In defence of Amazon

Much has been made of Amazon's attempts to limit losses in recent months. All of their international stores have abandoned the "Post-Order Price Guarantee", which until September this year allowed customers to claim money back if the price on an item purchased was decreased within 30 days of shipment. Around the same time, a number of Amazon.com customers began receiving e-mails stating Amazon.com was closing their account as "unprofitable".

But based on recent experiences, my personal feelings about Amazon remain positive. This morning, my copy of ER Season 12 arrived (a steal at £19.97 just five weeks after release). I loaded up disc 1, and oh! the horror: on the episode selection screen, I'm presented with episodes 9, 10 and 11. "Not to worry", I think to myself, they probably just put discs 1 and 2 in the wrong holders. Not so -- turns out, I had two disc twos. My heart was, naturally, terror-struck. What would I do without my ER fix? (Watch Third Watch, as it turns out -- probably the subject of a later post).

I logged onto Amazon and chose to return the item. I filled in a reason, and I'm immediately presented with a freepost label and bar-code insert. All I have to do is print them out, attach the label, stick the set in the post, and job's done. Meanwhile, a new order for the set was placed on my account within an hour (for free, naturally), and it's already "dispatching soon". (Bonus: my original order was with free delivery; this one's with first class). Impressive stuff from Amazon.

(This post subject to retraction if they deem me "unprofitable" at a later date.. though considering the number of DVDs I buy from them, this is quite the minor blip. Plus, Warners should refund them anyway.. silly lazy packaging department. I guess it's less obvious a disc has been duplicated when you're using label-free double-sided discs though..).