Since I live in the middle of nowhere I have a pretty good idea of which places are good at online business and shipping. This last xmas shipments from several places just never arrived. Since there was always something falling apart at that time I just didn’t pay attention and figured I’d sort it out when I had a minute. So I finally started doing that last month. I started with Amazon. They used to be very good at customer service but since COVID they just stopped caring. Even if the mistake is theirs they make you pay $7 to ship anything back in order to get a replacement. If it is my fault that’s fine, but they should pay for their fuck ups.
With Walmart they’re actually getting better, but only a little. Like Amazon, if a shipment goes missing, they don’t do anything. They just wait until you ask. When I finally did they sent me a another of the thing I ordered at no cost to me. They also gave me 5 Walbucks to spend on my next order, so that was nice.
Target sent me the missing thing with no trouble at all. There was no bonus to me, but that’s fine. I just want the thing I paid for and the process was relatively easy.
Big Bad Toy Store has never lost a package and in the 20+ years I’ve done business with them only one thing ever arrived damaged. It was recent, but the actual item was fine and I didn’t care about the box. It looked to me like it was packed by someone who was going to quit. Since it was so abnormal I just ignored it and the next time I made a purchase everything was normal again. Maybe holiday stress got to someone.
Recently I decided to start buying some of my manga from Barnes & Noble so that Amazon won’t be the only bookseller someday. Unfortunately B&N aren’t very good at online selling yet. My order came over the course of 3 months. Each time they would send one book they would charge me the full order amount then refund me for the books that weren’t actually shipped. In theory the last of the 5 books will arrive around March 14th. 3 days after the initial update after they told me it would take a week to ship all the books. So, not a perfect experience, but I will, theoretically, get the books and not have to buy then at 3 times cover price from Amazon’s shitty 3rd party sellers. On balance I’m not dissuaded from using B&N just yet. Hopefully they will get better with support and maybe I can move toward using them exclusively for books if they earn it. At the moment Amazon, Target, and Walmart ship books with absolutely no care at all. If they arrive undamaged it’s practically a miracle. Generally I’m not super picky if a book gets a little corner ding, or a folded page, but having one bent in half and then being told I have to pay the full price to ship a replacement doesn’t sit right with me. So far B&N have sent most of the books in a rigid mailer. Hopefully the one bubble mailer was an outlier.
As far as problems go having shipping issues isn’t all that bad, but I’m not so successful that I can continually absorb these small fees. When you enter into a contract with a seller both parties should uphold their end. That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable stance.
Best Buy and Gamestop are so bad at shipping that I just stopped buying from them altogether. Gamestop is much worse than Best Buy though. Best buy doesn’t care, but Gamestop seems to actively hate its clientele. It’s the only place where I’ve received an obviously shop damaged item and they straight up told me, “Too bad, no refunds.” in response. They didn’t even pretend to give a shit. On some level I almost respect that.
Hasbro fucks up all the time, but they almost always just send you whatever random shit is closest to their desk instead of actually trying to send you the thing you ordered. They’re actually notorious for doing that, but it’s not like there’s someone else to go to for their products, so it’s like being in an abusive relationship with them on some level. You just gotta have these lumps of plastic to try and fill the empty void where your soul is supposed to go, so when they tell you to kick rocks you just take it. Like the worthless, little, bitch you know you are deep down.
The absolute gold standard of customer service is LEGO. There is no other company that even comes close to doing whatever they can to aid the customer. As long as you can prove you bought what you said you bought they will replace damn near anything for any reason. They might ask a couple of questions, but in almost every case they just send you replacement parts and there’s nothing else to it. Basically, if you have the unique code from an instruction booklet you can get whatever it is you need fixed. Even parts that you aren’t allowed to order extras of. I once bought a set that had all the minifigures taken out, so I asked if they would replace the one unique character and they sent him to me for free. A character, by the way, that has never been reissued since. Zeb, from Star Wars Rebels. He’s not even in the new Ghost set, or any set from the one scene he was in from the Mandalorian. Anyway, they are so nice I only ask for help when it’s really something I can’t fix on my own with spare parts. I assume other people must be the same way because if it got abused I’m sure they wouldn’t keep bending over backwards for people. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been sorting out for a couple of days so that’s what I was thinking about when it came time to blog.

Support links continue to call out to you from above the blog. As always, I hope you have a nice weekend, and return safely here on Wednesday. Until next we meet, may your gods bless and keep you, or may the cold, unfeeling, universe take no notice of you.

Posts authored by Jackie

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