Amazon's automated complaints process keeps customers like me in the dark - Neil McNicholas

They offer a limited set of alternatives to click on and if your problem or query isn’t one of them then you get no further – and the cynic inside of me suspects that the system is set up specifically with that in mind.

Once upon a time you used to be able to contact Amazon by email, but it is now longer contactable by email. God forbid they might actually have to come out from behind their automated “heaven” (from their point of view) and deal with people personally.

My problem began with various of their deliverers who arrive at my house, finding the driveway gate closed depart leaving it open – total disregard for consideration, thoughtfulness, and basic customer relations. I then have to go out in all weathers to shut the gate. And of course they always vanish before I can speak to them in person.

I did find a customer service email address that seemed to be working and which sent an automated response telling me that someone would get back to me in six hours – but they never did. Following yet another open gate issue, I tried the same address again. Initially I received the same reply but then shortly afterwards came another automated email telling me that the first email address was no longer working (even though it had worked) and that, in fact, there was no email address that I could use.

And their so-called “chat lines” don’t involve any actual chatting, no actual person at the other end – all you are offered are automated boxes to click and if they don’t include your particular problem then that’s as far as you get. Wonderful isn’t it – completely surrounded by an electronic “fence” that lets nobody in.

When something has been delivered, Amazon then has the nerve to send you an email asking whether a delivery was “great” or “not so great”. There should be no need to ask that question in the first place – deliveries should always be great - but even if you click on “not so great” they never bother to contact you to ask why because if they did they might imply that they were actually going to do something about it and, clearly, they aren’t as nothing changes.

It must be great to operate a company or a business that has no accountability for the quality of the service it provides and this, believe it or not, is how they treat their so-called Prime members and is the quality of their so-called Prime delivery service. Pity help everyone else and how they are treated.

But this is exactly how companies increasingly treat their customers these days. Anytime you have reason to complain (and I usually do so by email) you never hear from them again.

And if you try a second time and mention that you didn’t receive a reply the first time around, mysteriously they always seem not to have received that email or your letter if you wrote one.

Coincidence? Nobody seems to care these days about public relations or customer service and if you simply do away with any system by which someone has to actually deal with dissatisfied customers, well “job’s a good’n” as they say.

I’m old enough to remember a time when companies, big or small, had a typing pool employing enough staff to not only deal with correspondence received, but to do so within a matter of days - if not hours. It was how companies and businesses operated and their success could depend on the customer satisfaction they safeguarded. Not anymore – no one cares anymore. Why employ staff to answer phones and write prompt replies to letters when you can hide behind electronic anonymity? If the age-old adage that “the customer is always right” was ever displayed on the corporate office wall as a reminder, it certainly seems to have been long-since consigned to the nearest bin - or the delete button. It has become a fiction.

No wonder so many businesses are failing these days, but the penny hasn’t yet dropped as to why, and how the situation could be remedied. The trouble is that there is now a new generation of executives running everything and they wouldn’t have a clue what you were talking about if you brought such things to their attention.

Does nobody learn things anymore by hands-on experience before they are put in charge?

Neil McNicholas is a parish priest in Yarm