I ordered some stuff during the ‘Great Independence sale’ from Amazon.in. The payment went through successfully but the order status was not updated. I immediately called up the customer service and they confirmed in writing that they have received the amount.
The amount was also deducted from my bank. This was within 15 minutes of me placing the order. 24 hrs later I got a message that my order was cancelled with no apparent reason. What was more annoying that the customer service started giving me all kinds of excuses and lies to convince me on why the order was cancelled.
First they said, they had not received the payment. When I showed them the email confirming the payment and asked why they were giving me the refund if they had not received the payment, they had no answer. Later they said the payment was delayed. I asked them what was the delay as I had the confirmation within 15 mins– they never replied.
Then they said I had placed the order using a mobile app – which I never did, it was placed using a desktop. Then they told me that I had placed the order after the scheme was over. I told them the scheme was still active for almost 8 hrs after I placed the order. I have all these recorded in the email.
The only reason was that they gave the discounted price to a very few people and rejected others. I am sure they have rejected a lot of orders during their promotional scheme. Instead they immediately raised the price of the items I had ordered and had the temerity to ask me to buy them again from the site! They never made an attempt to fulfill my order at the promotional price and instead gave silly excuses and lies.
The promotional schemes run by Amazon are a total farce – they fulfill a few limited orders and the others are just brushed aside like I was! They really do not care and get away with it by cancelling the order and dropping an email to apologize. It is sad that a brand like Amazon which claims to be the ‘Best Customer centric’ company in its email – resorts to cheap lies and unethical practices. If they were really customer centric, they could have easily fulfilled my order and it would not have cost them anything. I think the government authorities should take note of such farcical promotional schemes, launch an investigation and punish them severely.