I have used Amazon regularly since 2000, but having never bought from a Marketplace seller in the past, I was slightly dubious. Unfortunately, I decided to go ahead anyway.

To cut a long story short, I placed my order on 15th February, and it was supposedly dispatched on the 17th, with a delivery estimate of 19th-23rd. I emailed the seller on the 24th as I hadn’t received the item. The seller requested that I confirm my name and address so they could send a refund. I had already provided this information, which was the same as quoted on the dispatch confirmation, but was happy to provide it again.

I then received an email the following day stating that the replacement was “on its way”, and that I should contact them again in case of further problems. No delivery estimate was provided so I waited until 3rd March before sending another email to the seller to advise them that the item still hadn’t arrived.

I received a curt reply of “You definately have a problem with your local sorting office then , these things weigh a tonne, can you check with your local sorting office to see if they are holding any items for you at this time please.”

I had in fact already checked with the sorting office who had confirmed that they were not holding any items for me. I responded to this effect, and requested a full refund as I didn’t want to wait for yet another replacement that had no guarantee of arriving.

By now it was 5 March, but the seller told me that “we cannot refund on this item as yet as the replacement item was only sent out 6 working days ago, if this has not arrived by wednesday [10 March] of next week please feel free to email us back and we will sort this out for you.”

Fast-forward to today: still no air compressor – by now I’m frustrated but not surprised – so went back to the seller to ask for my refund. Despite having been in correspondence with apparently the same person – “Maria” – since February, she ignored my request and – déjà vu time – asked me to “please confirm your home name and address and we will send a replacement out by recorded delivery straight away”

I replied to remind Maria that the refund had already been agreed in the event of the first replacement item not receiving, but thought I was probably wasting my breath so have now filed a claim under Amazon’s A-Z Guarantee. Hopefully I’ll get my money back but Amazon’s website doesn’t give any indication of how long this is likely take.

I’ve always had a fantastic experience with Amazon.co.uk themselves in the ten years in which I have been a customer, and will probably continue to buy directly from them, but will definitely steer clear of Marketplace sellers. Amazon have taken a gamble by integrating the Marketplace feature so closely into their site and they need to be very careful not to allow dishonest sellers to tarnish their hard-earned (and, in my opinion, well-deserved) good reputation.

Right, off to Halfords, I think….

Update (16th March): I actually ordered the same item from eBay yesterday (for marginally less) and it arrived today. Lesson learned I think! Meanwhile Amazon say they should have a decision on my claim by 25th March.

Update (22nd March): I have finally received my Amazon refund! Glad to have my money back, after being without it for over a month.

I use Firefox for all of my day-to-day browsing, but today I loaded up Amazon.com in Internet Explorer and got a shock – the site looks completely different! The top navigation bar has had a major redesign, and now sports only two tabs – ‘[your name]‘s Store’ and ‘View all 31 product categories’.

According to SearchViews, the new design is available to all IE and Firefox users. For some reason, I’m seeing the old design in Firefox, but I’ll put this down to a minor teething problem rather than deliberate discrimination against users of non-IE browsers, as friends with Firefox are getting the new page design.

Note that Amazon’s international sites are not affected – presumably there is less of a need to redesign because there are fewer categories to clutter up the interface.

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