Giving customer disservice a bad name

May I extend my sincere, humble and altogether grovelling apologies to those good people who tried to do something nice for me and were caught in the Amazon web.

I shoulda known. I really should. Having long ago decided that I should avoid ordering anything from Amazon, ever, because of the sheer bloodboiling impossibility of communicating with them in the not that unlikely event that something go wrong. (Most of my friends claim to have never had a problem, ever. Apparently I've just been unlucky. But natheless: should you be unlucky, it should be possible to talk to them about it. Not that simple.) And yet I still posted my Amazon wishlist and some rather heavyhanded hints. (More demands, really.)

I have learned my lesson. The exact chain of events is listed, as a public service for the benefit of those unwise in the ways of Amazon, in the footnote below. It's a long footnote.

Meanwhile, steps have been taken. I have discovered a better wishlist. (Still fairly empty, but that's all right, since my birthday is now behind us and Christmas is a long, long way away.) For one, there's an offline reservation button, so you can record your intention to buy something without actually doing so via that particular online stockist. For another, it works on any website, anywhere, so you're not tied to a limited range of products. Hello knitting supplies! Hello Jo Malone! I'm not sure how the delivery thing works - you can register an address - but it can't really be worse than Amazon, can it?

Amazon ("Amazonly inept!") is being flushed down the Scroobious drain. Good riddance. [ceremonious brushing of hands]

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* How Amazon screwed up a perfectly simple gift giving experience: The Whole Story.

Friend A and friend B order gifts from wishlist. Time passes.

Both inquire as to whether I have received gifts. I haven't. I ask them to follow up.

Friend A finds that gift was supposedly delivered long time ago. Sends query. Amazon writes to me: "oops, sorry, we'll redeliver; if this [given] is not the right address, please use URL [given] to provide correct details."

Address given is two house moves out of date. Surprising, since I have received Amazon orders at both subsequent addresses, and looking up My Account I can't find the old address anywhere. (I later realise that the address attached to My Wishlist is completely unrelated to any other address - billing, dispatch, anything. Would be good of them to flag this up, wouldn't it? Or am I the only customer daft enough not to realise this?)

So I use the given URL to provide new address, and to mention that the same problem presumably applies to a second order, for which I give the order number.

I receive automatic email: "Sorry, we can't send information on your account to anything but the registered email address. To change email address please sign in." Astute readers will note that this has bugger all to do with my previous message, posted using the given URL, and with no other email address - or request for account info - involved.

I reply to the email pointing this out - obviously a mistake (silly me) and the mail bounces.
Meanwhile I have been emailing Friend B to let her know that her gift too must have been delivered to wrong address, and asking her to get in touch with Amazon.

B, a self-described "technopeasant", finds it difficult to do so. As do I. Emails to two different addresses bounce. She emails me in increasing frustration asking how she is to get in touch with them. I struggle to answer, knowing that there is a magic link that can be found somehow, going via "My Orders", but that it is tucked cunningly out of sight behind layers of standard questions and responses, so as to prevent frivolous queries; and not having any recent orders myself, I can't navigate through my own account to find it. I tell her never mind, I'm doing battle and WILL sort this out.

I finally manage to find an "email us" button (personalised especially for me) via a link in Amazon's original "you can't talk to us like this" email. I post a fairly stroppy complaint demanding that someone pay attention.

Finally, I get a reply: "oops, terribly sorry, if you're changing address then for security reasons we need to reconfirm the senders' payment details. Please tell them to phone or fax us on these numbers."

Obviously this makes no sense at all. But knowing I'm not going to get anywhere, and hanging my head very, very, very low indeed, I forward this message to my previously good friends. So that they may have the pleasure of making an international call, in order to sort out a completely unnecessary mess, in order to send me a simple birthday present.

Is it just me? Or is this really bonkers?

I have had similar problems before - but at least then it was only my own blood pressure being sent through the ceiling. The shame of subjecting my lovely, generous friends to this experience burdens me terribly. I mean that.