Amazon UK Customer Reportedly Receives 12 Pack Of Water Instead Of Xbox Series X

This sounds like somewherw in the supply chain from the time it's set to be shipped out to the delivery someone is able to access the box steal the console and dip another item in so at least it shows deliveried.. then sell it off in the after market

Amazon instructed him to return the water.
What a ducking joke of a multi billion pound company. They should send a special driver round to his house with a series x and free game and show some appropriate customer service here.
And of course let him keep the water.
Trouble is even if they lost a few future sales they are so dam big it’s nothing to Amazon.

@Dezzy70 the thing is Amazon actually has “gold cages” for high end stuff. Only specific people can handle these items.

They literally just don’t care, and that’s the stupid thing. I’m sure in their minds it’s just a toy why does it matter. We are getting our money anyway. It’s the same issue with them double selling their allotments :/

@mousieone @Dezzy70 Yeah, it's really weird, it's not that Amazon doesn't have procedure for high-value goods. It's that they don't seem to consider consoles high-value goods. Nobody's going to be swapping a Macbook with a bottle of water.

And Amazon's "return the water" - Amazon's help is pretty much 100% located in India with less-than-part-time script readers who just follow a flow chart for the response button to press based on the input. A robot could probably do a more accurate job of that. In many cases they literally have no idea what it is you're even trying to describe. They just respond with the click-a-button response to the keywords mentioned in your request. Additional information generally goes nowhere. It's automation except using humans as the automatons because they're actually cheaper than the software. So the details of what was in the box, the priority of high theft target consoles, the details of the driver going back to their trucks....all that just goes in one ear and out the other. They click the button for "wrong item received" and read the script of the procedure for that problem.

It all works fine when it works normally...but if anything is abnormal, it's an infuriating loop.

What a disgusting company with shocking customer service. I would never order high value goods from them, even if they were the only ones with Series X in stock.

@Dezzy70 I ordered some chocolate for a Xmas present from Amazon. Got a box of out of date chocolate and they asked me to return it. Not being funny, but I ain't going to the post office in a pandemic to return mouldy old chocolate when it's hardly my fault that it was sent to me in the first place.

As much as I dislike Amazon for their slavery working policy. So far I had an amazing customer experience with them. Ordered a Tv from a third party seller, got scammed since the seller never dispatched it. Got back the full amount plus 35 quid. Ordered a tie for Halloween with prime, didn't come on time and got another 10 quid voucher. Ordered a series X controller, came faulty and complained. They sent a new one straight away giving me two month timeframe to send back the old one.
Again, I really don't like Amazon, but honestly their customer service is spot on.

If the snipers don't stop you from getting one, the people packaging and delivering it will.

I dislike Amazon for many reasons, but this is not one of them.

I understand the disappointment, but these individuals will get their money back.

I am more curious as to what part of their fulfillment chain is responsible for these issues, and if it's honest mistakes or someone is indeed stealing these devices.

@Sunanootoko Wonderful customer experience... except it's very unlikely and an actual retailer who holds actual stock and sells directly to their customers, is ever going to be scamming its customers... sure mistakes can happen anywhere, but the scamming risk is exclusive to Amazon, Ebay, Wish etc.

@NEStalgia @mousieone One of the staff on PureXbox's sister site PushSquare described this scam happening to him firsthand (with a PS5 instead of an XSX, obviously), and it certainly didn't sound like "not considering consoles high-value goods" was the problem - in his account, the author watched the tracking on his device as it got as far as being dispatched for delivery one day, with an Amazon van even driving past his house - he'll, he even waved the driver down and asked him to his face if there was a package for him - only to be mysteriously postponed as not delivered for the day. The next day, when the delivery was made (with his wife even having to read the driver back an Amazon-provided code to accept it, in a misplaced attempt at security) the box had been opened and resealed with clear tape, and had a Nerf gun inside instead of a console.

Amazon can throw all the high-value-goods-security it wants at its warehouses, but that doesn't stop scumbag drivers at literally the last mile from raiding a box and trying hamhandedly to frame it as a "mixup." It does make Amazon asking this guy to "return" the bottled water that they never themselves sent in the first place extra stupid, though.

@Tharsman I would have tagged you on my last post if I'd seen yours before writing it; from one guy's account, it certainly sounds to me like these consoles are being swiped by the delivery drivers. Here, I found the link I was looking for: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/11/soapbox_having_my_ps5_launch_day_nerfed_by_amazon

@Fath Yeah, that was actually Ant Dickens, the owner of all 3 of these sites! It was hilarious that people were actually accusing him of making it up.

AFAIK for the actual designated high value goods, Amazon actually records the serial numbers. So if a driver steals it and fences it, that serial will turn up as hot goods and be investigated. They have little disclaimers on their site for things like hifi audio, TVs, computers, etc. But for whatever reason they aren't doing that with consoles. If they did, they and the authorities would know where every one of the stolen consoles ended up, and they could easily trace the sellers of them and bust the crime ring.

Since it wasn't in the serial number tracing program, it was probably not in the secure parts of the warehouse or given to more secure drivers either. I'm not sure how Amazon's delivery in the UK works, but in the US there's several levels where they send it via the big, bonded carriers, or in their own branded Prime trucks with full time staffers, or in the "use your own vehicle" and rent-a-van part time contractor stuff. The high value tracked goods would go with full time bonded drivers only. Sure they can still steal, but are less likely to, and the tracked serial would turn it up as soon as it was turned on.

They sent them out like it was toothpaste and office supplies. At least in the UK. But the serial tracking applied here would have made a lot of sense. Someone dropped the ball on that. Possibly thousands of consoles (or more!) would be lighting up the stolen goods trackers right now.

@Fath to add to what @NEStalgia said. Don’t you find a 12pk of Bottled Water odd? It’s much easier to find 24pks. So Amazon uses a weight system to insure the box has exactly what it’s supposed to in it. A 24pk would have weigh far too much to be a Series X but a 12pk is just about the right weights. This weight system isn’t employed for the high end goods section, again serial numbers etc

If Amazon was putting theses through the Gold Cage Procedure this would be far harder to have happened.

@NEStalgia Fair enough; you seem to know more about these things than I do, so thanks for the explanation.
@mousieone I don't actually find a 12 pack of water odd, though, and not all of the substitute goods being thrown in are as carefully chosen - in the account I relayed, Mr. Dickens' wife even commented to him before the box was opened that it seemed very suspiciously light. It appears, to me at least, that items are more or less just being reboxed to create a plausible excuse that something got mixed up in the warehouse, to keep the blame from being placed irrefutably on the delivery driver for a package outright going missing during delivery.

@Fath Well, I think they are two separate culprits. Mr. Dickens was the driver. This person I think was someone a little higher up the supply chain.

Which is why it’s odd that Amazon isn’t treating this items more carefully with their own procedures.

@mousieone I can certainly acknowledge the possibility of that, at least. The Earth may not quite be Mos Eisley, but it can still be a pretty wretched hive of scum and villainy throughout.

@Fath I’d compare it more to lower Coruscant