
Real Life UX: Returning Items to Amazon Makes Me Smile - jason_shah
http://blog.jasonshah.org/post/24828452871/real-life-ux-returning-items-to-amazon-makes-me-smile
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GuiA
Amazon is the most amazing company I've ever dealt with.

Once, I've had a package stolen from my doorstep, and they replaced it free of
charge (fortunately it was just $5 guitar strings).

Last year, I bought a camera with a 18-35mm lens ($500) a week or so before
leaving for vacation. It arrives 2 days later (thanks prime), but
unfortunately Amazon Warehouse had shipped me the bundle with a 15mm lens. I
contact their support right away— they propose that I return the camera and
they send me the original 18-35mm bundle, but I tell the lady that I'm leaving
in 3 days and would like to have the camera for my vacation. She talks with
her supervisor, and 2 days later I get the 18-35mm lens in the mail (~$200
value) and they tell me I can keep the 15mm lens.

I spend a couple of hundred dollars at Amazon each month (research books are
expensive), which is probably why I got such a great treatment— but I was
pretty blown away.

~~~
culturestate
I had a similar experience, except it was a MacBook Air stolen from my
doorstep. They overnighted a replacement immediately with no questions asked
(other than, "did you check with your neighbors?")

Your point about the service level relating to your customer history is a good
one, though - I've spent upwards of $50,000 with Amazon in the last 3 or 4
years, so the real test would be how they'd react to a new customer in the
same situation.

~~~
marisela_arias
Packages are insured so, unless they suspect fraud, they will let insurance
cover it.

Consumers usually pay FedEx for insurance when we need a package but I bet
Amazon self insures, given their size. Either way, money is set aside to cover
situations like this.

~~~
culturestate
I know insurance covers it; I'm wondering how they determine what situations
are likely to be fraudulent. Is customer history involved? My parents have
never ordered from Amazon; if the same thing happens to them on their first
purchase, what would the resolution be?

~~~
keeperofdakeys
They probably give users the benefit of the doubt the first time, then flag
them if they do it too much. At the scale of amazon, the cost of a product is
less then the cost of the time to chase up every single report of theft.

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melvinmt
> So I bought both - confident that I would return whichever one was inferior
> or the more expensive one if the cheaper one showed up on time.

And people wonder why there's global warming.

~~~
coderdude
Global warming aside, what a pain in the ass customer. He was decided from the
get-go that he would be a customer service issue for Amazon.

@jason_shah There are worse things to be than a pain in the ass customer, so
please don't think of this as an insult to your character.

~~~
polyfractal
To be fair, you could easily see this as one of Amazon's "features", much like
Zappos. Everyone orders from Zappos knowing that they can not only return
shoes for free, but that it is usually encouraged to buy several and return
the ones you don't want.

While Amazon isn't quite so blatant about that "feature", their incredibly
awesome customer support, zero-hassle returns encourage this kind of
behavior...effectively making it a feature.

And to be honest, it's an awesome feature.

~~~
gav
I often wonder if Amazon's acquisitions of Zappos and Quidsi (Diapers.com,
Soap.com, etc.) are simply to experiment with different "features" without
risking changes to Amazon.com.

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ck2
Amazon has amazing customer service.

However browsing items for a particular category on their site is not so easy.

When you go to a specific item, you should be able to see what categories it's
stored in, and then browse those categories directly (like breadcrumbs). But
that's impossible on Amazon.

They seem to have the ability though - if you pick a part that is not for your
particular car, it will show you what categories it's in. They should make
that option for all items.

~~~
Terretta
Scroll down the page. All the classification hierarchies are there. And
they're even linked breadcrumbs exactly as you wish.

~~~
ck2
omg, I cannot believe I've missed that for so many years

"Look for Similar Items by Category"

right near the bottom - I guess I never make it that far down the page!

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kevinsd
This guy is ripping off Amazon. You are supposed to pay a cost when your
return is not due to Amazon's fault or item's defect.

If a significant amount of people keep doing this, Amazon will have to raise
the price for all of us.

~~~
gav
This isn't really true.

All the retailers I've worked with (both brick & mortar and internet-only) see
returns as a small cost of doing business. An easy returns process makes
customers happy and keeps down credit card chargebacks. If you are selling on
the internet, handling a small percentage of returns is considerably cheaper
than having a retail presence.

You can look at Zappos (now owned by Amazon) for having an amazing liberal
return policy. you have 365 days to return things and they pay for the return
shipping. It's all to give you a safe feeling and buy multiple items.

In most cases large retailers force their vendors to cover the costs of
returned merchandise that they can't resell (due to opened packaging etc).

