Feeling ripped off by Amazon

londonadviser

Evening. I'm feeling rather ripped off by Amazon and, after a long time trying to work out what went wrong, I appreciate it might have been avoidable and hope to prevent others from making the same mistake.

My young son is in hospital and I decided to buy him a Lego crane that he's had his eye on. Amazon's price was £45, but on the page, it offered a bundle with another van for £49. I thought this was a bargain and went for the bundle option.

At checkout, it said that the van was available immediately but the crane would be delivered a couple of weeks later. I thought the van would keep him happy for a while, so I didn't worry about this.

Today, I received an email saying that they couldn't get hold of the crane, and I've been refunded..... £35. (Just to make this more complicated, Amazon has created this refund at the point of purchase, so the crane has disappeared from my invoice, and the gift voucher spend I used has reduced from £49 to £14. The crane now shows a different price (£48) and the bundles are showing out of stock with no prices, so there's no proof of the bundle that I bought in the first place, or the price of the single item that was on the same page as the bundle).

I spent an hour on chat this evening, being passed from one chat support person to another, without warning that I was being passed on. I had to explain the problem over and over again and was fobbed off with "bundle prices are different to single item prices","you ordered from an overseas seller" (I didn't), "you didn't order the bundle" (I did), "that bundle isn't available any more" (really?) and so on.

I asked who I can make a complaint to, and was told that my feedback would be noted. I asked if the feedback team would contact me with a response to my complaint and was told no. I explained that it's not a complaint then, and they told me that they have no way of making a personal complaint.

After trying to work out the various transactions, I think that the single crane for sale was out of stock on Amazon, so it was showing a third party option. The bundle was an Amazon bundle, and Amazon's own price for the crane must have been £35, but this wasn't stated anywhere. So the van was never just £4 extra. It was always £14 extra, which was the full price of the van. Now that the crane isn't available, Amazon is charging me the full price for the van, and only refunding their price for the crane.

I know I've made a mistake here, but Amazon has really hacked me off. It wasn't clear that the single item wasn't sold by Amazon (it was fulfilled by Amazon, and carried the Prime logo). It wasn't clear that the bundle was from a different seller than the single item. It also wasn't clear that the bundle price wasn't discounted at all, but was Amazon's full price for both items.

It's also irritated me off that the audit trail for this purchase has been erased, and that I can't point out to anyone at Amazon that their bundle deals are misleading.

So next best thing, I'm having a rant here and hope that it will encourage a few people to check any bundle deals before they buy, or even shop elsewhere, considering that they've left a little boy in hospital feeling very unhappy (and me out of pocket as I'm going to have to buy him something else now!)

jackieblack

I’ve experienced something similar with Amazon and always take screenshots now. The evidence has come in useful on a couple of occasions since.

HampshireH

You will have an email confirming your order so until you have deleted it your audit trail won't have been erased

londonadviser

Yes, I told them about that. It only shows the full price of the bundle, not how it was split between the two items. Definitely taking screen shots if I ever order a bundle again. But having rediscovered the joys of taking my son to Smyths and the fact that Amazon's prices are no longer that good (it's just the convenience factor), I don't think I'll make a similar purchase for some time.