On April 2nd this year, I ordered a copy of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” on Bluray.
At 14:17 on Sunday April 8th, I received notification that it had shipped, via Amazon’s own, in-house courier service.
At noon on Monday April 9th, I checked the delivery status via the Amazon ordering page and was told that the parcel was out for delivery and would be with me by 20:00. I checked again at 19:55 – just 5 minutes before the deadline and was able to confirm that it was still expected.
At 20:05 (and, largely curious to see if stepping past the anticipated delivery date would cause anything to happen with the shipping details) I checked again. I was told that the parcel was now still in transit, but that Amazon were “sorry” that it was delayed and that if it had not arrived by Thursday, I should contact them for assistance. Uh-uh. Where’s my parcel?
So I contacted a representative via a chat window. Top tip – if you ever have to contact Amazon, use a chat window. You will get the chance to receive an email copy of the entire transcript – which is useful evidence.
As to be expected, the loyal Amazon helper fell over himself to apologise – and did really well. To be fair, this was a rather unusual event. However, coming hot on the heels of some flat out lying and deceptive practices from Amazon regarding a printer order, I was inclined to be careful… This was what I got from the Amazon helper:
“Please allow me to explain what seems to have happened. We do our best to ensure that all orders are delivered by the date provided when you place your order, but occasionally due to the volume of orders dispatched, there are rare occasions when a carrier receives an order that wasn’t originally assigned to them. However, we still expect your order to arrive as expected.
Be assured, this is not an common occurrence and our transportation team is working hard to eliminate these issues and continually monitor instances like this.”
When I expressed relief that the helper suggested the parcel would arrive on Tuesday April 10th, I got a bit of a surprise:
“I don’t want to set any false expectation to your but as the parcel arrive to the carrier facility which was not assign to the order so there might be 1-2 days of delay as we have to ask the carrier to locate your parcel which takes 1-2 days.”
Wait, what? What’s this “locate my parcel” lark? You’ve just spent 10 minutes telling me that the parcel is with the courier and is in the van that delivers to my local area. So there was quite a bit more bluff and bluster about how everything was all in hand, but, basically, that was it.
Or was it? Take a look at the photograph, below, which is the shipping envelope in which it arrived today… See the dispatch date, at the top? “09/04”. Monday. [You might notice I’ve blanked the delivery address, just for the sake of privacy…]
So all that lovely detail about how it had been dispatched on Sunday morning was just complete fabrication. Typical.
Bastards.