Is Amazon Hand In Glove With Fraudulent Delivery Partners in India?

A recent incident that led to a brief investigation exposes how customer support agents of Amazon.com are backing the unethical practices employed by their delivery partners, which is turning out to be a nightmare for many customers who are place order online. Next time when you receive the Delivery Notification, stay attentive.

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Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is a global tech behemoth largely driven by the growth of its eCommerce business. They have long boasted about their rock-solid customer support being one of the most important cornerstones of their booming business all over the world. However, a recent incident Dazeinfo has come across, paints quite a different picture of the ground reality.

A recent dispute between a frequent customer of Amazon and the company itself has brought to light some ‘shady and not very ethical practices’ by the company when it comes to their customer support and delivery agents.

Deepanker who claims that he does most of his online shopping from Amazon itself and has also subscribed to their ‘Prime’ benefits, along with the Amazon Pay ICICI card believed that he was a loyal Amazon customer.

He placed an order for an ‘Echo Dot 3rd Generation’ which was bound to reach his location by February 10th according to the estimates of Amazon’s Prime membership delivery. On the morning of 10th February, Deepanker received a message which stated that the product was out for delivery with an OTP included for receiving the product from the delivery personnel.

And that was the beginning of ordeal Deepankar was supposed to go through. But on a larger picture, this also exposed the unethical business practice that could easily create chaos among the shoppers owing to rising online frauds and sceptical nature of online shoppers in India.

“The No. 1 thing that has made us successful by far is the obsessive compulsion over the customer as opposed to obsession over the competitor”,  Jeff Bezos the Cheif Executive Officer of Amazon reportedly said that on 13th September 2019, at the Economic Club of Washington.

Now, unfortunately for Deepanker, he wasn’t home on the 10th to receive the order. However, he was taken aback by shock when a notification from Amazon’s app showed that the product has been successfully delivered. By his own claim, he found it a bit odd as there was no one else at home to have received the order. Therefore, he went ahead and called his neighbours who said they haven’t received any package on his behalf as well. More importantly, no one beside him had access to the transactional OTP he received via the SMS to complete the delivery.

Deepanker proceeded to contact Amazon’s customer support via email regarding this matter wherein he received quite a shocking message from their side.

The response he received via email from Amazon’s customer support executive – Dazeinfo has obtained a copy as well – clearly mentions that “sometimes the courier agent erroneously updates the tracking as ‘Delivered’, while the package might actually be still on its way. Hence we suggest that you wait until 12 February 2020 as we expect the package to be delivered by then.”

This is quite a shocking revelation about the ground reality of the quality of customer support that Amazon has been exercising. The customer support executive who was well aware of the fact that the delivery partners are falsely and intentionally updating the delivery status which, in turn, could create a panic among the Amazon’s customers found nothing wrong in employing such practices.

The fact that he went on supporting delivery partner in spite of being aware of the consequences is quite appalling.

After this particular revelation, Deepanker kept on pursuing this matter by exchanging several emails but soon reached a dead end on February 19th wherein he was told they (Amazon) have found that his package was in fact delivered intact after their logistics experts have conducted a multi-layered investigation and therefore, they will not be proceeding with a refund or a concession.

“Amazon person ensured that sometimes delivery guys do this and suggested me to wait. I had faith in Amazon’s services. But the real surprise was their investigation that blamed me only,” Deepankar informed to Dazeinfo.

The whole incident points to an even more serious concern – Unethical Delivery Practices that is affecting hundreds of thousands of Amazon customers in India.

Deepankar is not the only one who went into the panic mode after receiving the delivery notification followed by the email from Amazon customer support team supporting the delivery partner. There could be hundreds of thousands of customers of Amazon who go through a similar kind of ordeal every day.

Nishant Misra, who happens to be another regular customer of Amazon India, also shared similar kind of experience he had to go through a few weeks back.

He, however, insisted to change the Delivery Status until the product is delivered.

Well, such incidents are a clear testament to the fact that Jeff Bezos might not completely be aware of the kind of customer support that his e-commerce giant is practising in its entirety.

The Shady Practice By Amazon

This particular incident raises a lot of serious questions regarding Amazon’s internal operations, particularly those involving their customer support agents and delivery partners.

  • How is it possible that the customer service executives who is completely aware of the alleged fraudulent and unethical activities such as changing the delivery statuses by their delivery agents?
  • Why hasn’t anyone escalated this to their authorities above them and resolved it already?
  • How is it possible that a delivery partner can change the delivery status without receiving the transactional OTP from the receiver of the package?

These are grave questions that need to be answered by Amazon right away.

Amazon has pumped in US$600 million (Rs 4,400 Cr) to strengthen its presence in India. While it was not very clear how exactly the funds would be utilised but such exposure puts Amazon under humiliating, rather tough, situation to deal with.

It is a no-brainer that the reputation of any and every company is built by the positive feedback of its consumers and that’s why phrases such as ‘Customer is King’ and ‘The Customer Is Always Right’ were coined.

Amazon as a company doesn’t enjoy an exception to this golden rule. Therefore, we expect Amazon to respond back with a reasonable explanation to such huge gaps in their customer support as well as address the security loopholes related to their logistics partners.

Hopefully, Amazon will take notice of these ground realities and fix them as soon as it’s possible.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Hi same happened to me with a prepaid order. Amazon shown it as delivered, it doesn’t reach me. On contacting Amazon they said the investigation will take some time and has given a date of 18th Nov, 2020. I waited for it, and on 18th they again needed time for their high level investigation. and on today they told me that they cannot initiate a refund or return as it was delivered to me on the 13th, while it was not delivered.
    So this was the last order I had with them. As its a fraud investigation, a prepaid order upon delivery needs to confirm the identity,

    It was not expected by Amazon.

  2. This is really horrible and disappointing. Such number of cases are on rise with Amazon everywhere. It’s high time when Amazon need to have a look at those cases properly.

  3. BEWARE: I ordered a 60k HP Latop from amazon.in and paid extra for an early delivery which was supposed to happen on July 25th morning. The 2 delivery guys who told me the laptop couldn’t be delivered as my address was out of their delivery sector; didn’t even bother to call me. It was only after I saw the order updates on the website did I know that something was amiss and called them. After following up and complaining numerous times, the package was finally delivered on 26th late evening. Due to Covid-19, building society rules do not allow you to open the package on the premises nor are delivery guys allowed to deliver to your doorstep. So, I collected the package and opened it at home. Instead of my laptop, there was a Personal Massager and a Ring Fill Light. On complaining I was told that they would take 5 days to get back to me and if they don’t, I should call them back. Not only have they cheated me, they are also extremely uncooperative. Now they have washed their hands off my case saying that they are done with the investigation and that the right product was delivered. When I asked them to share their investigation report based on which they took this decision, they refused to. I offered to share the CCTV footage of my building society (in which you can clearly see the pitiful state of the package) with them however they are just not interested in listening to anything I have to say. So neither do I have my laptop nor do I have a refund. Absolute FRAUD!!!

  4. Beware of Amazon india and it is doing all sorts of fraudulent . Recently I was also cheated by Amazon India. Payment was made while booking order due to Covid 19. Product was not delivered and message received in my amazon account that it was delivered at 0938 PM on 27 May. When contacted customer service, initially they lodged the complaint and assured to deliver the product order and paid within 3 working days and after that neither they are delivering the product nor picking up call.

  5. Hi,

    Recently Amazon has cheated me with their fraud seller. And I have all the evidence. Screenshots and everything.

    Can this make it to news?

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