I live in the UK and have on the odd occasion purchased from Amazon US as they calculate the taxes etc for you and to be fair have never had any real issues until recently and today.I purchased a collectible item which was not cheap, only purchasing it because I couldn't get it in the UK. Unfortunately it was shipped in a paper bag with absolutely no protection whatsoever. I used the chat to speak to one of their customer service agents and explained that basically the item was crushed and of no use. in fairness the agent consulted with their supervisor and came back to say that as a one time exception, they would send me a full refund and there would be no need to return the item.This was provided on the transcript of the chat which I always copy as proof (by the way, if you ever need to revisit any of your chat transcripts there is not an option available to do so, however, if you initiate a new chat, then scroll upwards, its all still there from last time). given the above, I disposed of the item as it was too badly broken and didn't want to risk re-ordering.5 days later, no refund. When contacting them to ask why, I was continuously told that the agent had made a "false promise" and would be re-coached to correct their mistake and that unless I returned the item there would be no refund!!!!literally after 4 plus hours of chat and phone calls to what was at least 15 agents and supervisors who each kept asking me to repeat why I was contacting them (remember the transcript was all there, and very very long now), they would not acknowledge that I acted on their instructions and was unable to return a disposed of item. There was absolutely no empathy, even to the point of cutting me off mid chat when I had gotten to the point of basically asking "please just let me speak to a senior person!". I even asked how I could complain and was told repeatedly that there was no way of doing this and to be fair, if you look on their site, its literally true.Only after asking for their legal department details and adding that I would be contacting my bank to raise a claim and saying that I would share the impact of this with the press etc did one agent eventually give in and agreed to what was their original suggestion and instruction.with exception of a few, overall what a complete bunch of rude and unsympathetic people they were, even telling me that yes, regardless of the circumstances (their fault) I just had to accept that I'd lost my money. 100% in need of training in their customer relations department.
