So what problems are people seeing this year? Who has exceeded your expectations, and who is a hot mess?
My Stars:
- Canon: Approved a return (and even paid for the return shipping!) even though I had opened the box so I could buy a different model that they had a better sale on. And they were nice about it!
Good Enoughs - delivered what I ordered, on the timeline they estimated:
- Staples
- Best Buy
- eBags
- various sellers on eBay
Duds:
- Kohls: shipped a wrong size for something I ordered during the Veteran's Day sale. Ok, things happen. So I called back and got them to replace the order, and AGAIN they shipped the wrong size. They clearly had a SKU issue on the website. That appears to have been worked out now, but the Customer Service folks can't understand how I could possibly expect to place an order for a different SKU (the right one for the size I wanted) at the same price as my original order. They keep trying to say it is a new order because of the new SKU, and they can't give me the discounts I had. The Facebook reps are useless too.
- Amazon: out of 3 orders I placed between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, only 1 showed up correct and on time. I'm still waiting for one item to ship because they shipped the wrong item originally, and what I really ordered was then backordered; today the backorder was extended further. The second package is late being delivered - again. So much for Prime. Their excuse? "It's busy this time of year". Umm...last I checked I was paying for Prime year-round, not just during the slow season. Amazon customer service agents are almost always useless; at least the AMZL phone rep was more helpful, providing more information on just where the package was stuck and being genuinely sorry about the delay (as opposed to most agents who you can tell are just reading from a script). Note my issues have all been with items sold by Amazon directly; marketplace orders not fulfilled by Amazon have all been fine.
- Target: Had a ship to store order where the store didn't process the order after receiving it for 4 days, and then tried to lie about it, even after I told them the website support team had given me the package tracking information and I knew the exact time they received it and even who signed for it! They actually had the nerve to tell me I must not know how to read UPS tracking information.
And this was a few weeks before Black Friday, so it wasn't that they were overwhelmed.