Amazon Refund To Closed Account?

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This all started back around Christmas 2011.  I bought a camera on Amazon.com, and then ended up returning it because it didn't suit my needs.  The problem was that I had closed my account on Wells Fargo shortly after buying it, and the original Amazon.com policy is to refund back only to the original card.

So fast forward to 2012 February, the refund gets processed.  Of course, I ask Amazon to please just give me store credit instead of trying to process the refund.  Unfortunately it was a no go, and they told me to please contact my bank or to expect a check refund from the bank.  Well I can tell you after several months, none of that happened.

I finally just went to Wells Fargo yesterday and asked someone to look all this up for me.  It turns out they wipe their records clean after X number of months so they have absolutely nothing on the computer system for me.  The rep also said there would be no way a refund / credit would have been processed after the account was closed.  I didn't want to call him a liar but Wells Fargo had been a pretty shady bank to me over the years.

So I went back online and contacted Amazon.com for some assistance - via email.  Their response was the same, so naturally I filled out the feedback form and let them know what I thought about their policy.  They asked me to give them a chance to correct it and offered to have them call me immediately to resolve.

25 minutes on the phone, and its finally resolved.  Most of it was just waiting for their team to figure out a way to process the refund to me - store credit isn't possible, but a work-around was.  Basically they would refund an amount from a previous order to my account.

All-in-all, Amazon did not lose me as a customer.  Amazon and Costco rank right up there for me in customer service and it's still my favorite place to shop.

Newegg Hard Drive Gone Bad, They Want $9 To Ship it Back 5 Miles

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OK, the drive itself was cheap!  I posted about the 2TB deal a short while ago.  Now that it's DOA, I'm going to have to ship it back for a replacement at my cost bringing the total price a bit higher than a special local Fry's deal.

Newegg says their deeply discounted UPS partner will give me a discounted rate - but its $9.  That's not the rate I was expecting for a RMA address that's just over 5 miles from here.

Newegg really should take a close look at the online leader Amazon who would immediately send a replacement overnight shipping at my cost as well as provide a return shipping label, shipping / handling pre-paid right back to them.

I bought a Lenovo keyboard remote from Lenovo, and the E key failed out of the box

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I bought a Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard from Lenovo's website.  They had a great deal on it for under $30 shipped.  Everything would have been great if only the E key worked.  If it was some other sort of less used key on there, I would have been OK with it.    Nope, it just had to be the E key.  Phone customer service bouncing ensues...
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I'm a pretty BIG fan of Costco

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Here's yet another story and an example why someone else is now a very big fan of Costco.  In a nutshell, this guy saves a huge bundle on a demo camera already, checks out and realizes that he paid about $120 less than he was told it would cost.  He tries to give money back, but Costco refuses.  Now they have a customer for life.

Click here for the story on consumerist.

where godaddy went wrong

in ,

I have been a godaddy customer for years.  My company(s) use godaddy both for hosting and domain name registration in the past.  They are well known, provide good prices, and decent service - most of the time.

This past month whilst traveling abroad in through Asia, I submitted a simple request to remove an auto-renewing service called smart space (which is not worth it IMO).  I had it added in as a promotion when I registered this domain (mikemuonline.com).

Within minutes of using smart space, I decided it was going to be a waste of money and went with squarespace instead.  I immediately switched the site over.

Fast forward a month, and I find out that it was on autorenewal and I could not figure out how to remove it / cancel it.  I submit a request to customer service to please have them REMOVE the service immediately and that it was inconvenient for me to do so while traveling abroad.

They did not remove it.  They replied telling me how, which didn't help at all because 1. I had very limited internet access.  2. I still couldn't find it.

I replied and asked them again to please just remove it for me.

Today I got another bill for the service.  GRRR!!

Now that I have internet service, I removed the automatic renewal of the horrible smartspace.  At the end it asked me to fill out a survey - gladly!  Well the script failed and of course no survey could be submitted.

While I'm just out $10 because all of this is non-refundable (written in red on the side), they have lost a lot more business from myself and my colleagues.  I will now at most just register domain names with them and not recommend anything else.