I have purchased numerous books via Amazon for a great many years, but this is the first time I have encountered their customer service, or should I say lack of customer service!

I pre-bought a hardcover book and when it came out they sent a softcover. I called and was told a hardcover would be sent immediately, once again I received a softcover, again I called and was told that I needed to repackage the books and drive to UPS to have them sent back to Amazon... and oh, they would not order me the hardcover book that I had purchased!

I told them no, they could send UPS to pick up the books since they would not even order me the book I paid for. Three weeks go by and I need to take my time and find out what gives as UPS has never come by. I find out they were never requested to come by...

So I spend my time again on the phone and this time finally get an email saying UPS will come by... and get this! Amazon will be deducting the cost of returning the books they sent by mistake from my refund!

And they would not do anything to compensate me for the inconvenience! Not a discount on a future purchase and not even an apology for the screwup!

Last time I shop at Amazon... do yourself a favor and avoid the aggravation take your business somewhere that it is actually appreciated!

As an International customer of Amazon.com I am most impressed with their poor level of service. I ordered on-line a number of items for my kitchen. I checked each web page for each item to be certain it was available for overseas shipping. When I got to the checkout page up popped red notices saying two items could not be shipped overseas even though Amazon's web pages said they could.
Once my order was confirmed another week was added to my estimated arrival time. Their shipping information page gave a shorter arrival time then on the order confirmation.
Finally, all items were in stock and shipped the same day. Amazon split the shipment so they could charge an additional shipping fee. This is sneaky at best and I would call it dishonest.
If you are outside the USA, I would suggest you look at alternatives rather than order from these sneaky and inefficient types.

Wow!! where do I start from. I placed order for 3 amazon kindle before christmas, was scheduled for delivery on dec 23 never recieved it. Reason order was cancelled. When I called up the Customer service I was baffled, they have the worst customer service I have ever come across.. they recently acquired zappos (a company and founder I have utmost respect for) and I hope they dont merge zappos customer service into themselves. I guess it is too big of a company to worry about a handful of customers.
Anyway back to my point, my order was cancelled thats fine, but why was'nt I notified. when I asked them they simply said that I cancelled it or someone who has access to my account cancelled it . I had made a new account with them and only I had the password for it. I did'nt cancel it so who could it be. Lo and behold it was Amazon who never gave me a concrete reason why the order was cancelled. When I wanted to speak to a supervisor- they would not allow me to, when I asked them for their name-they would not give, when I asked them if any supervisor could contact me they said yes - I waited for two days and had to called them back.
I was too frustrated with them so finally decided to choose the Nook of Barnes and Noble.
There is no way people like us can challenge companies like amazon but I bet there will come a time when another upcoming company will challenge them and I hope they come to this board and see the things they were doing wrong...

My wife ordered a camera kit from Amazon,

Kit contained some filters, lenses, lens wipes, straps and a camera stand. Received everything but the wipes and camera stand. After emailing Amazon about the partial order, they claimed the kit ordered does not offer a camera stand. Went to the URL for teh Amazon page, sure enough, they deleted it off the page.
Amazon scrubbed one of the referenced component items off not just the sales page, but also off the history of my order. The flexible camera stand has magically disappeared from the sales page URL and the history of my order with a few keystrokes from an Amazon employee.
This was not a case of, "did she REALLY see it or not?" When she was considering getting the kit, my wife called me over to look at the screen and find out what it was - I recognized it as a flexible rubber snaking stand, I knew it right off the bat.
Deleted the component after a customer orders the kit, and then telling the customer to, "prove it, " by providing the URL (which is now scrubbed) when we said it was missing.

Guess if we ever decide to get anything from Amazon, we'll have to screen capture the item ahead of time...

I recently received an email from Amazon.com saying that they were trying to charge my credit card for $79. for the Amazon Prime membership. They said that the credit card they were trying to charge was cancelled and they would charge another card listed on my Amazon account. (the credit card indeed was cancelled by me when I lost it and contacted my credit card company). I didn't know what the Amazon Prime membership was and went onto the Amazon website to see what this was about. I found that they had me registered with this membership and had charged one or another of my credit cards on record with them for the past four years with no notice. When I clicked on the "printable receipt" button an error code was presented saying this information was not available. I tried several times with the same result. I looked at the terms of the Amazon Prime account to see that way down in the terms they state that they will not notify the member of the charge each year. Of course I received a receipt from my credit card company in my monthly statement but it looked like the charge once a year was for some undisclosed purchase my wife had made and I didn't question it thinking it was a legitimate charge for some product she ordered. They charged my credit card accounts yearly $79. each time for four years without receipt sent to me or notification or explanation of what the charge was for. I did not nor would not sign up to pay $79./year for what amounts to lower cost shipping of books when I only make one or two purchases per year. And certainly would not have continued doing so year after year. Their practice of charging you without receipt or notification is an unfair practice. I called to complain to their customer service whose number I couldn't find on their website (I did a Google search for the number that someone had listed in a forum) and was connected to someone with english skills bad enough that I could not understand unless they repeated each statement three or four times. I requested to be switched to a call center in the US and was told that I would have to call again and then maybe I would reach a US based call center. I asked to speak to their supervisor and had to wait on hold with loud music for over ten minutes. When I explained that I could no understand the customer service representative and requested to be switched to a US call center... the supervisor said she would transfer the call and disconnected my connection. I have previously been charged by Amazon for a camera that I did not order and it too weeks and a complaint to my credit card company to cancel the charge. I deleted my credit card information from the website but there it was again today when I looked along with other credit cards I had deleted information for in the past.