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I just had a doozy of a customer service experience with Amazon.com. I’ve written (and tweeted) about them a lot in the past, both good (here, there) and bad. Today’s experience, though resolved in my favor, would have to fall into the latter category.
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You see, Amazon has a “strict” no price matching policy for their own store. If you buy something today for $35 and tomorrow the price drops to $25, Amazon says, “Tough luck.” This is nuts.

Even the most dubious of brick and mortar stores (Best Buy, I’m looking at you) will price match their own store within a reasonable time frame. I think Best Buy will match within 30 days for most purchases. But Amazon, the otherwise wonderful beacon of customer service (seriously!), says nay.

Now, as I said, this ended up exactly where I wanted it to in the first place: I got my price match. But as you can see from the chat transcript (after the jump), the circuitous route I was forced to take was less than satisfying. Moreover, the policy is the problem here, not the situation. As you will see, Amazon’s policy would rather have 10+ pound packages sent three times across the country than do what they ended up doing here anyway (and what Best Buy would have done without batting an eye). This needs to change. Amazon needs to price match themselves.

One last bit of amusement for you before I let you jump into the transcript: It was Amazon’s own technology that alerted me to the price drop. If their system hadn’t told me that the item was cheaper, I would never have known. Why have such a notification if you don’t want people to use it? Riddle me that.

Continue reading the transcript: Read the rest of this entry »

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