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 COLUMN
Poor shipping processes got Amazon on this year's holiday naughty list UNLIKE SANTA, I make up my list of who's been naughty and nice after the holidays, with a special emphasis on Web retailers that were wayward in their shipments to holiday shoppers. So far this year my naughty list is a short one: Amazon.com.
"When I ordered, I understood the item was in stock and would ship within 24 hours," wrote one reader who had ordered a gift several weeks earlier. "It still says it's 'entered the shipping process' when I check on the status, but it hasn't arrived. I could order it elsewhere, but when I try to cancel the Amazon order, I'm told I can't. 'We're sorry!' it says. 'We are unable to cancel any item since your order has already entered the shipping process.' So I either risk getting two of them, or I risk not getting it in time for Christmas." Not only could a back-ordered product in this potentially infinite shipping process not be canceled but several readers discovered their credit cards were charged when the order began. One reader with a stalled order got through to Amazon customer service on the phone to see what could be done. "After a 25-minute hold I spoke to a service rep who really could only offer [that] she'd try to cancel it but could not guarantee stopping it or, worse yet, could not guarantee that my credit card would not be charged. I asked to speak to a supervisor, and ... he said, 'they would try to cancel the order, but the policy was to charge my credit card at the beginning of the shipping cycle, and due to the holidays, the shipping process was being extended.' In fact, I contacted American Express and found that my card had been charged four days before. But please understand, the item has not shipped; I have been unable to cancel the item for five days, and the delivery days are still slipping by. This is the most incredible scam I've ever seen. Charge the card, hold the shipment, don't let the customer cancel!" Another reader received an interesting explanation of the situation from an Amazon representative. "While [two weeks] may seem an unusually long time with no movement of an order, one must remember that Amazon.com is in fact a retail store," the Amazon representative wrote. "People must also wait in line for their orders; after all, it would not be fair for someone who ordered a copy of [the product] in October to get it after someone who ordered it in December. Please keep in mind that the availability and shipping time frames listed on our Web site are estimates, not guarantees. While we do our best to adhere to these estimates, our inventory is constantly changing based on information we receive directly from our suppliers. Occasionally, unexpected fluctuations in supply will add time to our original availability estimate." The recipient, who had actually placed the order four weeks previously in November, was clearly outraged. "If I understand your message, you are trying to tell me that even though your catalog says that an item usually ships within 24 hours, it really could take over a month to ship," the reader wrote to Amazon. "That is very misleading. "If there is in fact a line of people waiting for the same items that I ordered and it will take over a month to fill all of the orders in that line, you have no business implying that it will take you about a day to do so. That is outright fraud," the reader continued. An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed that it is the company's policy not to allow cancellations and to charge the customer's credit card when "the shipping process" begins. The shipping process can get extended during the holiday season, she said, and Amazon tries to rectify all such situations as quickly as possible. It seems to me that Amazon wants it both ways. One does sometimes have to stand in line at a brick-and-mortar retail store, but not for weeks at a time. And they don't charge your credit card when you first step into line, and when you get tired of waiting you can always buy the product somewhere else. Amazon can take some comfort in being the sole name on my e-commerce holiday naughty list, because it had enough business to generate gripes. I'm sure other companies that might have made the list discouraged so many folks in previous years that they didn't have enough business. Let's hope Amazon can avoid next year's naughty list by cutting down on the number of back-orders rather than their overall orders. Got a complaint about how a vendor is treating you? Contact InfoWorld's reader advocate, Ed Foster , at gripe@infoworld.com.  RELATED SUBJECTS  E-CommerceWeb TechnologiesDiscuss this article in our online forums MORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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