Amazing Amazon Offer !!!!!
Just a week back I had ordered on Amazon in Bangalore, India as there was an offer running up just before the Christmas. It wasn’t a big order but since the offer was little unique in terms of eligibility I worked it out such that I was just eligible. I got few stuff and one of the item was slightly off size but due to the offer I thought of keeping it.
It was over a weekend and since the offer terms were little weird, I just messaged Amazon customer care just to check if I was eligible as per the snippet below and I left it there.
Next weekend while checking I realized that there has no cashback at all and hence checked back again with the Amazon Customer Care and this time I was told something very weird like the offer. There was two things that the customer service person, one that I did not order for the requisite amount as the orders were split (split is not done by me but by Amazon) and second one the bags that I ordered is not categorized as bag but a baby product. Both these were kind of reasons just to make sure that I am not eligible.
Very strangely some customer executive from the Qwiksilver which manages such cashback offers snooped on my LinkedIn profile (may not be related to all of this though)
After all of this I felt somewhat cheated and looked up online what can be done. I did hear Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s customer centric philosophy. And I just thought of sending out an email. Fortunately there is jeff@amazon.com and this inbox is monitored. I just shot an email to this email ID and Voila today I got a reply as well a phone call. They did give me the cashback, no question asked as a gesture of reaching out
Key Takeaways
Companies are built on belief systems but when it grows bigger it is really difficult to control the same among all the employees. In India customer are not treated like a King by most of the businesses be it the mom & pop shop (parchun ki dukan) or the large corporate houses. Just finding proper email ID of an accountable person might be a big thing. Customer service agents change every time you call them and one ends up explaining the same story thousand times and guys on the other side are trying to make the life difficult. Customer service center over telephone as we know is quite irritating with the personnel apologizing profusely which actually sounds phony all the time.
Customers can become difficult but as a company we should give them options to vent their anger otherwise it will just take a toll on the brand. If we can do something to solve the problem it will be icing on the cake. I am sure jeff@amazon.com is not Jeff Bezos himself looking at email, it is an option that is not published out but if people do reach out they are not let down by the team looks at the emails.
By the with the Cashback that I got I ordered first set of books of 2019