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Amazon Logistics service broke GoW street date today and tried to blame me

It's a long story but I'll try and summarise.

I pre-ordered both Yakuza 6 After Hours Premium Edition and God of War Collectors edition.

Yakuza was supposed to be delivered on Tuesday. I am working all week so I keep an eye on my e-mails, I get one saying that it's been delivered and I'm pretty hyped up to go home and get set up. Problem is, it never happened like that. I got home and there was a slip on the floor. I anticipated my product had been left with a neighbour. Oh no, no, no. This genius decided to leave it inside my recycling bin, where someone probably saw an Amazon box and an opportunity. Check out the slip they left me.

GmXFl8y.jpg


I live in a relatively safe neighbourhood in my town but it is still targeted by thieves and someone somewhere has my game. For those who don't live in the UK, the local council issue us these blue boxes to place glass and plastic recyclable items inside. Once a fortnight the bin men come and collect them, the following week they collect the bins and it cycles weekly between the two.

Recycle-703974.jpg


They look like the boxes in the image above. So bare in mind, they're in plain sight, on the street and anyone can look inside. Safe place, my arse.

So I called Amazon and kicked off, I was pretty miffed. £80 down the shitter, I wanted my game. The lady I spoke too in a call centre, who, no disrespect, spoke very little English and struggled to communicate with me, told me that Amazon would open an investigation and send a replacement if they found there was an error. However, they didn't issue a replacement, they can't. Because they are out of stock. Which they didn't tell me about, they just sent me an e-mail saying I am getting a refund. Brilliant. I have had to pay a Premium to get it from another seller because people have bought the initial stock, knowing they won't get any more in, and marking up the price. Just like CeX with the Mini NES/SNES.

Outraged, I e-mail them back. They say they're going to give me £10 promotional credit, even though the additional cost of the game was more than £10 and that they'll pass on my complaint. This was Tuesday, so 17.04.18. I have to explain this, because it leads into the God of War issue.

To avoid further mishap, I asked my manager if I can have God of War delivered to work and he said yes. (In fact he said I can direct all parcels to work happily but I suppose that's besides the point, company policy used to prevent us from doing it previously.)

So I changed the delivery address to my work address and at 11am today, a deliveryman brought God of War. Woop woop right? Well, not quite.

My colleague who accepted the parcel on the shop floor came and gave it to me. I was out the back when it was delivered. My fiancee stopped by quickly and picked the parcel up to take home with my son as she is on maternity leave and needed to do some shopping in town, so it was convenient for us both and I wouldn't be lugging home a big box on the bus.

Half an hour later, the deliveryman comes back into store and waits at the back. It's dinner time and a peak period so all of our counters are smashed with customers coming in to do business. My manager asks me what he wants and I reply honestly with "I don't know." - because I don't.

The colleague who originally accepted the parcel is asked to go and speak to him. The deliveryman tells him that he wants the parcel back. Surprised I wonder why, because the name and address matched perfectly, so what's the issue? My colleague informs the manager of the situation, who is now looking a bit uncomfortable and asks where it is so that he can return it. I question why he wants it back and nobody knows.

After a few minutes, the deliveryman skips the queue, comes straight to me at the front as he's probably guessed it was my parcel with everyone looking at me. He walks in front of my customer and asks me for the parcel back, telling me that he has other jobs he needs to get too. I explain that it's been collected by my fiancee and no longer on store premises and he protests that he's been told by his manager to get it back.

He goes as far as to take out his mobile phone, ring his manager and pass me the phone, telling me to speak to his manager. By this point as I'm sure you can imagine, my own manager is very unhappy with the situation because customers are looking angrily at this guy who is holding up the queue.

The manager informs me that the parcel was sent out in error as God of War is supposed to be released tomorrow, so I should not have it. I explain that I physically don't have the parcel to give back to the deliveryman and he gets angry at me and tells me that I shouldn't have accepted the parcel because they've now broken the street date! He gets angry with me, the customer and says I need to find a way to return it so they can re-deliver it tomorrow.

I tell him that I'm not willing to do that and physically can't because I am at work and get tells me to return the phone to the deliveryman who he shouts and swears at (I mean you could hear it from across the room) and then the deliveryman leaves.

I'm home from work with my parcel now and I don't know what to do. I'm really unhappy with the situation. My manager is very displeased and as a result has gone back to the old policy of 'no parcels delivered to work.' But even if I complain to Amazon, what will they do? They can't come and get the parcel before tomorrow to deliver it tomorrow. That's stupid and makes no sense at all. They won't refund it, which I don't want anyway, because I have the parcel. But I still want some justice out of this situation. The actions of Amazon have inconvenienced me twice inside a week and even put me in bad stead at work through the actions of their logistics service. Then they have the nerve to blame me for their error! I'm so angry.

