[duxup]

Worked in support for a long time. Very true.

The real trick is trying to get the support guy to tell you what to do to get the right attention ... IF they know.

I used to do that all the time when I did big time networking gear support. "I, the support guy, can't just send you a new router (price like $200k+), that's just the policy, I gotta do X, Y, Z. That will take a bit of time and here is how that works ____ . But if you can get _____ to tell me to do it, I'll do it."

Now as a support guy you have to know the lay of the land before you deliver that line... but I was lucky enough to know and that org had good policies and so on.

What is AMAZING is some customers didn't realize that I just gave them the route they needed to go to get exactly what they wanted and they'd complain and whine. Like guys ... come on. I'd also tell them what to do to get closer to that goal faster without pulling strings, but that meant they had to do extra work, lotta folks didn't want to do that either.

Granted consumer support guy, probably has no tools / doesn't know the magic words / people and so on. Also probably afraid to tell you. Support personnel are most often "valued' for a short time but in reality are seen as a cost in most orgs and treated like garbage / scummy pawns. At one company I worked at the engineers would invite me over to their building when they had food catered. They knew we got jack squat (support almost never got food catered in), we had management who only knew how to prove their worth by penny pinching, and the engineers liked some of us / knew we saved them a lot of time.

Side story: I don't know if Amazon ever had human support but right now I've got something that shipped 3+ months ago and it is "On the way but running late" ... for 3+ months. In the past Amazon would just give me a refund outright... Now Amazon just sends me between two different bots that can't help me at all... The seller has a bunch of posts and feedback all the same, people not getting the product. Amazon bot don't care tells me to talk to the other bot. My review (almost the same as the other reviews now warning people about not getting product) was rejected.

[wahnfrieden]

Amazon deeply hides the human chat features. They’re also placed differently in diff countries. Go look for it under the general support page, not starting from the product order status page which rarely exposes helpful support functions

[duxup]

TY, I will try that.

[wahnfrieden]

even when amazon tells you on the product page that something cannot be returned, if you can find the chat link elsewhere and ask about the product there, you will find that not only can it be returned, you can also get the option to be refunded without having to return the item (at least mostly the case with food items in my experience)

[cameldrv]

On the Amazon thing, get the tracking number and track it with the carrier. I’ve found Amazon will say something has shipped when only the label has been created. You can see the truth if you track it through the actual carrier.

There seem to be some sellers on Amazon that just don’t ship things until the customer complains.

[TylerE]

It cuts both ways. Some carriers tracking (Glares at USPS) is just bad. I had had stuff delivered that the web still claims is "label created, item not yet received".

[duxup]

The China post tracking number doesn't track, although I suspect there really is no way to make that work. I half suspect someone figured out if it didn't track they could avoid Amazon giving refunds.

[Our_Benefactors]

> Now Amazon just sends me between two different bots that can't help me at all...

I ran into this issue some months back. The unofficial-official policy seems to be to make you file a dispute with your CC stating that merchandise was not delivered. I was promptly refunded and haven’t had any issues conducting further business with Amazon.