Is Amazon becoming like Flopkart or even worse?

Ssreek

Ssreek

Adept
During this sale, I bought many items. But specifically, 3 of the items were not delivered and "being returned to seller".

A phone, earbuds and also a Logitech product.
All these were bought on different days and the issue happened on different days as well. The products come to my city (Hyd), gets marked as "undeliverable and being returned to seller".
Meanwhile soaps, shampoos, and other smaller priced items which are ordered on same dates as those 3, gets delivered without any delay.

Amazon only offered refund but not replacement and asking me to order again. Meanwhile prices of all the items have increased by 5K+ for each.

Is this some sort of scam I don't understand? Common factor is seller being Appario. Customer care says "sorry saar we will take strict action on seller and delivery team".

The Logitech product (G29) going back, has broken my heart, it was always my dream to own that and now no longer possible.

Have any of you faced such issue?
 
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Ssreek said:
The Logitech product (G29) going back, has broken my heart, it was always my dream to own that and now no longer possible.
Click to expand...
Order again man, it's 33K now excl. any discounts.

Haven't had this happen to me till now. Only once when it was rainy and around 10pm my order was returned to hub and delivered next day.
 
Ssreek said:
Bro I bought for 25K and it is now being returned to seller. :(
Now there is no discount.
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Ah sad, you wrote 35K in OP so... anyways I remember I bought it for 25K 2 years ago as well but now prices have increased a lot on these.
Don't worry around republic day you will see sale again
 
enthusiast29 said:
Ah sad, you wrote 35K in OP so... anyways I remember I bought it for 25K 2 years ago as well but now prices have increased a lot on these.
Don't worry around republic day you will see sale again
Click to expand...
Corrected.
I am definitely now skeptical to buy big items in Amazon.
It had similar offer on Croma yesterday, I should have ordered there. Now croma too increased price anyway.

Maybe this is Nature's way of saying I shouldn't buy G29 :banghead:
 
Get the G29 used from OLX or something like that, it's frequently bought and resold without much use as it's a hobby item. You should be able to get it around 15k easily.

As for Amazon vs Flipkart, I've always found the experience to be pretty much the same, but I'm someone who pays attention to the seller and return policy on both platforms. I've noticed amazon has some diehard fans for some reason which flipkart does not. So that improves amazon's image in online discussions.
 
Ssreek said:
During this sale, I bought many items. But specifically, 3 of the items were not delivered and "being returned to seller".

A phone, earbuds and also a Logitech product.
All these were bought on different days and the issue happened on different days as well. The products come to my city (Hyd), gets marked as "undeliverable and being returned to seller".
Meanwhile soaps, shampoos, and other smaller priced items which are ordered on same dates as those 3, gets delivered without any delay.

Amazon only offered refund but not replacement and asking me to order again. Meanwhile prices of all the items have increased by 5K+ for each.

Is this some sort of scam I don't understand? Common factor is seller being Appario. Customer care says "sorry saar we will take strict action on seller and delivery team".

The Logitech product (G29) going back, has broken my heart, it was always my dream to own that and now no longer possible.

Have any of you faced such issue?
Click to expand...
going since long ago, it's just you who face first time. I face same issue 5-6 yrs. before with AZ & Fk both, they found address for cheap/low amount products but always failed to deliver whenever I strike good deal (way lower than offline market price)
 
bigbyte said:
At Least with Amnazon you get refund for the Items being returned to the seller.
With Flipkart I am still fighting for refund. They say Refund has been issued and provided me ARN. Bank says no refund received on this ARN.
My Rs.54000/- stuck with Flipkart, let's see. Fight i sgoing on.
Click to expand...
New fear unlocked. I will sleep peacefully once amazon issues refund and I get it back in my credit card.
 
Ssreek said:
New fear unlocked. I will sleep peacefully once amazon issues refund and I get it back in my credit card.
Click to expand...
Maje ki baat, The credit card here is Flipkart Axis Bank Credit card.
Now Flipkart has the handle to access the balance and payment on Flipkart Axis Bank Credit card, just the way Amazon has on its Amazon Pay ICICI Credit card.
Point is, with little effort Flipkart knows whether a refund was credited or not on this Card. And the fight is going on since 13th October.
 
bigbyte said:
At Least with Amnazon you get refund for the Items being returned to the seller.
With Flipkart I am still fighting for refund. They say Refund has been issued and provided me ARN. Bank says no refund received on this ARN.
My Rs.54000/- stuck with Flipkart, let's see. Fight i sgoing on.
Click to expand...
That's bad. Had a similar issue elsewhere where refund was not credited for 7 days. However, it was settled once I provided the ARN from Razorpay who were the payment processors.

Incidentally, I had completed and then cancelled payment for a large value Flipkart order on SBI card but received the refund within 48 hours, so something has gone reallly wrong in the process.

Since it has been over a month, you can file a complaint with the RBI ombudsman. Those cases are usually settled in a week.
 
I order hundreds of orders from amazon every year these days, including grocery.
99.99% of online shopping done from them. Never had any major issue, and when something happens CS always resolves it. Never had any issue/delay with refunds.
I almost always stick with appario or atleast amazon fulfilled sellers + look at ratings if needed.

This time there was a bit of an issue, in that they kept trying to deliver motherboard 1 week earlier than requested ( wanted all parts to come together) and i had to keep rejecting.
Multiple calls to CS/delivery guys did not work. Eventually had to accept, as i got tired of it.
Then made final call and asked them to send cpu earlier ( it was coming from assam to mumbai .. ). They did, i got it on saturday instead of monday and had 5 days to test everything.
All parts working fine.

Sometimes shit happens i guess, but so far amazon has been very good for me.
 
