Amazon customer service refund blunder

danybloke

Hi All,

So the story is we purchased a gardening furniture set worth £800 from a seller from Germany on Amazon.co.uk.

after receiving 6 large boxes and spending most the day assembling it, there was a manufacturing error with one of the corner seats (upside down frame inside the material). We contacted the seller via Amazon and they pasted a response which diverted us to their external website - which was broken, and from what I could tell they had no spare parts for our furniture model.

I then initiated the refund process via amazon, and a week later the seller was in contact with the 6x DPD parcel tickets (1 per box) and instructions to take these boxes to a DPD store. I spent another 2 hours disassembling the furniture and boxing it up and loading it in my car and spent around 3 hours traveling to 4 different stores with DPD pickup locations, and none of them would accept the boxes because they were too big. I contacted DPD directly and they told me that the seller needed to arrange a pickup from our address as the packages were indeed to big for pickup from a store.

I sent this information to the seller but yet again had the email to go via their broken website.

By this time I was getting very annoyed so I directly contacted Amazon customer service. The young man we spoke to seemed very concerned about the way we was treated and told me then on the phone that we are now entitled to a full refund and now did not need to return the item. my mobile phone then lost signal and 5 minutes later I received a voicemail (which I still have stored) and an email from him confirming the above and that we would get the money by x date the latest.

Obviously my wife and I were thrilled, and have since spent that money on other things including getting the corner piece fixed ourselves, and a cover for it.

Now....the date for the refund to be issued has passed and has not appeared in our account. I have spoken to Amazon customer services and they said that our previous advisor has made a mistake and should not have told us that, and that we should in fact return the item in order to get the refund. This has obviously now got us in deep water financially and I feel very stressed, worried and annoyed with the whole situation.

Does anyone have any advice on where we stand and does them confirming in writing and voicemail we are entitled to a full refund and not returning item, have any bearing?

ssparks2003

Do you still have the furniture 

danybloke

ssparks2003 said:

Do you still have the furniture 

Hi Yes when we thought we were getting refund and told to keep it, I unboxed and reassembled it (again!), sent the corner piece off to get corrected.

sekrapa

You can't have a refund and keep the item. For a refund You will need to return the item. The person you spoke to first was wrong to tell you that you did not need to send the item back to obtain a refund. 

danybloke

sekrapa said:

You can't have a refund and keep the item. For a refund You will need to return the item. The person you spoke to first was wrong to tell you that you did not need to send the item back to obtain a refund. 

Hi yes this is normally true however Amazon telling us we are getting a full refund and no need to return the item, and then 2 weeks later after the fact change your mind is terrible and in our case now has financial consequences.

Put yourself in our position - what would you do to get out of this whole mess?

ssparks2003

It was not amazons to give away, you don't get free garden furniture, surely you must of realised something was off when you were offered an £800 freebe? 

sekrapa

As you have had the item altered (fixed by 3rd party) it will be difficult to get your money back even if you sent it back to the manufacturer. I would not have spent any refund until the money was actually refunded. You could ask the manufacturer for a partial refund to cover the cost of repairing it..

swingaloo

Its bad service from the Amazon customer service agent but I doubt there is anything you can do about him making a mistake.  Perhaps the biggest mistake was getting the thing repaired before receiving the promised refund. 

danybloke

ssparks2003 said:

It was not amazons to give away, you don't get free garden furniture, surely you must of realised something was off when you were offered an £800 freebe? 

Hi no not really as in the past we were given a £400 refund and told to keep the item a couple a year ago.

danybloke

sekrapa said:

As you have had the item altered (fixed by 3rd party) it will be difficult to get your money back even if you sent it back to the manufacturer. I would not have spent any refund until the money was actually refunded. You could ask the manufacturer for a partial refund to cover the cost of repairing it..

Yeah this is likely the route we will take but their website is so bad once you log, and the customer service is very bad.

danybloke

swingaloo said:

Its bad service from the Amazon customer service agent but I doubt there is anything you can do about him making a mistake.  Perhaps the biggest mistake was getting the thing repaired before receiving the promised refund. 

yes getting it repaired, buying a cover, and spending the promised money on other things. like the other post said we should have waited for the money in the account before spending it but with having 3 different confirmations (2 recorded) I truly thought it was a sure thing.
Amazon will contact us tomorrow with what will happen. I'll share their verdict.