UPDATE: On February 4th, we received a check for the full amount in dispute. It was a bit of a pyrrhic victory considering how much time it took to get resolved, but in the end Amazon did the right thing.
UPDATE: Amazon contacted me to tell me the check would be returned and that to be safe I should also have my bank do a stop payment. Kind of ridiculous to make such a suggestion given that the check has already been cashed! And I wonder how they plan to return a check that's already been returned, (by virtue of it being cashed). I know they're powerful and all, but still.
If I weren't such a mellow person all this would start to make me angry.
Original article:
Short and to the point.
If you have an Amazon credit account and mistakenly send a payment to Amazon at their Des Moines processing address, it will not get processed correctly. You will find this out a few weeks later when you get a call regarding the lack of payment.
That makes sense, so I made the payment and attempted to clear things up with Amazon. That was a complete and total failure.
What doesn't make sense is that after 3 hours on the phone no one at Amazon could determine what was to be done about the mis-addressed check. That they did deposit. But can't find in their records.
The thing is, I sent the check to an Amazon address, and it was deposited. Now either Amazon has the check, or their mailbox has been abandoned and some fraudster is cashing the checks sent to that address. I would think Amazon fraud and security units would take this more seriously!
Their only advice was to contact my bank. I did, but to what end? From the bank's perspective, I wrote a check and it was cashed. What's the problem?
In fairness, after 3 hours the Amazon rep said they filled out an internal form that should cause the situation to be reviewed. Why did it take 3 hours to get to that point? It should have taken less than 10 minutes. Oh, and did I mention that I talked to at least 7 different Amazon reps? They were all very nice, and completely unable to address my situation.
And while I understand the realities of out-sourced help desks, Amazon's was really terrible. No, not the accent of the customer service reps. They were, for the most part, quite understandable. The problem was the low-cost VOIP phone system they use. The hiss and static was so bad that almost every word of every conversation had to be repeated! This wasn't a problem when speaking to folks in North America, only when talking to the Amazon folks overseas.
I'm extremely annoyed with Amazon. My bank account is pleased with my (temporary, to be honest) boycott of Amazon.