I’m not a great fan of online shopping.
OK, I’ve taken the lazy route a few times.
But as a rule, I much prefer the old-fashioned human contact method of popping into a local store and seeing or trying on what you’re buying.
That was reinforced when I did my good deed for the day on two occasions this month.
A pensioner friend pleaded with me to help after a bit of a mix-up with her Amazon Prime account.
She had returned two items of footwear she had ordered and received a refund on her credit card for both of them.
Amazon contacted her a week or so ago, warning they would remove £31.99 from her account as she had not returned one of the items.
I contacted a customer services chat and explained a mistake had been made as she had returned the goods.
Within ten minutes she was promised the £31.99 demand would be cancelled.
Good deed number one completed.
To my friend’s dismay, she received a message at the weekend informing her that Amazon had helped itself to £31.99 from her credit card account.
Assuming I’d be able to sort it in a flash, I offered to help.
An hour and a half later, Amazon agreed it would set in motion the return of the £31.99.
But to get there, I was first put through to a chat in the USA after clicking on customer services UK.
After about 30 minutes I was told they couldn’t help as they didn’t have access to the account.
I was given a phone number to ring for customer services in the UK, where another chat sent me a link to click on to hold a conversation with a UK chat.
That chat was the same American one I’d just been talking to.
To cut a long story short, somehow I eventually made contact with a UK chat called Patrice.
Within a couple of minutes, everything was solved and money was winging its way back to my friend’s credit card account.
And lovely Patrice thanked me for being such a great customer.
But the whole experience was pretty frustrating and stressful.
A couple of times, my friend felt so guilty she told me she’d rather take a £31.99 hit than bother me any more.
If only she’d trudged into Taunton town centre and bought the footwear in one of those things they call shops.
