誠意の差

Back in March, I complained about the event that put my relationship with Amazon.ca on the verge of breaking up. Since then, I've only placed 3 orders with Amazon.ca and I don't foresee myself getting anything else for the rest of the year.

No, I haven't stopped buying games online. I just started getting them from Amazon.com (and 3 from Amazon.co.jp, thanks to Friend K).

A couple of weeks ago, I placed an order for 2 games with Amazon.com... and got a cancellation/refund email notification a few days after the shipment notice. According to Neko-tan, the shipment was sent to a wrong address (not uncommon with the postal service down there, apparently...) and got rejected by the person at that address, hence the "returned by customer" as the cancellation reason.

With the rate difference between buying and selling the CAD and US currencies, I got a bit less back. Since it's a very small amount (less than $2), I just let it go.

A few days ago, just as I finished placing another order for games with Amazon.com, I thought I'd write a quick note about the delivery error and that they should watch out for such returns in the future.

When I returned from work the next day, I found a reply from Amazon.com in my inbox, apologizing for the delivery error and requesting for the exact amount so they could refund the difference.

Now, there was another thing with the Amazon.ca incident in March that I didn't include in the previous post. One side of the limited edition package (paper box) was squished and kinda ruined when I picked up the shipment. To this, Amazon.ca offered to refund 20% of the price if I wanted to keep it, or a full refund if I returned the whole thing.

What, so I could re-order the item and pay another $35 to pick up the $40 item again??

Everyone I told the story to thought those offers were lame and urged me to boycott Amazon.ca for it.

Other than that, Amazon.ca's reply only mentioned that they'd pass my message to their shipping department so they can watch out for future squished shipments. Nothing about compensating the customer for the trouble caused by their change of delivery means.

While the amount of "loss" is smaller for Amazon.com in the currency difference case, I'm almost certain that if it (the March incident) were Amazon.com, they would have offered something just for the extremely bad delivery experience, even if the limited edition paper box wasn't damaged. Amazon.ca, on the other hand, would had offered nothing if the shipment was intact.

This difference in customer service is what makes me a loyal customer, or not!

I buy most of my anime from Right Stuff (some from Amazon.com or Anime Expo) and games from either Amazon.com or local game shops. Even got myself a PSN card the other day so I can also buy from the North American PlayStation Store.

Is there any reason for my relationship with Amazon.ca to continue? Hmm...