Just got back from a motorcycle ride to RI to see my brother & his wife, a great lasagna dinner & homemade (!) cookies = a good night.

back home. I miss mom already.

not that I did, but that is what I feel like. sorry, should elaborate more ~ hard to do with 140 characters

shit

So I regularly use Amazon.com when I’m looking for a book or some music. On Sunday evening I purchase something from them, but then right after wards I realized I shipped it to my work address rather then my home address. Opps. I tried to change it, but basically the system told me too late. I sent a comment through their help pages. That has gotten me nothing. So yesterday I tried again to change it, but it was too late: the item had shipped. I sent this to customer service instead:

 09/22/08 15:23:11
Comments:I sent this yesterday via the “did this page help you” feedback. I received no response. Since that time my order has been shipped and it is too late to ship it to the address I needed it to go to, though my last question still stands and so does my dissatisfaction with the way the system is currently in operation:

I placed my order, and then 5 seconds later realized I shipped the item to my work address rather then my home address. Since this will not work for me, I quickly went to my account and clicked on the “change shipping address” button and then the button for order ::snipped number::. I clicked on the button for my home address and then was taken to a page to reenter my credit card info. I did this and clicked on the button – and was given an error and told to try again in a few minutes. Which I did. Only to receive the same error and message. So I waited and tried again. The same error.

I decided to go thru the process again, going back to my account page. Only to find out that the order stated “We are preparing these items for shipment and this portion of your order cannot be canceled or changed.”

Really? at 5:50pm on a Sunday evening? While there may be a second shift on a weekend working (“due to high volume”?), the period given to me for changing my shipping address was too quick and now you will be costing me extra shipping charges as I will have to ship the item from my work to my home address.

What can you do to help me out?

Thanks
Margaret

They actually responded to my ‘email’, I’m reprinting it in whole (minus account / order info) not changing grammar or whatnot:

Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.com.

I am very sorry to say that, it is too late to make this change to the shipping address because this order has already been shipped via UPS 2nd Day delivery.  I hope this will not prevent the package from reaching its destination.

Please note that UPS will redirect the package to another address; however, they require at least one delivery attempt (out of their total of three) before they are able to make this change.

Once UPS has already made at least one delivery attempt, you will need to contact them by calling 1-800-PICK-UPS (742-5877).

Please reference this tracking number when you call them: #
Any correction needs to be received by UPS within 2 business days.

Because orders can’t be stopped once they enter the shipping process, the option to change the shipping address will not appear in Your Account. I’m sorry if this causes any inconvenience.

We here at Amazon customer service continuously strive to assist the customers in each and every way can and feel disappointed when we are unable to address customer’s concerns. I hope you can understand our limitations in this regard.

If the package cannot be delivered, it will be returned to us by the shipper, and upon receipt of the return we will issue a full refund (including shipping charges). When the refund is completed, we will send you an e-mail confirming the amount.

I am really upset, we are unable to re-ship orders that are returned to us as undeliverable.

If you would still like to purchase this item, I encourage you to return to our web site and place a new order.

For your convenience, I have included a link to the product page here:

Please be sure to double-check the shipping address and make any appropriate changes to it when placing your order.

For your reference, the shipping address we have on file for this order is: ::snip work address::

If this is an outdated address, you can remove it from your account by clicking the “Your Account” link at the top of our home page and then clicking the “Manage Your Address Book” link under Personal Information.

In future, please note as long as your order is not shipped or “shipping soon,” you may change the shipping or billing address online:

1. Click the “Your Account” link at the top of our web site.

2. On the following page, click “Go!” next to “Open and recently shipped orders.”

3. Sign in with your e-mail address and password.

4. Click “View or change order” next to the order you wish to modify.

5. Click the “Change” button underneath the address (shipping or billing) you want to change.

6. To use an address that’s already in your account, scroll down through the list and click “Use This Address” beneath the correct address.

7. To use a new address, click on “Add U.S. Address” or “Add Intl.  Address” and enter the new information.  If this is an address to which you have not previously shipped orders, we will ask you to re-enter your credit card number for security purposes.

8. When you are done, click “Confirm” to make your change take effect.

If you have any further questions, please visit our Help pages:

http://www.amazon.com/help

Thank you for your understanding.  We appreciate your business and hope to see you again soon at Amazon.com.

Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

If yes, click here:

If not, click here:

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our web site.

