[buildbot]

This is no longer true about the returns - I may have to go to court with amazon over a warehouse item that was empty, and then they stuck me with the non-returned item when I returned the empty box, wiped my review of the 3rd party seller (fulfilled by amazon). They are currently lying to my credit card company about the chargeback. Not fun...

[billyjobob]

Why would you return an empty box?

Legally Amazon had a contract to deliver you an item. They failed to do that, so you should have reported it as undelivered. When this has happens to me Amazon usually spend a few days “investigating” if the courier misplaced the item, then they admit it wasn’t delivered and send a replacement.

If you report it as “delivered but there’s something wrong with it” then that’s going to trigger them to request you return it, and if you return an empty box that’s going to lead to the “customer failed to return item” pathway.

[Closi]

They probably mean they opened the box and it was empty (i.e. they got sent a parcel, and the item's box was inside the parcel, but the item itself wasn't in the box).

I've worked in quite a few eCommerce companies on the fulfilment side (although not Amazon, but including Amazon sellers) and this is pretty common - the overwhelming cause is that a scammer buys a product from an online store, takes it out of the box, replaces it with rocks or something of a similar size/shape to make it weigh the right amount, then shrink wraps it to make it look like it hasn't been sold and then returns it for the full value.

However sometimes customers also lie and say that they received an empty box, when they actually had the item inside.

It is very rare that the manufacturer will ship an empty box (however it does sometimes happen).

Because of this, most eCommerce companies adopt a policy of "If the 'new' item was previously an unopened return, allow the refund, however if not, do not allow a refund". eCommerce companies track this by using different bins for returned products (or at least by not returning that product to a bin with the same SKU that is non-returned). This sucks for the customer if you are one of the unlucky people that gets a box sent empty by the manufacturer, but fortunately that's very rare (it's a tough one to resolve without lots of theft, as it's very easy for people to say that the box was empty and very hard to prove otherwise).

This is even more difficult with third party sellers, as Amazon may not have full visibility with how they are tracking returns, and those third party sellers may have different policies around 'received empty' returns (I've not seen the above in any official policy, but can confirm it is common practice - again not with Amazon but I've worked with a number of eCommerce companies with similar issues and policies).

[buildbot]

Yep, exactly this happened. I even asked them to check the shipping weight from their side, to confirm that it was the same.

[Closi]

Yeah, well there definitely isn’t a requirement for third party sellers to weigh the parcels - in almost all instances the shipping weight field is just calculated based on the packing list and known weights for each item and the packaging material. All large Amazon sellers I’ve worked for did this.

An exception to this is if it’s shipped by Amazon, as I believe they have in-line weigh scales.

Amazon as a company though is almost impossible to deal with if you need to do something outside their regular processes or procedures, and they are heavily bureaucratic from an external perspective (including to their ‘partners’). I suspect you have unfortunately reached a block on their internal flow chart that says “no refund” and the customer services operative has very little discretion to do something different.

[buildbot]

It was fulfilled by Amazon, so hopefully at whatever end of this they figure that out and realize they've made an error. I have certainly hit that point, for whatever reason :/

[Closi]

Good luck! They are a nightmare.

[ziml77]

Too many people complain about things like this without seeing it from the other side. Like yeah you got screwed, but companies can't accommodate every issue that people claim they have. They'd go out of business. Even someone as big as Amazon couldn't sustain it. Word would spread about how easy it is to scam them and the number of people trying to do that would quickly ramp up. There's enough people in the world who aren't honest or who generally are but think "surely [large co] has enough money".

[buildbot]

They actually asked me to. And the box wasn't empty per-say, it was just missing the graphics card. It had the power adapters/manuals and such still, as well as the original NVIDIA box. It was a used item, so it was expected to be opened.

[gambiting]

Sure, but the main item was missing. Like other posters have said - you paid Amazon to deliver an item, that item was missing. There was nothing to return at all in my opinion and I would have refused any request to return from amazon. I know hindsight and all, but yeah. If your account is in good standing Amazon would(should?) just refund it. If you have a new account or if you did this a few times already they will be pissy about it.

[lucasmullens]

You sent Amazon an empty box? It's still their fault, but sending back an empty box and issuing a chargeback usually aren't the first things I try to get refunds from Amazon. Their support chat is usually pretty willing to give you a refund IMO (although if you've returned too much / had too much stolen over the years that might not be the case, which I'm guessing is the situation you're in)

[buildbot]

They asked me to in the first place, I called them immediately when I got the box. I sent them back what I got, the original NVIDIA box + accessories. I actually asked them to check the shipping weight IIRC :/

[akouri]

Amazon support 10 years ago used to be amazing. They were truly a customer-first company. Today, Amazon support is probably worse than Comcast. They've been winning too long.

I have starting curtailing purchases from Amazon, and ordering from any alternatives whenever possible.

[ziml77]

The impression I'm getting here is that he didn't even talk to their support. You can do returns without ever talking to a CSR. But in this case that's a stupid move because when you do a return, you're saying that you'll return the actual item. So when they get it back and the box is empty, they're going to think you're scamming them. It sounds like his very next move was to do a chargeback, which again is a dumb thing to do if he hasn't even spoken to Amazon support.

[buildbot]

I did 3 times actually, at first there was no movement on it. I opened the return with support stating that I got an empty box, which they asked me to send back to them.

[joshmanders]

As someone who had Comcast and has dealt with Amazon support I cannot disagree with this statement anymore.

My only experience with Amazon support was a failure to deliver a $600 item, Amazon not only refunded the price right away after we figured out what was going on, but also credited me $100 for my trouble.

Comcast? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA.