Goodbye Amazon — You’ve Changed!
No Longer Earth’s Most Customer Centric Company
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Amazon has grown massively over the last few years and is built on a strong and innovative business model. I believe it really succeeded, especially in its early days, because it wanted to be Earth’s most customer centric company.
Amazon is a really impressive retailer in many ways. Shopping with them gives you:
- 1–2 delivery on most items; in some cases same day (in certain regions)
- Great prices
- A wide variety of items; of unusual as well as ‘stock’ items
- Subscribe and Save to make regular purchases easier
But there is also the bad (and getting worse every day):
- An online experience that feels like I’m just a robot being ‘sold at’ be algorythyms
- When I do have an idea of what I want, a have to search and browse a shop catalogue full of junk listings messing up the clarity of what’s actually for sale, and what you will receive
- Reduced service offerings on returns — it used to be an immediate refund at point of you shipping your return; especially on problem orders (damaged or wrong item). Now you have to wait for refund on their timescales.
- Blaming 3rd party sellers and claiming they are just the delivery merchant. Frankly, that’s just absolving responsibility. I’ve experienced the same with fast food delivery services such as Uber Eats who simply pass the blame onto restaurant despite them being the merchant I ordered from and paid. If I pay Amazon, I expect Amazon to be responsible, whomever the actual supplier is.
This is the worse part of it. It’s an erosion of accountability, something Amazon used to accept responsibility for, no questions asked, but no longer. They’ve become big enough to think they now don’t need to be Earth’s most customer centric company.
Unfortunately they’ve driven out of business many other retailers selling specific items I can now only find on Amazon. But there are also smaller specialist retailers popping up. It’s rare that I can’t find what I need elsewhere, albeit at a higher cost, with just a little more effort to search online.
I’m ok with that as it helps me challenge my consumer spending choices and ask sensible questions like
“Do I really need this?”
Amazon set early high expectations and delivered on them for so long. No they aren’t, and I can’t help but feel let down. Time to go back to the retailers who truly care about their business and hold themselves accountable for genuine great customer experience.