One of the main reasons I'll buy from Amazon is that the transaction carries
zero risk for me. If there is any problem whatsoever I know it's going to be
resolved to my benefit.

~~~
caffeine5150
> In most cases large retailers force their vendors to cover the costs of
> returned merchandise that they can't resell (due to opened packaging etc).

Yes, and this can increase costs to the consumer. Cost is cost. It has to be
born by someone in the chain and it's pushed on to the consumer if possible
(granted in the competitive retail space it's harder to make consumers absorb
costs).

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jason_shah
Amazon really blows me away with their end-to-end experience. The funny thing
is that their site's UX leaves much to be desired, but it's highly functional
and they still have a world-class brand even without a world-class frontend
for Amazon.com. We obsess over our web app's front-end design, but often
neglect the end-to-end experience.

~~~
majormajor
Could you elaborate on how you think their site's experience leaves much to be
desired _despite_ being highly functional? I'm having trouble thinking of any
time when I thought to myself "boy, I hate the process Amazon makes me take to
do this task" and isn't that really what it's all about?

~~~
waterlesscloud
The main area I have complaint with is the discovery process for finding
digital videos to watch. Once you've used something like Netflix, the Amazon
process is awful.

~~~
majormajor
Oh, good point, this is definitely true. I have Prime, but Netflix is so much
easier to find stuff on (or even remember that there's stuff there to find)
that I've never used any of the included free Amazon video stuff.

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zht
I worked for Amazon, and focusing on the customer experience is something that
permeates its culture (at least in fulfillment).

It's not even just having good customer service/returns, ensuring the best
customer service even permeated through our code.

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bonsaitree
Amazon is fabulous, but that sort of real-time return policy workflow is for
relatively low-mass & low-expense items from high-volume retailers.

Try returning custom car parts or, really, anything close to $1k USD which
essentially mandates shipping insurance.

That said, I love-love the instant UPS-label "pick-up at your office or home"
return workflow for the majority of stuff I buy from them.

The item is here in two days (Primed) and if I need the rare return, it's, at
most, about 5 minutes worth of my time & attention. It's such a total win over
the typical retail process for non-bespoke items.

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nodata
Amazon has a great returns policy, and good, fast customer service.

Amazon lacks in the following areas (covered in another post):

1\. The price filter doesn't really work.

2\. Sorting doesn't work unless you choose a category (many items are
miscategorised or match multiple categories)

3\. Backwards shipping policy "What the heck, let's order it for tomorrow" on
an ordered item often doesn't work because it's too late.

4\. The ratings system gives too much weight to lightly-reviewed items.

5\. Often the dispatch date for an order is shown on the checkout page, the
expected delivery date would be better. Amazon AA batteries? 5 week delivery.
Ouch.

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yifanlu
Once I bought the most expensive Vita bundle on Amazon and a day before
shipping they included some free stuff with the cheaper bundle (I think it was
a Sony decision because other stores did the same). I sent a email to them
simply asking why this was the case and they sent me $50 credit with no
questions asked.

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mwexler
Not to derail all these comments about Amazon, but I think Jason's reminder
that UX is just a subset of overall "CX" or customer experience is a good one.
I spend a bunch of time reminding folks that they can't just look at one page,
or one set of functionality in a vacuum, but instead need to see the cohesive
whole, from the first ad a person sees to the quality of some autogenerated
confirm message. It all counts. Functionality and design, btw, can be awesome,
but if it's wrapped around a defective business process, you will still
suffer. Making users jump through hoops, even hoops of diamonds and gold with
ergonomic handles, can still suck.

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ernesth
What is amazing in this?

Returning goods bought by mail order or online is the most basic service
sellers have to implement. Refund if the product is not open and is returned
at most seven days after purchase is guaranteed by law. If it is open a reason
such as "does not fit" should be enough to be refunded.

Or is it the fact that the customer was refunded before amazon received the
parcel? I am not impressed as my bank account is debited once a month, which
means I usually still have my money when I send an item back to the seller!

It was already like that when I was buying things (especially clothing)
through mail order twenty years ago. Or is it only in my country?

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mgl
It's amazing that actually nobody noticed, including the author, the real
problem which are vague descriptions of delivery dates, especially for
international shippments. This made him to order two different items at the
same time as he had no option to either evaluate shippment time in a more
precise way or make a conditional FIFO-driven order. And this is the actual
flaw in Amazon UX.

~~~
rogerbinns
And also that it wasn't possible to discern the practical differences between
two products where one cost twice what the other did.

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kazuya
Or try think this way - your doorstep is part of Amazon's storefront. Even
though you have to make a deposite and wait much longer than real retails
before perusing the goods at hand, you think they have great customer service.
Genuinely interesting, with no sarcasm.

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frenger
Sounded good at first but then started sounding like an advert written by a
social media promotions company

~~~
binarysolo
It's Jason Shaw, a fairly avid blogger.

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gringomorcego
I wish Jeff Bezos quit being such a dictating dick when it came to the home
page. I mean seriously, I fucking love amazon, why the hell is it so fucking
unintuitive and feel like a time traveling 95 site.

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delinquentme
+1 for TLDR.

