The Incompetence of Amazon!
If you have ordered from Amazon over the last two years, you may have noticed a lack of quality when it comes to the way your product was shipped. Perhaps it is the lack of packing material in your package, leaving your items prone to damage during shipping. Shipping DVDs/Blu-Rays in an envelope. Maybe they opened a warehouse by your residency and started using drivers that would just toss a package from their car to your door without a care if you are standing on your balcony watching them do so or not. Of course, you might have even experienced them delivering your package to an entirely different apartment, leaving you to search 250 doors just to see if they brought it to someone else in the same complex. Or, maybe they just flat out lost your package in transit.
I, myself, have experienced all of these. I even made a video that highlighted one of these issues as I had received a package that had a crushed Simpsons Season 5 DVD in it. Now you might be thinking, "Well is it possible the DVD was crushed during shipping?" True, that is a fair assessment. However, the DVD was not the only product in the shipping box, as it had been shipped with a few other items that had not been damaged. Here is the link to the video for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqr-i8OlpLg
Moving on from there, Amazon is constantly increasing the price of Amazon Prime despite the diminishing services rendered. New release video games no longer have Prime member discounts. Hell, they don't even get in most new release Blu-Rays and DVDs on time, especially when it comes to products from Disney, WB, and Shout! Factory. Then there is streaming services that cost IN ADDITION to your Prime subscription.
Of course, that is just half of the issue. The other half lies in their customer service representatives. About two years ago I ordered a Batman Omnibus, which was a pretty hefty hard cover book. When I received it, no packing material had been placed inside the box. As such, the book came with half of its upper right-hand corner pages indented. I requested a new one and when that arrived, not only was that one too not shipped with any sort of packing material to ensure it would not be damaged, but it had slices through the dust jacket as if someone took a box cutter to it. When I complained about it to Amazon, the customer service representative told me there was nothing they could do about it and that I might as well send it back for a refund since there was no way for them to send me a non-damaged book. I was appalled to hear something like this considering I worked in customer service for more than five years and that is NOT how you treat your customers.
More recently, I had preordered some Marvel Legends figures from them and had naturally chosen the 2nd Day Delivery option that is supposed to be an Amazon Prime guarantee. When my figures were shipped out on January 31st, I noticed it said they would arrive on Monday the 4th, which is not the second day. Thus, I kindly inquired Amazon about why it would take four days to arrive instead of two. Nothing harmful, just wanting to know. The woman who came on looked it up and said she has contacted the shipping department and guaranteed it would be delivered on Saturday the 2nd. Saturday comes around and nothing is delivered.
The tracking number says it will now be delivered on Tuesday the 5th instead of Monday the 4th. That didn't make sense to me, so I yet again contacted Amazon and showed them the transcript I was emailed that the agent had stated it would be delivered that day. The new guy said he could NOT fix that and there was no way to restore the package to its original shipping delivery date despite the fact that it was already here in my local Amazon facility.
Now, I'm not mad at the fact the package did not arrive on Saturday, nor was I mad about it not being delivered in the two days I spend my hard earned money on Amazon Prime for (though, what is the point of Amazon Prime if they can't keep up their end of the bargain?). What I was mad about is how one customer service representative told me she guaranteed the package would be delivered on Saturday and the other refused to fix the issue of it being delivered later than the original intended delivery date. This tells me that Amazon themselves do not care about the quality of customer service, and if that is the case, why should people spend $120 (as of this moment) on services that do not justify the cost?
I could take that $120 and use it to pay for shipping from other retailers that would ship their products securely, on time, AND use competent delivery services that will knock on your door and/or take the package to your apartment's leasing office if you do not answer rather than throwing the package from their car or just leaving it at the door without notifying you at all.