Oh, posed 50 seconds before me! Here’s the summary anyway:
With a push for ‘Black Friday’ deals next week, a cautionary note about amazon.com who show “a contempt both for the law and the customer”.
tl;dr amazon are forcing some customers to get police reports for ‘theft’ when it is amazon’s own couriers who are failing to deliver (both physically and/or contractually) goods purchased online. If the police do issue a report for this civil matter, then amazon are then not accepting it. All of this is against the Consumer Rights Act, which holds the retailer legally responsible for goods until they are safely received
Uber did a similar thing to me where they failed to deliver my food and then refused to refund me. Felt pretty powerless to do anything except a chargeback, which got me blocked from all their services
Amazon should be the ones reporting it (if anyone) not the buyer
Does Amazon actually adhere to any uk laws? The Amazon driver we had recently didn’t call at the door they just put the parcels in the wheelie bin. No card through the door to say where the parcels were left. If they had been stolen I would probably be out of pocket.
I offer a simple solution to potental victims of this sharrp practice.
Boycott the bastards. Not one cent or penny.
Amazon are the only website I know where you always get a refund/replacement no questions asked. Customer service is incredible there.
Insane. Though Amazon is right to be concerned, this isn’t the correct response. I’d say around half my parcels are stolen.
I can tell from my home camera why: The drivers simply leave them at my door, on a busy high street. Occasionally they never turn up, which I suspect means they took it themselves.
As someone who has both delivered and sold on amazon in the past, there are just to many cretins in this country that will lie and cheat to get free stuff. It’s an easier form of shop lifting.
The police report is a bluff for chancers and not regular thieves because it scares them out of theiving their £20 dildo.
I had to sue Amazon in the past for shipping me a box that had the product removed
They refused to refund me as I returned an empty box. Well yeah, you never delivered the product
Once the case was filed with MCOL they settled fairly quickly
More people need to take Amazon to small claims especially with how easy it is. They also pay solicitors to handle the case on top of having to refund the filing fees to you
Hit them where it hurts, their bank account
You deserve everything you get if you are still using Amazon with everything we know. Do better.
I mean does it even matter if they are found guilty?
The people affected wont get anything back and it’ll be some company “fighting for the people” who win in the end while Amazon pays a small fine and continues to spit in the face of the law as every other company does because our government is weak.
I’ve seldom had any problems with Amazon deliveries.
Last April I ordered a high end mobile phone (worth over £1000) and it was stolen from the packaging on route. They gave me a refund without any problems.
In June I ordered some camping equipment that arrived missing some key parts. They replaced that with no problem.
So, all in all, I’ve had a good experience from shopping with Amazon (just hoping I don’t jinx the delivery I’m expecting today :-).
Amazon always gave me exceptional customer service so I doubt these claims are the full story
Amazon reserves by far the most contempt for its drivers. There is absolutely zero excuse for theft, but if working conditions were improved, a lot of the other negative experiences would be resolved.
Newbie drivers are put on reduced routes for the first couple of weeks. During this period, I was able to wait for every customer, phone any who weren’t in, and verify their name before handing over the package, as stipulated in the training. Once you move up to full routes, this simply *is not possible*. Ok, it is if you take the time. But if you were being paid a flat rate for the day, would you commit yourself to going over the planned finish time, every day?
The maximum time you can really afford to wait for someone to answer the door is about 10-15 seconds. I would usually ring the ones without a nominated safe place, but is it any surprise that many drivers feel compelled to just leave it behind a bin and move on to the next drop? If you fail a delivery, you’re expected to go back at the end of the day and reattempt, regardless of how far away you might be by then. Again, would you do that for a flat day rate?
All this against the backdrop of Amazon using ‘self-employed’ as a smokescreen to avoid employment law – no minimum wage, no paid leave, only one break planned all day. Not to mention it being tacitly assumed that you’ll go over driver duty limits if necessary – if you get caught, it’s your fault as a ‘self-employed contractor’; Amazon’s hands are clean.
Moaning at the driver when you’ve had a bad experience won’t improve things. The entire culture at Amazon needs to change. Since that’s unlikely to happen, if you don’t like it I suggest you shop elsewhere.
Amazon really piss me off, every other delivery company knock on my door and hand it to me but these bastards just leave it on my doorstep
Anyone else watch that recent channel 4 documentary about amazon with Oobah Butler? It’s on YouTube if interested. Quite amusing how he approaches highlighting how bad some of their systems are and how the drivers are treated.
Gathering bottles of driver urine from the roadside is just the start
Amazon need to be punished hard for this.
However, get a store box by the door for parcels, it has done wonders for avoiding wet/visible parcels.
It is inconvenient, but it is the norm for other things. Have an insured bicycle and it is stolen. You know your chance of getting it back are zero but the insurer wants a police report. The idea is that making a false report gets you in trouble.
Yes, Amazon should be filing the report as delivery isn’t completed but unless we are talking something of high value, they should make any necessary reports for their loss insurance.
I once ordered something big and expensive.
Their driver left it out my front door when I wasn’t in work. Got an email saying it’s delivered. Got home, surprise surprise it ain’t there.
Contacted Amazon lost my shit, they agreed to refund me.
2 days later my neighbour pops her head over the fence saying she took in a parcel…
Call Amazon, email, live chat, no one wants to know anything, no way of returning the goods or even paying for them. No evidence required, nothing. They must suffer enormous amounts of fraud.
The problem is the complete lack of penalties for failure to comply with the law. If large companies faced the shareholders losing 10% of the value of the entire group for every offense where they failed to resolve it within the law, it would stop overnight.
Also, retaliation of any kind against chargebacks should be treated as a criminal conspiracy to defraud and result in anyone involved going to jail.