I could do the British thing and write a really angry e-mail, but I want results, not 'thank you for your e-mail.' with a bunch of customer service blarg. I'm not sure how to handle the situation, but I'm really pissed off.

EDIT: Oh and just as proof that I have the parcel, you can see it here on my sofa.

Wyruqwy.jpg
 
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Fbh

Member
Don't know if there is much you can do.
Amazon definitely screwed up here. It's their job to keep the street date of games, not yours.
And the whole thing with Yakuza doesn't even make sense to me. Where I live if there is no one to receive the delivery then it's taken to the nearest post office and you have to go pick it up there.

You can write them an email and leave comments on their social media but I doubt you'll get more than a "sorry, we will look into it....here's $10"
 

OH-MyCar

Member
I don't know what to add other than, anecdotally, Amazon has been a pain in the ass for me to deal with in the past year. I don't know if it's that I recently moved to a "more dangerous area" and their algorithms say to "trust me less", but they previously went out of their way to be awesome and the last time I had trouble with shipping they essentially told me to go to hell with a $5 credit on a $150 purchase (that it looked like Ace Ventura delivered; there were bootprints on the inside because someone re-taped up the box at UPS). It's like they went from the best customer service in the industry to Wal-Mart in a very short amount of time.

The rest of that sounds like a trainwreck though. Good luck with it.
 
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Northeastmonk

Gold Member
I'd write both Amazon and Sony an email. Sony can look into why Amazon broke the street date and Amazon should look at their own policies.

It isn't the postal services right to do that. It was their mistake. It's your property once it was delivered.

I can't even imagine how many people own a copy of God of War already. I was wondering about this the other day. When Ninja Gaiden II came out, managers at one of the GameStops here in town already had the game. They told me they took a copy home when they arrived in the store. This was my second time hearing about this type of thing going on.

I worked for GameStop when Halo 3 and GTAIV came out. All the copies were stored in the back with a red label saying "don't open until...".

In all honesty it's all handled poorly and the consumer shouldn't be reliable for their mistakes. Have Sony investigate this. You purchased a game that you really wanted and you had a lot more stress than you should have to go through.

It's not like you're being sent a review copy with a month to play the game. You're paying for a copy and you get it whenever it arrives at whatever shipping location you used.

Plus, that's basically a trash bin. They need to hire new employees if that's where they're putting packages.
 
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A.Romero

Member
Contact Amazon through chat. After the conversation which will probably lead nowhere you will get a survey. State in the survey that you are not satisfied with the service. Some one other than a regular call center person will get in touch with you pretty quickly.

I placed a complain a few months ago related to a TV I ordered and they did call me back. Not only that, they made sure they were acting correctly and tried really hard to make me satisfied.

At least here in Mexico, Amazon has some really good customer service. I place over 60 orders separate orders a year for all kinds of stuff and the few ocassions I've had problems they've tried to help.

Good luck! (And enjoy GoW!)
 

autoduelist

Member
I still can't get over the fact that they thought a safe place was essentially a trash bin. Is this the safe place you set up?

I am sure Amazon will try to rectify the situation, it sounds like a subcontractor issue. That is the people mad at you were just delivery people, and everybody was in a problematic situation.
 

Arkhan

Grand Vizier of Khemri
Staff Member
I just want to say that delivery people that leave packages in bins which are only on the street because they are being collected are possibly the lowest form of human life. These people veer wildly beyond lazy into stupid and spiteful. I have had the same thing happen. You can probably tell.
 

TannerDemoz

Member
Man,this sucks but I think you've be actually shed light on the poor relationship between Sony and Amazon - not sure if you've seen the news that loads of upcoming Sony games are listed out of stock or not available. Seems weird that the guy would come back to collect it so I'm wondering if the relationship between the two is so sour because Amazon has been consistently breaking release with delivery?
 
1. There's no such thing as safe place delivery on Amazon.it, but I imagine that wouldn't end well anyway. It sucks for yiu though.

2. The parcel has been delivered, it's now yours. I'm sorry for the deliveryman but he's the one who fucked up, there's nothing else to say or do.
 

Roitorb

Member
I live in the UK and Amazon always leave our packages in the green bin even though I work from home. Hermes are the worst though. The one time they just rung the doorbell and left the parcel on the doorstep.
 
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WaterAstro

Member
lol wut. That's pretty much like throwing your parcels in the trash. What if it was being collected that day. What an idiot delivery guy.
 

Droxcy

Member
That's freaking obnoxious. I would've raised hell when they couldn't get me another copy. That's not right at all.
 

