Oddball Update

Yep, we’re done with Amazon. Permanently and forever. They can officially kiss off.

Those two Christmas gifts I mentioned in yesterday’s post? The ones I ordered from Amazon? The ones that are taking forever to show up? A bit more light was shed on the situation just now. Amazon has this bad habit, more and more lately, of offering items through third-party vendors — essentially outsourcing the product handling to other shops, some brick and mortar like Target or Toys ‘R’ Us, some Internet-based. The items we ordered were being outsourced to Internet camera and electronics store J&R, which is a reputable store which which I’ve ordered before. They have a great feedback rating.

But today I learned that Amazon had changed vendors on us. J&R no longer offers (or no longer had stock of) the product, so Amazon switched the handling to an online store called K & B Electronics. This store has a questionable feedback rating of only 67% percent. And when you read the customer feedback about the vendor, guess what the chief complaint is? “I was billed immediately but the product took <insert astronomical timeframe here> to actually arrive.” Usually these remarks are accompanied by “All of my attempts to contact the seller were unanswered.” Greaaaaat! Thanks a fucking load, Amazon, for outsourcing our Christmas gift order to a bunch of swine.

On top of this, Apple also called (again) the customer service number for our Amazon credit card to bring up the missing gift certificate issue again. Now we have received New Story #6: Cardmember services is completely washing their hands of it, saying that we should check with our local post office because maybe the US Postal Service is secretly holding our mail hostage without our knowledge. This goes directly against one of the other stories we received, which was “Your gift certificate was mailed out, but our system shows it was returned to us as undeliverable.” Both excuses are bullshit, and both leave a very bad taste in my mouth.

We have decided to cut up the Amazon cards after this month’s statement and go back to using the GM Card until we find a credit card with a benefit program that actually suits our needs, although I don’t know what that would be. We’ve thought about a card that gives you airline miles for purchases, but with all the major airlines teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, who wants to waste a year or two racking up miles only to possibly have them rendered null and void by a financial collapse? Even GM is in serious trouble, making me wonder if eventually the GM Card program will go away as well.

This isn’t related, but add to this the fact that the Netflix website said they wouldn’t bill us until January 14th, but then decided to bill us on December 14th instead, before I could plug in the gift code number we received from my grandmother for Christmas — and you’ve got the recipe for some surly moods at home today. Sure, it’s only twenty bucks, so I’m inclined to just let it go given the grand scheme of things, but you know…principles.

Sigh…Merry Christmas, peeps…and BOHICA.

Categorized as Rants