The day that I became a lifelong Amazon customer was when I mistakenly ordered a mattress to the wrong address via Prime. I noticed the mistake some 28 hours after placing the order. I nearly said that I called them to tell them about my mistake, but that isn't true. I typed in my number online AND THEY CALLED ME when an operator was available. The operator quickly calmed me down and told it was "nothing to worry about". She cancelled the shipment of the mattress going to the wrong side of the US and placed an order for a replacement within 2 minutes of learning about the problem. On top of that, without being asked, she upgraded my replacement to 1 day shipping FOR FREE so that my order would still arrive by the original delivery date.
Since I screwed up in such a ridiculous way, that I would have fully expected to have gotten slammed with a return shipping fee, a shipping fee for the replacement, and even some kind of BS replacement fee. But Amazon took the bullet and provided me the the best customer service I ever could have hoped for, which prevented me from having to sleep on the ground for even one extra night.
> Sellers just have to assume a 10% loss of gross margin due to issues like this. It's not the end of the world, but that's where the cost is.
This explains why individuals selling individual items, or a small number of items, can get so burned too. You need sufficient volume to cover all the inevitable bullets you have to swallow.
>Sellers just have to assume a 10% loss of gross margin due to issues like this. It's not the end of the world, but that's where the cost is.
Cost of doing business. Reminds me of the book "What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars" where Jim Paul describes how someone trading in lumber doesn't cry about 20% of the wood being useless, he knows 20% will be useless and he writes that up under cost of doing business. Just like refunds and customer support are a cost of doing business.
The day that I became a lifelong Amazon customer was when I mistakenly ordered a mattress to the wrong address via Prime. I noticed the mistake some 28 hours after placing the order. I nearly said that I called them to tell them about my mistake, but that isn't true. I typed in my number online AND THEY CALLED ME when an operator was available. The operator quickly calmed me down and told it was "nothing to worry about". She cancelled the shipment of the mattress going to the wrong side of the US and placed an order for a replacement within 2 minutes of learning about the problem. On top of that, without being asked, she upgraded my replacement to 1 day shipping FOR FREE so that my order would still arrive by the original delivery date.
Since I screwed up in such a ridiculous way, that I would have fully expected to have gotten slammed with a return shipping fee, a shipping fee for the replacement, and even some kind of BS replacement fee. But Amazon took the bullet and provided me the the best customer service I ever could have hoped for, which prevented me from having to sleep on the ground for even one extra night.