning if something is on back order, or even out of stock till the first item drops on your door step. Last week after arguing to get a S&H removed I follow tracking of my entire order which shows they are all making it to my home the next day. I watch as Amazon’s special carrier drops off only one small box, then only a few moments later get a ding on my phone to tell me my shipment is here. The box that came was way to small for my complete order. I log into Amazon.com to see one item marked as delivered, and the rest of the order that had shown was almost at my home was now updated to say it would not be here for several more days, yet Amazon charged me for the complete order and kept lying that it was almost here till the one item got scanned in. Not only is this wrong, but in many states to lie you shipped something just to charge your card the full amount, is not only credit card fraud, its mail order fraud as well. All of this is now happening after they take payment. I lost count how many shipments have almost made it to my doorstep according to Amazons website, to end up not even shipped for most of the order. I really hope they read this. It takes years before they get hit with fines, but it does happen.