Struggles with Amazon

Refund request to amazon - by chat and phone  - September 15, 2013
Level of Satisfaction: Dissatisfied

My daughter mistakenly charged her textbook to the Pace Connect credit card (a Pace business procurement card).  All receipts have to be explained and reconciled for the business card meaning that I had to work out a way to change the credit card that was used to pay for this transaction.  Below is the conversation that took place on the chat function of the amazon website.

You are now connected to Amazon from Amazon.com

Me:For order number xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx, the wrong credit card was charged. This item was supposed to be charged to my credit card ending in xxxx. Can this be refunded and charged to a different card? It is really important because the first card is a business card that should not have been charged and the charge needs to come off that card. Thanks.

Amazon:Hi, My name is Ravi.

I'm sorry for your wrong card to be charged.

Thanks for providing the order number.

Would you mind staying online for 2-3 minutes, while I check this for you?

Me:No problem.

Thank you

Amazon:A member of our Generalist team will be the best person to help you with this. Let me connect you to a member of our Generalist team. It will only take a moment.

A Customer Service Associate will be with you in a moment.

You are now connected to Katrina from Amazon.com

Katrina:Hello Kathy, my name is Kat.

Me:hi

Katrina:I'd be happy to look into this for you and see what we can do.

You can return the item back to us so that we can process a refund for you.

Me:I can't return the item. My daughter ordered a textbook that she is using in a different state. She just clicked the wrong credit card to charge it to. I just need to charge it to a different card.

Katrina:I'm really sorry Kathy, since the order is complete, the charge has been processed. The best thing that we can do now is to return the item for you to be refunded.

Me:That's crazy. Please tell me who I can appeal this to. It should just be a matter of paperwork.

Katrina:I do understand how you feel. If I'm on your situation, I would feel the same. I've already consulted my lead and that's the best thing that we can offer at this time. I can create a return mailing label for you.

Me:How can she return the book when she is in the middle of the course that she is using it for?

There has to be some way to just move the charge from one card to another.

Katrina:Here is another option that I can offer. You may want to place a new order so that she can use the one that will arrive and return the original order for you to be refunded.

Me:This will be very complicated - especially for a college student to do - and expensive. Can you have a supervisor call me please? xxx-xxx-xxxx. Thanks.

SUPERVISOR CALLS:

Asks for a bunch of information to verify my account.  I give it to her, but my home zip code doesn’t work (the zip that should be on the account), then she asked for the zip that the product was shipped to and I gave her my daughter’s zip but that wasn’t it either.  Then I gave her Pace’s zip (for the card that was charged).  That didn't work either.  Finally my other daughter’s zip worked (she had made the most recent purchase).

Once she could go in and look at the account, the supervisor told me the same thing as the chat rep – all they can do is refund the book and order a new one and my daughter will need to ship the old one back.

I told her to think about how ridiculous this is – that a huge company like amazon can’t refund one card and charge another when small mom and pop stores are able to do this.  I suggested that maybe amazon should empower supervisors to make simple decisions that make sense instead of being ruled by bureaucracy and being forced to do what the computers demand instead of using common sense. 

She said there was nothing she could do - then I told her I was teaching a Customer Relationship Management course and this would make a great case study for my class demonstrating ridiculousness in customer relationship management.  She then put me on hold and said she would try to get in touch with someone.

After putting me on hold for five minutes, she got back on and said they sent the request up to headquarters to the central accounting office to see if they could do the refund for me and charge it to the new card.  To be continued……

UPDATE:  Two days after the above call I got the following email:

Hello Kathy, 

I trust this e-mail finds you well. 

Thank you for contacting us with your request to charge a new credit card for your order 106-4177529-8982625. As a one-time courtesy, we have refunded the credit card that was originally charged for your order and charged your Visa for $72.23. This refund should go through within 5 business days and appear as a credit on your next statement. 

When placing an order on Amazon.com, there are opportunities to review your order information and make changes. Whether you use the Shopping Cart or 1-Click to order from us, there is a default credit card listed as the payment method.  

..... followed by more lecturing about what I should have done, but they did make good.

Amazon should have empowered their customer service people to do the refund and charge my person card right away to solve the problem.  There was no reason for this requirement to ship one back and order a new one.  The company especially should empower supervisors to do this.  What's the point of having a supervisor to resolve issues if she can't do something that make such obvious common sense.  The supervisor also should be able to see in the CRM system that I make a lot of purchases at amazon.  She should be able to figure out the lifetime value of me as a customer and decide that it's no big deal to make this adjustment for a good customer.

The service recovery process, while completed, was not very satisfying.  First, there was no apology for the inconvenience I experienced because the reps could not help me. And then the refund came with a lecture that blamed me for being dumb enough to make this error.  This violates the important rule of never blaming the customer.  Amazon might have made me a satisfied customer if the rep had refunded my business credit card and then said the book was free, apologizing profusely for the inconvenience I had to face getting the credit card changed.

Amazon did do a few things right. The greeting and ending of the chats and phone calls were done very nicely and all representatives were polite and claiming to want to be helpful. The chat feature was readily available and the phone waits were not very long.  

RCI Customer Service

Call to RCI vacation exchange program - August 29, 2013
Satisfaction level:  extremely dissatisfied

We are frustrated with not being able to find good exchanges for the points from one of our timeshares on RCI, so we are putting out timeshare up for sale.  To sell it, we need to understand how many points are available now, and when points are put into the system each year so we know what to tell a prospective buyer.  I also wanted to know how many points were expiring this month. The website is very confusing, listing 36,000 points from 2011 expiring on August 29, 2013, current use year 2012 points of 0, and 2013 use year points that we can borrow from of 45,800.  Then total available points shows as 55,680.  The numbers don't add up and I was concerned about the expiring points.  I also wanted to know when the next use year points would be put in.

I used the Chat Now feature on the website to ask some of my questions.  I was told incorrectly that "current use year" was the number of points available now (which would mean that I would have 0 points - I knew that was not right).  When I asked further questions, I was told that I would need to call the phone number to get any specific information about my points.

I called the number the chat rep gave me and was kept on hold for a very long time after typing in my phone number to identify my account.  Finally, a representative answered who could barely speak English.  She asked for my phone number (again) that I had already entered.  When I asked her why she needed it again, she had no answer.  She then wanted my account number.  I told her I didn't know my account number and could she look it up using my name and phone number.  She said no, that she needed the account number.  I finally found it.  She told me I had no points expiring.  I had 900 carried over from 2011, but they had been extended to 2014 for me.  This all took a very long time to figure out, since she couldn't understand me well and I had trouble understanding her.  After some frustration, she put me on a hold for another long time (almost 10 minutes), then she came back on and told me the above information.  I then asked her when the next points would be submitted and when the points were deposited to the account each year.  And I asked her why 2013 points were still listed as future points.  She was extremely confused and put me on hold for another very long period.  She came back on and told me that points were deposited in March.  When asked about 2013, she said those become active in September.  By now I was even more confused and asked to speak to her supervisor.  She tried to talk me out of this and kept trying to explain things that were not making sense.

She finally put me through to someone who I could understand and who could understand me who explained things to me in a way that made much more sense and that was totally different than what either the chat agent of the first phone agent told me.

RCI needs to make their website for customers much more clear with updated numbers that add up and clearly show you a current statement of what is expiring and what is currently available.  They need to have the capability to look up member accounts using name and phone number, and they need to hire customer service people who speak and understand English and train them how to accurately answer customer's questions.  They also need to train their chat agents to assist customers with details of their accounts.