On 03/07/2019 12:24, Gareth's was W7 now W10 Downstairs Computer wrote:
Been a regular customer of Amaxon for a couple of years
and paying extra for their next day free postage prime service.

But why do the costs of items under prime seem to exceed the
cost when not prime and paying for postage? You can fool
all of the people some of the time?


To some degree, yes. Prime subscribers might just hit the prime link
without looking too hard. Probably guilty of that myself, but it means
you never have to consider delivery charges, and of course, you often,
but not always, get it fast.


So, try to set up item return. But at £17 for the purchase, all
options are going to cost half of that in timeÂ* and money.
Why couldn't they just pick it up themselves?

Because it costs too much :-/.


Next difficulty - well nigh impossible to find an email address
to complain to Amazon. All menu options keep steering back to
the return item screen which is no good; at least 10 mile round trip
and cost of packaging to resolve.

That's intentional. Use the chat or send a message and they'll call you
if required. They don't want email because the process will be automated
to some degree and they're looking to minimise the human interaction
required, because that takes time and costs money. A pre-populated form
can be me handled by machine.


This is the first and only time I've wanted to send something back
and the frustration of trying to work into their shilly shallying
on the matter is sufficient to lose me as a customer.

I've been a customer since 2000, and I've returned stuff several times,
never had any problems. If fact, if you return stuff through Collect+,
you get a refund as soon as you take the item to the collection point.

Like many companies depending on tech a lot, you generally ahve to
follow the flow the way they want it to be used...