Best regards,

Muthukumar.C
Amazon.com Customer Service

Yeah, sorry Muthukumar, I know it isn’t your fault that Amazon’s system sucks: you’re just a customer service representative, you don’t have the power to institute the changes I was looking for, and appearantly you can’t even answer my question.

Not that question. I threw them a bone with the “What can you do to help me out?” question. His answer was a rote copy and paste  one, not the excellent customer service answer I was hoping they would give me (send us the bill for the shipping of the item from your work to your home address and we’ll pay for it).

The question I was hoping they would answer was how would they eliminate this from happening again? To determine the root cause of the problem and eliminate it. But no, I get nothing but superficial “customer service”. This doesn’t answer my question. It doesn’t solve the problem. Even the copy and paste answer they gave me won’t help. UPS will make the delivery attempt and they’ll actually make it: someone from my work will sign for the package. So there is no redirecting the package. If the Amazon.com rep had listen to what I had to see they might have seen that, or at least asked that question.

And this part of his “email” made me scratch my head:

 I am really upset, we are unable to re-ship orders that are returned to us as undeliverable.

Looks like English isn’t Muthukumar’s first language – though to be fair his English is better then any of the “second” languages I speak. But thanks to this blog entry over at “Amazon Customer Service” blogspot, I’m going to print out this blog entry and send it to the snail mail address listed there:

Snail mail to customer service
Amazon.com, Inc.
Customer Service
PO Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226

Though I doubt sending something to just that address will solve the problem or answer any of my questions. Though if you keep reading that blogger’s entry, there are some names and titles listed.  Perhaps this address will get me someone that can find a solution to the problem:

Amazon.com Headquarters
Address: 1200 12th Ave., Ste. 1200
Seattle, WA 98144

Though Google is pretty helpful with this company overview page.

I’m not a financial expert – never claimed to be an economic genius, but this whole $700 Billion buy out of wall street (or whomever this money is going to end up with eventuality), seems awful fishy to me. We seem to be running too quickly down this path of buy out, I hope the people in charge of this decision have looked at a large variety of options. Though it boggles my mind how Congress passed laws greatly restricting an individual’s bankruptcy, but yet goes out of its fraking way to help out these large companies which took huge risks and did some shady manipulation of numbers to make large amounts of money and put our economy at peril.

The blogging world is up in arms about this mess, and Mark Cuban says something I agree with 100%:

On the subject of executive compensation, if they need government bailout money, take away 100pct of exit pay and any bonuses. Let them quit if need be.

Why should they get this money when their bad decisions led the taxpayers to have to bail out their companies? This mess that they’ve put our country in isn’t going to just cost the proposed $700 Billion, but according to this newsite: “The Treasury plan, which follows a new federal guarantee for money market fund holdings, would push Washington’s potential bailout tab to $1.8 trillion.”  $1.8 TRILLION dollars? Are they fraking serious? I thought the billions wasted on the Iraq war were (are) outrageous, but this is insanity taken to a new level.  The NY Times has an interesting write up on the whole mess, from what is going on to how it got to where it is at.

I know I contacted my US Rep and Senator – and Todd Alcott has a good blog entry which will give you links to contact your Rep and Senator – to at least voice my displeasure over what these financial institutions were allowed to do with little oversight from the government and what I’d like to see happen: tht the executives in charge get nothing except a pink slip and that regulations are put into place to ensure this madness never happens again. I would like to see a solution to the problem that doesn’t force the US taxpayer to pay even more out our pockets come April 2009, but I can’t see any othe way. I hope that the people in charge of coming up with a solution (do we need a solution or can we just let these companies go bankrupt?)

Or prehaps Secretary Paulson can put his $632.4 Million net worth (at least in 2006 dollars, though the ex-Goldman Sachs CEO might want to get rid of that stock as it has been dropping like a rock, unless he already did that in lieu of the crisis, in which case – should he be taken to task for knowing what was going to happen?) towards helping digging us out of this mess? And that is the guy who wants $700 Billion of our money without any oversight to do with it as he wants: spread it out to his old friends in the industry. Hahahahaha!

What can you do but laugh?

Oh, that is right – get out there and vote this November to get these arses out of office.

“You’re not gay, you’re just really really vain.” ahhh. Always Sunny in Philly. So far, so funny!

back from a nice long motorcycle ride, that always clears my mind. now for some quizno’s, comics & the thin red line on dvd.

wishing I could give my mom a hug through the internets

listening to more coldplay, eating cheese and pepperoni snack, checking my rss feeds & emails, wondering what is going through her mind. . .