Amazon has really improved out here. Next day Prime. That said Walmart is taking some of the turf and they are next day as well.
Never actually got a return shipped to me. Interesting
They've mostly been fine here in the past, but heading in the wrong direction and declining in general.
And if you need help now, trying to get past the canned help garbage and in contact with a human being is another hurdle. It used to be very easy to initiate a chat, or a phone call, no matter the time of day. I once had an after normal business hours chat who was obviously in a foreign call center in a different time zone and it had to be in Blighty, because his voice sounded just like Billy Idol.
I just did that with those order, and the rep finally acknowledged that the order was lost in transit, last scanned >36hrs ago.
There were no notices of a delay, or anything but false hope. Proactively checking the site only provided canned status notices, and empty promises that the order would arrive by such and such a time. Nope. Empty boilerplate.
No notification or confirmation of the replacement order that the rep arranged either. Almost like they didn't want to talk about, or acknowledge something had gone awry.
Someone recently posted here about T-Mo cancelling one of their orders and costing them a deal because they didn't see the notices that the pickup window was closing. At least T-Mo attempted to maintain contact in good faith, even if those attempts were not seen.
I'm not expecting to be served on a silver platter; just be honest with your customer. And being a long time user of Aliexpress, I know what bad, or non-existent customer service is like, and having to fend for yourself. Now it's becoming harder to say that, if you don't want that risk, go shop on Amazon.
With regard to getting used/returned stuff sold as new, it's not hard to find such complaints in the negative reviews. At least they don't censor those, yet anyway. But you do have to be logged into see anything beyond what is teased on the item listing, which are mostly the good reviews. People are gaming Amazon and taking full advantage of their return policy to audition, then return things as a normal practice. Those returned items are being passed right through whatever processing that takes place, and placed right back into stock, and sold as new again. Those who had a Fry's Electronics in their state would have déja vu, and probably a good chuckle.
One doesn't even have to be an Amazon shopper to feel those effects; there are brands that sell on multiple platforms and use FBA as their fulfillment provider. Been there done that getting a return through that channel as well.
You know the saying is about the real test of character is not when things go as expected, but how someone behaves when they don't go as expected? That.
The Amazon UX is in decline, and how they advertise would be the least of my concerns with them.