Cleared_Hot

Member
Bro, the sexond that dude walked in demanding his package back I would tell him tough luck and completely ignore him thereafter. Ya'll are way too nice. Putting you on his phone?! Sheeeeeeeit. Hell no.
 
I am glad amazon's shipping courier hasn't made their way to Massachusetts. From what I hear online, they are a total nightmare.
 

Vawn

Banned
You're doing the best thing you can do - share your bad experience with others. Word of mouth. If these type of experiences happen often and those people do what you do, eventually the poor customer service will bite them in the butt.

I don't see any way you can get financially compensated out of this however.
 

Shin

Banned
Problem with the world, everything has to be and go as fast as possible and as cheapest as possible.
All to save money / please stockholders, I wonder how humanity see this ending up for them if they keep this up.
I noticed recently also while dealing with government stuff, everyone is in a rush to get to the next case that twice in a row (and a 3rd pending) they screwed up and I had to file an appeal.
Same thing with the mail man here, he leaves packages on top of a building community mailbox, or leaves it at the neighbours or just blatantly lie that x or z user wasn't at home.

Human greed...it's everywhere and in everything.
 
Amazon have gone right downhill in my experience too, not to the extent of delivery driver's asking for parcel's back and causing a hassle, but in terms of leaving parcels anywhere they please, all the fucking time.

I don't live in a nice area either, it's a council estate so you can probably imagine. I've had amazon leave parcel's in the rycycling bin, in the bin shed, and even just causally leaning against the front door. Worst was buying an expensive keyboard and having it go missing because it was likely left at the front door. Complained multiple times and nothing has changed, I avoid ordering from them now.
 

Boss Man

Member
+1 to Amazon dropping the ball lately. I've gotten sick of wasting 15 minutes of my time with customer support whenever they miss a delivery date to get my free month of Prime. It's not even worth the hassle anymore.

Also, they (Amazon's own delivery) always deliver packages to my apartment's leasing office even when I'm home. That's irritating.
 
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JORMBO

Darkness no more
Dropping off a package and then asking for it back. I would have just laughed at him even if I had the package sitting right next to me.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
I had a 4tb hard drive left in one of those recycling boxes
Also their prime delivery is slacking as of late.
One Day Delivery, get it Thursday and its Monday
I've been seeing a lot of it recently when it's 4-5 days delivery on a One Day Prime
If ya can't deliver don't list it as One Day, simple.
But it's random so sometimes they can and others they can't.
 

demigod

Member
Also its most likely that they made your coworker sign for the package so if you gave it back to them, they are not liable to redeliver since its been signed.
 

TLZ

Banned
Should've told them both to fuck off and deal with their mistake and you're very busy with customers.
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Amazon universally pushes these principles through their company almost religiously:

https://www.amazon.jobs/principles

Cite these principles back to them as you explain how they messed up on many of them.
 
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NathanW18

Neo Member
This is actually outrageous. Firstly, putting your game in a recycling box in the middle of the street. How is that a safe place? Then a driver asking for the game back after delivering it?

Amazon have always been great with me. This shitty service surprises me. I would call and ask to speak to a manager after all of that.
 
Amazon is a bad company. Not a terrible company ala Walmart or EA, but a bad one.

People need to realize how much they go back on their word, cancel orders, put out generous offers and promotions for prime members then retract or gut them a few months later, and treat their non-prime customers much worse than their subscribers
 

goldenpp72

Member
Amazon is straight up awful for any special item. They cancel my collector editions to an almost comical extent. When I actually do get them they tend to be damaged, so I try to avoid now. I'm not sure what I'd do if I was you really, ridiculous situation.
 
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Mathrin

Member
For my last 5 parcels, I have had the amazon driver leave it propped up against my front door, while selecting the "handed to occupant" selection for updating their app! Baring in mind this was a Vinyl, so quite obvious on what it was, and relatively fragile!

Amazon UK also had a large screw up with South Park TFBH which I lost my shit at them for and they palmed me off with the "heres £5" which wouldn't have covered the cost of a replacement Steelbook edition, and then had the game come in stock 2 days later after telling me "all copies are damaged, we will be getting no more of them".

I ended up buying GoW from Smyths instead, £5 off for pre ordering it, and I can collect it from the shop on my route from home. Fuck Amazon and their delivery drivers.
 

deathsaber

Member
In no way whatsoever, are you in the wrong. Its up to Amazon and the delivery place to not break street date. All you did was preorder a product and receive a package. Once he left it with you, its delivered. You don't owe them a package back. That is for Amazon, the delivery service, and the delivery man to take it on the chin.

