Amazon.ca and UPS just got on my bad side...

[WILL]

I ordered a couple of books through the Amazon.ca website last week, Sept 9th. 'OpenGL Programming Guide Sixth Edition' (Red Book for OpenGL ver 2.1) and 'Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach To Creating Innovative Games' were the two titles I bought.

OpenGL = $83.99 CAD regular price, got it for $52.91
Game Design = $51.95 CAD regular price, got it for $32.73

The whole purchase cost me $89.93 in total with taxes. It arrived today on the 17th. However instead of being properly delivered to my door where a person signs for it or leaving a slip saying it was at the nearest drop off, it was just left outside the door of my apartment building in a tattered and ripped and clearly poorly packaged box where anybody could have taken it. To add to this brand new books were also ruffled and now look like well used books all around the outside.

I have ordered quite a few things online before from Amazon and shipped through UPS and I have never had this kind of treatment from either of them. Disappointed doesn't quite cover it to be honest. I'm seriously considering pulling all the advertising for Amazon from the Pascal Gamer website and boycotting them for good. In fact this is the worst treatment from an online sale that I have ever received. I'd recommend that if anybody here does purchase something through Amazon, that you be very weary of how it will arrive.

Big black mark for me. I believe that they may have just lost my business and any potential for advertising amoung the Pascal game development community.

[dazappa]

Have you contacted them directly yet asking for a replacement? If you do and they don't care, continue with your plan. I've had nothing but good service so far from them.

[WILL]

I sent them a message through Customer Support. Order Feedback was either removed as a function or was not working or I would have left a comment there too. My main beef was with the way that they packaged the books not how it was left. That's a problem with UPS outsourcing their shipments since they don't have a proper drop-off location here in town. Regardless the way it was packaged there would be damage just from the lack of protection during packaging.

I'll see how that goes. I'm really unhappy with them and am an inch away from pulling all my advertising from the Pascal Gamer site. I've had good service from them before, but this was a pretty dumb mistake on their end.

[Traveler]

Yeah, it's stupid. The last Internet order I made (not from amazon btw) turned out to be a disaster as well. I actually make a point being at home on the delivery date, so they don't have to deliver next door or come back for a 2nd try. The nice thing about these orders is that I can actually look up the status of the delivery on the website of the delivery service. Where my package is, when it's going to arrive etc. Anyway, on the first try I waited the entire morning and while I was at home, it never came. It later said on the website that I was not at home. The second try was even worse. They dropped it off at a house further down they street and never even bothered to write me a note where it was delivered. You can imagine my anger when it said on their site that the package had been delivered.

I understand you blame Amazon for poor packaging, at least they could've used proper material. In my view however, UPS is really the one to blame here. How they justify a delivery by dropping it at the front door like that (or without notice is beyond me). It's wrong I know, but you could just as easily have claimed to Amazon that your books were never delivered. Because there was a good change that might have happened.

In my case I did get my stuff. I kept my cool and figured that instead of writing the store I bought the goods from I first check with some of the neighbors and scored on the second try. One thing is sure though, there are two things I'm going to do different from now on when I order stuff.
1) I check for delivery service.
2) If possible I set the delivery address to my work, or to a place where I can pick it up myself.

[WILL]

Well Amazon.ca got back to me. They apologised for the cruddy service I got and offered me a 20% discount, a full replacement at cost to them or to return it for a full refund. They also said that they would pass my message along to the shipping department (the folks that package their stuff) and let them know what happened.

Though it seemed slightly automated, the fact is that they did say what they said and offered to make up for it. So I'll give them credit for that. So Amazon.com ads won't be removed from Pascal Gamer, but I'm not quite sure that I'll be putting them up here any time soon. It was a thought not too long ago, before yesterday. I liked the way that GameDev.net had theirs up with a small review of each one that they listed and I was trying to do this with PGD 1.0, but that didn't go so smoothly. Anyone know of an alternative to the Amazon ads?