In Praise of Amazon
I have decided that I will occasionally put out a post on the weekend as another benefit to subscribing to Costa’s Corner.
Unfortunately, It is more a gripe than anything that you may want to sink your teeth into.
While my title is a tad misleading at this juncture, I am sure I will get there soon enough. This is more about something I am sure everyone of you has experienced repeatedly, even before the pandemic started, bad customer service.
It is more prevalent than positive Covid cases and the spread is even faster. I will put this out there and let everyone chew on it a bit. Companies no longer care either way if you come back or not. They put up a front but in reality, right now, it is a goods provider market. The consumer has less and less pull on how those goods providers maintain their businesses.
Years ago, If a company sold shoddy products or gave lousy customer service, consumers would speak loudly by going to another provider of pretty much anything that was wanted or needed. Companies lack of quality made their business models unsustainable and many failed. Some didn’t. they got the message and they upped their game. That is another aspect of Capitalism I love. Winners profit, Losers don’t.
The tide has turned on consumers however and the pandemic has pretty much given the providers free reign as to how they handle their business.
I will give you two examples just today. I ordered from Fresh Direct, which is a well run, competitively priced retailer of foods and sundries. Great website, you pick the time you want your delivery to come. Worked like a charm, until today. Stuff happens and I am ok with some driver dropping off 2 items of the 19 items I ordered an hour before it’s scheduled. I figured that the rest of my order would show up at the requested time. No dice. I waited an hour after the delivery time and then contacted customer support. Obviously, some bot replied and said my order would be there before noon. Ok, no biggie. 2:30 rolls around and no word from the company, the driver nothing. I call at 3:15 and speak to an actual human and he was pleasant enough. He explained that if I didn’t get it by 2, I wasn’t going to get it. Ok. I asked the support person, why wasn’t there a follow up. You promise one thing and that thing does not happen, you should at least contact the customer and explain that I was not going to get the delivery. If that was done, I would not be writing this minor tale of woe. The support person, said he was going to credit my account and I said thats fine but what he didn’t do, was apologize for the confusion on their end. It really is not a big deal but when you screw up a customers plans, the least you can do is apologize. As an added note, someone emailed me and did apologize and extended some service of theirs that saves on delivery by two weeks. Whatever. My point is they messed up. They did no follow up at all. They just don’t care.
The second story is similar to the first and I won’t bore you with the details but suffice it to say, initially, I was the male version of a Karen, whatever that is called and at the end of the day, the service provider did the right thing so I guess ripping the manager a little bit paid off.
The whole gist of this Substack is that we are seeing a complete drop off in customer service in this country. From the 40 minute waits to talk to an agent (Where the hell do they have the nerve to say that “Your call is important to us”, if it was so important you would have someone pick up the phone), to trying to cancel a subscription (not through Apple) on line. We all have experienced the dropped calls, the transferring over to another agent who can better help you. The litany of customer service failures could go on and on.
The bar was set very low years ago by the cable industry. The largest organized waste of humanity in corporate history. Let’s see anyone refute that one. Didn’t think so. The airline industry had their own level of disinterest in clients needs that still pervades the industry to this day. I could go on but I am sure you see my point.
Covid has just given almost every consumer business the excuse they were looking for to suck even worse. You can’t get something you ordered online? It’s Covid, supply chain, hey lets through Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory in there as well. Give me a break. If you don’t have something, just say it up front. We don’t have it, we don’t know when we will be getting it and good luck and Godspeed trying to find it elsewhere. I can handle that. The nonsense about placing an order and seeing the delivery date move further back every couple of days should stop. If your supplier can’t guarantee a product delivery, you shouldn’t either. It isn’t life threatening but it is very frustrating.
One last little note, and this could open a huge ball of wax with the banking industry if you dig a little deeper, is the waiting five to ten days before a refund hits your account. Why? It didn’t take five to ten days to debit my account for the purchase, why does it take five to ten days to credit me back my funds? It’s the float I tell you. I get they have wait for the item to reach their return centers but a lot of companies get it, inspect it, then wait the five to ten days after that.
Consumers just take it, every day. Beaten like a broken down mule, we just accept being treated treated poorly and with Covid, it’s an extra layer of baloney we have to deal with. The one thing all of these companies have quickly forgotten or don’t believe it is actually possible is that consumers have memories. When a company treats me poorly, I remember. When a service provider shows disdain for the job they are hired to do and do it poorly, people remember. They also have social media that can get the word out quickly and widely. That has to hurt at some point when social media builds up a terrible dislike for a company. The memories do linger and those memories also carry the positive experiences as well.
Thats where Amazon comes in. You can feel a lot of different ways about Amazon but you can’t say that their customer service is shoddy. I don’t know the numbers but my guess is they lose billions of dollars a year trying to make things right for their customers. You pretty much just have to contact them through an incredibly easy internet site and bring whatever it is to a UPS location and you get a credit (yes, on your credit card!) within a day or two. Amazon does this for a very simple reason, you will come back, again and again and you will buy, a lot, and you may return one or two things again but you will buy and buy and buy. Case closed.
Walmart, tried to emulate the model. They lag. a lot. However, Walmart does have scale and they have incredible cash flow so they can compete. I don’t think they will ever overtake Amazon online. You put the two website next to each other and your decision will be an easy one.
This is why consumers memories are important. You order something and it get pushed back weeks or months while Amazon rarely will allow you to order something without having a date that they are pretty sure they can fulfill your order by. No pushing back, no supply chain crap. We have it, you will get it.
All of this just adds to the long term viability of Amazon and it’s model. I can’t say that about too many other businesses during these times.
My other pat on the back goes to Apple. Another name you can love or hate and I can understand both feelings. They mastered the art of planned obsolescence. The IPod was the perfect example. It lasted 18 months, almost to the day. IMacs have a three year life cycle no matter how many upgrades you do. The IPad is the same thing. However, their products work better than any of their competitors, by a long shot. Their customer service is spectacular and I challenge anyone who has ever walked into one of their stores and not walked away satisfied, purchased something or fixed a problem. There could be four hundred people in the store and they do their best everyday to get you in, get help, get you out. Let’s see a Verizon store or a Best Buy do that. You put up with the knowledge knowing whatever you buy will probably be completely outdated by a second life cycle and you keep coming back. Thats the best business model I have ever seen and it has worked and it will continually work for as long as that company spends 10 to 15 billion dollars on research every year. Granted they haven’t had a game changer in a while but in their case, they don’t really need it.
I know I am sounded like some grumpy old man but you know what, I am a grumpy old man. I am going to sit in my recliner and watch some cable show and have a hot chocolate. Wait a second. I cut the cable cord a year ago!