20 comments
Oh, posed 50 seconds before me! Here’s the summary anyway:
With a push for ‘Black Friday’ deals next week, a cautionary note about amazon.com who show “a contempt both for the law and the customer”.
tl;dr amazon are forcing some customers to get police reports for ‘theft’ when it is amazon’s own couriers who are failing to deliver (both physically and/or contractually) goods purchased online. If the police do issue a report for this civil matter, then amazon are then not accepting it. All of this is against the Consumer Rights Act, which holds the retailer legally responsible for goods until they are safely received
Uber did a similar thing to me where they failed to deliver my food and then refused to refund me. Felt pretty powerless to do anything except a chargeback, which got me blocked from all their services
Amazon should be the ones reporting it (if anyone) not the buyer
Does Amazon actually adhere to any uk laws? The Amazon driver we had recently didn’t call at the door they just put the parcels in the wheelie bin. No card through the door to say where the parcels were left. If they had been stolen I would probably be out of pocket.
I offer a simple solution to potental victims of this sharrp practice.
Boycott the bastards. Not one cent or penny.
Amazon are the only website I know where you always get a refund/replacement no questions asked. Customer service is incredible there.
Insane. Though Amazon is right to be concerned, this isn’t the correct response. I’d say around half my parcels are stolen.
I can tell from my home camera why: The drivers simply leave them at my door, on a busy high street. Occasionally they never turn up, which I suspect means they took it themselves.
As someone who has both delivered and sold on amazon in the past, there are just to many cretins in this country that will lie and cheat to get free stuff. It’s an easier form of shop lifting.
The police report is a bluff for chancers and not regular thieves because it scares them out of theiving their £20 dildo.
I had to sue Amazon in the past for shipping me a box that had the product removed
They refused to refund me as I returned an empty box. Well yeah, you never delivered the product
Once the case was filed with MCOL they settled fairly quickly
More people need to take Amazon to small claims especially with how easy it is. They also pay solicitors to handle the case on top of having to refund the filing fees to you
Hit them where it hurts, their bank account
You deserve everything you get if you are still using Amazon with everything we know. Do better.
I mean does it even matter if they are found guilty?
The people affected wont get anything back and it’ll be some company “fighting for the people” who win in the end while Amazon pays a small fine and continues to spit in the face of the law as every other company does because our government is weak.
I’ve seldom had any problems with Amazon deliveries.
Last April I ordered a high end mobile phone (worth over £1000) and it was stolen from the packaging on route. They gave me a refund without any problems.
In June I ordered some camping equipment that arrived missing some key parts. They replaced that with no problem.
So, all in all, I’ve had a good experience from shopping with Amazon (just hoping I don’t jinx the delivery I’m expecting today :-).
Amazon always gave me exceptional customer service so I doubt these claims are the full story
Amazon reserves by far the most contempt for its drivers. There is absolutely zero excuse for theft, but if working conditions were improved, a lot of the other negative experiences would be resolved.
Newbie drivers are put on reduced routes for the first couple of weeks. During this period, I was able to wait for every customer, phone any who weren’t in, and verify their name before handing over the package, as stipulated in the training. Once you move up to full routes, this simply *is not possible*. Ok, it is if you take the time. But if you were being paid a flat rate for the day, would you commit yourself to going over the planned finish time, every day?
The maximum time you can really afford to wait for someone to answer the door is about 10-15 seconds. I would usually ring the ones without a nominated safe place, but is it any surprise that many drivers feel compelled to just leave it behind a bin and move on to the next drop? If you fail a delivery, you’re expected to go back at the end of the day and reattempt, regardless of how far away you might be by then. Again, would you do that for a flat day rate?
All this against the backdrop of Amazon using ‘self-employed’ as a smokescreen to avoid employment law – no minimum wage, no paid leave, only one break planned all day. Not to mention it being tacitly assumed that you’ll go over driver duty limits if necessary – if you get caught, it’s your fault as a ‘self-employed contractor’; Amazon’s hands are clean.
Moaning at the driver when you’ve had a bad experience won’t improve things. The entire culture at Amazon needs to change. Since that’s unlikely to happen, if you don’t like it I suggest you shop elsewhere.
Amazon really piss me off, every other delivery company knock on my door and hand it to me but these bastards just leave it on my doorstep
Anyone else watch that recent channel 4 documentary about amazon with Oobah Butler? It’s on YouTube if interested. Quite amusing how he approaches highlighting how bad some of their systems are and how the drivers are treated.
Gathering bottles of driver urine from the roadside is just the start
Amazon need to be punished hard for this.
However, get a store box by the door for parcels, it has done wonders for avoiding wet/visible parcels.
It is inconvenient, but it is the norm for other things. Have an insured bicycle and it is stolen. You know your chance of getting it back are zero but the insurer wants a police report. The idea is that making a false report gets you in trouble.
Yes, Amazon should be filing the report as delivery isn’t completed but unless we are talking something of high value, they should make any necessary reports for their loss insurance.
I once ordered something big and expensive.
Their driver left it out my front door when I wasn’t in work. Got an email saying it’s delivered. Got home, surprise surprise it ain’t there.
Contacted Amazon lost my shit, they agreed to refund me.
2 days later my neighbour pops her head over the fence saying she took in a parcel…
Call Amazon, email, live chat, no one wants to know anything, no way of returning the goods or even paying for them. No evidence required, nothing. They must suffer enormous amounts of fraud.
The problem is the complete lack of penalties for failure to comply with the law. If large companies faced the shareholders losing 10% of the value of the entire group for every offense where they failed to resolve it within the law, it would stop overnight.
Also, retaliation of any kind against chargebacks should be treated as a criminal conspiracy to defraud and result in anyone involved going to jail.