[slang800]

I've experienced the opposite with Amazon. If you complain about a product you've gotten they simply refund the full purchase price, no need to return the item or anything. I've even gotten months of prime refunded by telling them I forgot to cancel.

I assume that eating the cost of a bad purchase is cheaper for them than upsetting a long-term customer.

[dingaling]

I've never had that experience with Amazon UK, they've always demanded that the broken / damaged item be returned.

On one occasion when I had to return an item I ended up £30 out of pocket because it had to go by courier instead of post, due to length. I had to argue with their customer support to obtain recompense despite it having been them who told me to send it courier. The item was only worth £80.

Nowadays I just use Amazon as a price baseline but shop elsewhere.

[vinay427]

On returned items, both Amazon US and Amazon DE have been quite helpful. I think Amazon US is even more over-the-top, but I think the local retail standards for this are much higher in the US so it makes sense.

On memberships, I don't mind the Prime cancelling issues very much because they seem to always credit back a month if you later tell them you forgot to cancel. Unfortunately, there are annoying dark patterns when signing up, hiding the "No thanks" button when trying to get through an order, etc.

[tonyedgecombe]

I just returned an item and they arranged for a courier to collect. They acknowledged the return after one day and credited my account the following day.

The only thing I noticed is they hide the collection options under a button. By default they encourage you to drop off at a depot or post office.

[alpaca128]

In my recent experience this has changed drastically. Amazon was on average the cheapest, fastest online marketplace I'd used, and any issues were resolved within an hour.

Now I'm still waiting for a product I ordered 3 months ago. The only option I have is contacting the seller - who doesn't respond. I wrote a review about the experience, which then got promptly removed.

More recently I've ordered a few things from multiple places, the one outstanding delivery is from Amazon, and now almost a week late. It'll probably be the last one; their obvious lack of interest regarding fake reviews, review resetting and obfuscation, misleading pricing, counterfeit products and the constantly shrinking number of quality products have taken a toll. More often than not products are shipped from China, making it a worse choice than many local competitors who may ask higher prices for delivery but at least ship in two days instead of two weeks, have a phone support hotline and a reason to care.

Very slowly but steadily the reasons I started using Amazon's platform eroded away until it became more or less a more approachable middleman for aliexpress dropshippers.