If even if your wife hadn't left with the package already, I would have told them I don't have it on me. As far as they are concerned, the package can remain missing unitl the street date in which none of it matters. They delivered it to you, and what you do with it afterwards is none of their concern.

It sucks they made a scene at your place of work- I would go back to Amazon and hardcore bitch about this experience (plus bring up the Yakuza debacle again). You might get a credit for the cost of the whole game. I got that once (for Mario Odyssey which they were a day late on for release date delivery, I didn't even press them that hard).

I'd also speak to some management of the delivery company about the problem. They probably won't do much, but they can maybe sort that driver out some.
 
This is really surprising to hear this for Amazon UK, I've used them for years and not had one problem with them. I am shocked to hear about both of the delivery people though. I usually request to have it sent to my Post Office but that's around the corner from me and not everyone will have the "luxury" for that.

If that was me then I'd pretty much tell them to do one basically. especially at my work place.
 

God Enel

Member
Problem with the world, everything has to be and go as fast as possible and as cheapest as possible.
All to save money / please stockholders, I wonder how humanity see this ending up for them if they keep this up.
I noticed recently also while dealing with government stuff, everyone is in a rush to get to the next case that twice in a row (and a 3rd pending) they screwed up and I had to file an appeal.
Same thing with the mail man here, he leaves packages on top of a building community mailbox, or leaves it at the neighbours or just blatantly lie that x or z user wasn't at home.

Human greed...it's everywhere and in everything.

I love your comment.
 

Arkhan

Grand Vizier of Khemri
Staff Member
lol wut. That's pretty much like throwing your parcels in the trash. What if it was being collected that day. What an idiot delivery guy.

That is why it is so incredibly stupid. Normally bins are ONLY left on the street the day they are collected, which means either:

a) The parcel is left in the bin before it is collected, but the trash collected before you get home from work so you lose the package to the dump.
b) The parcel is left in the bin after it is collected, meaning it is in an open topped bin with nothing else in the street for everyone to see, so you lose the package to thief's.

It is so obviously wrong people should not need to be told not to do it. Even those people that leave their recycling boxes out the front of their house all week for unknown reasons would still suffer problem b. I'd add that this problem is not contained to Amazon either, and is something other delivery companies also do.
 

Orpheum

Member
Even though i had nothing but good experiences with Amazon customer service i can understand why you're angry. Also none of this Situation is on you. First Amazon messed up, then the delivery service. neither your fault nor your business.
 

Shifty

Member
Amazon Logistics was a trash fire from the get go. They've gradually brought their standards up to okay around my area, though we occasionally get a knock-and-run and leaving the front gate open on their way out is a given.

Sorry to hear what happened to you OP, those are some new levels of unprofessionalism right there. You should definitely complain through the proper channels if you can, because that manager very clearly fucked up and should not have had his guy come and bother you about it. Reeks of trying to save their own skin at your expense.

Human greed...it's everywhere and in everything.
Preach. I try not to think too hard on it lest I go down the spiral of 'fuck capitalism man' and get all depressed about of the state of this planet.
 
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vanhanz

Member
I am glad amazon's shipping courier hasn't made their way to Massachusetts. From what I hear online, they are a total nightmare.
They're ok in my area but we have a main warehouse about 20 miles away. They usually put the package on my doorstep and take a picture and it shows up in the app. I have cameras facing my front door and one time I caught the amazon delivery girl launching a huge snot rocket into my flower bed as she was leaving. Interesting people.
 

Makariel

Member
I simply can't get over the fact that the delivery person thought the rubbish was a "safe space"...

With parcels that don't fit through the mail slot I always have them delivered to the nearest amazon locker or post office, instead of trying my luck with amazon logistics.
 

JORMBO

Darkness no more
I simply can't get over the fact that the delivery person thought the rubbish was a "safe space"...

With parcels that don't fit through the mail slot I always have them delivered to the nearest amazon locker or post office, instead of trying my luck with amazon logistics.

The last package I ordered from Amazon came on a day where it was raining all day. Instead of leaving it on my porch next to my door where it would not get wet at all AMZL left it in front of my porch. Had they taken an extra 0.000044 seconds to place it two feet back on my porch the package would not have gotten drenched. I think they are intentionally trolling me.
 
lol if this was my story my wife would be angry at me for getting so many people involved in one purchase of a videogame. Couldn't you just've bought it at a shop? Instead you now have the game but still want two massive companies to somehow magically fix stuff outside of their control. Anyway, you probably won't like my opinion, it's just my view.

Edit to avoid banhammer: enjoy the game it looks awesome, I hope NewGAF is a bit more considerate of opposing opinions, and sucks that the courier yelled at you, that was a bit much.
 
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