The thing is the delivery folks are not Amazon Employees. They are "contractors" in the same way cab drivers are not employees of Uber. So when Az tells them these many products have to delivered in this time frame or their payment will be cut, marking items as undeliverable and returning to seller is the only logical option during sales when they are overwhelmed with too many orders to be delivered in a working day.

I've seen deliveries made by actual, underage kids riding scooters a couple of times, probably trying to help their parents out with some of the excess workload in the evening. It's sad to see child labour coming around thanks to a trillion $ company that can't hire enough employees. But then no big company made money without exploiting someone.
 
n1r0 said:
I've seen deliveries made by actual, underage kids riding scooters a couple of times, probably trying to help their parents out with some of the excess workload in the evening. It's sad to see child labour coming around thanks to a trillion $ company that can't hire enough employees. But then no big company made money without exploiting someone.
Click to expand...
I don't think Amazon would be okay with employing kids like that. It is probably being done by the individual delivery agent, who is doing some other work and employing some kid (or their own related kid) to do this work, thinking amazon wouldn't find out or doesn't care.
I've seen similar things in the past in auto rickshaws, the driver/owner will bring along a kid (10+ age) and will try to make the kid/teenager drive.
 
Ssreek said:
A phone, earbuds and also a Logitech product.
Click to expand...
Ssreek said:
Hyd
Click to expand...

So our city is well known to be a lazy city, where most older shops don't start operating until around noon. This is changing in the newer, more developed areas but it's been slow progress from what I've seen. Keep in mind that lazy also means unreliable in some contexts.

Something I've noticed is that all of my electronics orders come with usually the same delivery person and the non-electronics items come with all kinds of delivery people, some new, some old. The one that delivers the electronics stuff is a much older person who has been delivering with Amazon for a few years now. It looks like there's some kind of trust/reputability system with the delivery operations and electronics packages are not given to newer people, and if they can't find a "trusted" person to deliver it, it's returned as undeliverable. We had this problem some years ago but I guess we continued ordering stuff until they found/promoted this person and we haven't had anything marked as undeliverable for a long time now. Sometimes the newer people would mark as delivered (mostly for same day orders) and come drop it off the next morning.

A very detailed delivery address also helps with this, for example all of my packages have "Opp Fast Food, Pink Flower Tree Brown Gate" as the landmark (I have it as a macro, haha). I've noticed delivery people don't read house numbers or plot numbers anymore, they just look for building names and visually recognizable landmarks.

Ssreek said:
Maybe this is Nature's way of saying I shouldn't buy G29 :banghead:
Click to expand...

Well, judging by the number of G29's being sold here and elsewhere, it's has turned into some kind of meme — like threadmills. People buy them with the intention of using them, and then they end up as clothes drying stands because setting up becomes a hassle every time.
 
n1r0 said:
The thing is the delivery folks are not Amazon Employees. They are "contractors" in the same way cab drivers are not employees of Uber. So when Az tells them these many products have to delivered in this time frame or their payment will be cut, marking items as undeliverable and returning to seller is the only logical option during sales when they are overwhelmed with too many orders to be delivered in a working day.
Click to expand...
This is like hero and villain are fighting and side character gets the ultimate loss. But here we are the customer who's facing the loss.
 
bigbyte said:
At Least with Amnazon you get refund for the Items being returned to the seller.
With Flipkart I am still fighting for refund. They say Refund has been issued and provided me ARN. Bank says no refund received on this ARN.
My Rs.54000/- stuck with Flipkart, let's see. Fight i sgoing on.
Click to expand...
check if you have had paid via other bank or card account than what you used to pay regularly?
 
rsaeon said:
So our city is well known to be a lazy city, where most older shops don't start operating until around noon. This is changing in the newer, more developed areas but it's been slow progress from what I've seen. Keep in mind that lazy also means unreliable in some contexts.

Something I've noticed is that all of my electronics orders come with usually the same delivery person and the non-electronics items come with all kinds of delivery people, some new, some old. The one that delivers the electronics stuff is a much older person who has been delivering with Amazon for a few years now. It looks like there's some kind of trust/reputability system with the delivery operations and electronics packages are not given to newer people, and if they can't find a "trusted" person to deliver it, it's returned as undeliverable. We had this problem some years ago but I guess we continued ordering stuff until they found/promoted this person and we haven't had anything marked as undeliverable for a long time now. Sometimes the newer people would mark as delivered (mostly for same day orders) and come drop it off the next morning.

A very detailed delivery address also helps with this, for example all of my packages have "Opp Fast Food, Pink Flower Tree Brown Gate" as the landmark (I have it as a macro, haha). I've noticed delivery people don't read house numbers or plot numbers anymore, they just look for building names and visually recognizable landmarks.
Click to expand...
I never had any address issue in all these 8+ years in this location and never got called asking for address, as it is well recognized place.
But most delivery agents in my location are quite lazy and most of them feel like chapris.

My take is, all the 3 times products got damaged or the packing box got damaged, exposing the contents inside; hence being returned.
But I do agree somewhat to @n1r0 's comment as well, maybe delivery agents/contractors are marking them as undeliverable deliberately.

rsaeon said:
Well, judging by the number of G29's being sold here and elsewhere, it's has turned into some kind of meme — like threadmills. People buy them with the intention of using them, and then they end up as clothes drying stands because setting up becomes a hassle every time.
Click to expand...
Only for setting up hassle it becomes a clothes drying stand? Damn. I've seen several posts that way, where they buy it and again sell in a couple of weeks/months saying "brand new", "mint condition".
I always wanted to buy this since when I discovered Mudrunner and ETS 2.
 
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