I have a recent customer experience that spanned an entire month but as the pieces unfolded it became all the more impressive. My wife ordered some heart-shaped pancake molds from Amazon.com and every indicator was that we would receive them in time for Valentine’s Day. Seriously, who doesn’t love Amazon Prime?
As the day approached, I checked the shipping status and it said “Delivered” but we did not receive them. I contacted Amazon chat support and was connected with Raaid who engaged me in a conversation about my predicament. After hearing my story, he promptly shipped out a replacement item at no extra charge. This was the day before Valentine’s Day so I was resigned to the fact that the replacement wouldn’t make it to us on time. No problem there. He did a fantastic job assisting me and I sent out the obligatory Tweet of gratitude afterwards.
@jtwatkin Glad to hear you had a good experience! I hope you have an awesome day.
^CW
— Amazon Help (@AmazonHelp) February 14, 2014
Now, fast forward a couple weeks — long after we had received our replacement — and the original item showed up on our front doorstep, opened and slightly damaged. Hmm where did that come from? Was it FedEx’s fault?
Finally, another week later, my wife talked to our neighbor two doors down and found out that they found the envelope behind their trash cans in that condition and no knowing where it came from, left it at our door. Well that narrows it down. It’s nice to know that someone is walking the neighborhood, opening our packages and discarding things like pancake molds which have little to no value to them. Ultimately that’s my problem now isn’t it?
Going back to Amazon, they could have easily placed the blame on me for not retrieving the package from my front doorstep fast enough, or perhaps they could have sent me on a wild goose chase with FedEx. Instead, they quickly handled my chat, showed empathy for my situation, took full ownership, and quickly sent me a replacement. My response as the customer is “Wow!” And that’s why I continue to buy items from Amazon.com.
