Why I'll Be Buying Some Presents from Amazon.Com This Year

The end of last year, frankly, was a mess. We were getting the house ready to sell, we were getting ready to do some holiday traveling, and some horrible things had recently happened in our family. We weren't putting up a Christmas tree for several reasons, some due to the stock advice not to put up anything personal in a house you're trying to sell, but also partially because we weren't in a frame of mind to celebrate.

Everything I did around then just seemed more difficult. The last of the weights that were pushing down on us just fell at the end of last month, in fact, when the house finally sold. Things just weren't going well, and I just kind of knew that things would be a struggle for us for awhile. The last thing I needed was a new problem, the sort of random thing that can happen to anyone.

I bought a digital photo frame for my parents for Christmas, loaded it with pictures of our daughter, me, and the mister, wrapped it up, and sent it. I reused a shipping box that had held something I purchased from Amazon.com, a lovely boxed hardcover set of Calvin and Hobbes that was the mister's present last Christmas, bought at such a steep discount on their Friday sale that I doubt they made that much profit on the sale. I carefully covered over the shipping info from Amazon to send the box to my parents, taping a piece of heavy construction paper with their address on it over the top of the box.

What happened to cause the random problem that I needed like a hole in my head was this: somewhere between Missouri and Virginia, the piece of paper ripped somehow and the address information was separated from the box. It still apparently had the sticker that was printed by the shipping machine I used at the post office that directed it to the right zip code, but the street address was gone.

When too much time went by before the package reached my mom and dad, I dug out the receipt with the tracking number on it and set about trying to find the package. It had a weird status when I checked it online, and I ended up making phone calls that ended with the postmaster of the post office where the package had apparently been at one time, but no one seemed to be able to put their hands on it.

I was so upset over this package being missing. Part of it was the money, because it was a kind of expensive present. Part of it was the work I'd put into choosing the pictures and putting them on the memory card, pre-programming it so it would be easy for my parents to use. But part of it was that it was one more damn thing that wasn't going well.

I made, at the postmaster's suggestion, about three more calls to him while that post office tried to figure out what had happened to this package. I was losing faith that anyone I knew would ever see it again. I even began to wonder if someone had opened the package, unwrapped the present, saw it was a larger-ticket item, and decided to keep it.

Then one day, my doorbell rang. I went to the door and found a package UPS had left on my doorstep that had shipping labels from Amazon, along with a neon yellow sticker on the outside saying something about an item that was being returned to me because Amazon didn't know why it had been sent to them.

I opened that box and found MY box inside. That box had clearly been through a LOT, dinged and ripped and dented, but inside THAT box was the digital photo frame. It wasn't wrapped (I imagine Amazon had to take off the gift wrap to figure out what it was) but all of the pieces were safely inside the box.

There was a note inside the box saying that they had sent me back my item because they couldn't locate an RMA involving that item. I thought it through for a few minutes and then figured out what must have happened.

The USPS must have seen the old shipping label on the box, the original one from Amazon when they sent me the books I'd ordered. Having no other solid info to go on (I'd ripped off the part with our address), they sent the box to Amazon in the hopes that the puzzle would untangle somehow.

Amazon then got a box with an item that I don't even think they sell, but they looked up the shipping information from my original order, probably the UPS tracking number that I'd sharpied over but was probably still readable from the barcode. When they got the shipping info, they sent the box to me at their cost, along with their note about not having a matching RMA request.

I felt horrible that Amazon had incurred a cost in helping to get this box back to me. I went on a mission to find someone in their customer service to explain the whole debacle to, finding someone in the right department after a few stops and starts. I explained what had happened, how they'd come to be in possession of a product I hadn't even purchased from them, and that I wanted to reimburse them for the shipping costs.

The lady sent me an email back in our little chain of replies back and forth that basically said, "Don't worry about it. Just think of us in the future when you're shopping online. Happy Holidays."

I'm not a member of Amazon Prime, and while I've bought my share of things from them in the past, I doubt I'm even in the top 70% of sales for private individuals. There was nothing in my account that could have persuaded this woman or Amazon in specific to give me special treatment. This was just how the company treated me when I approached them to tell them how they'd helped me. They did me one last favor and told me to forget the shipping cost, which was extremely generous, considering that they were the last step in a chain that helped me find this gift that went astray and get it back to my parents.

That, both the effort they took to ship the box back to me and the kindness of their customer service agents, means that I am now going out of my way to find the presents I'd like to buy on their site. That's how you turn a customer into a devoted repeat customer. I'm happy to thank them with my purchases and my loyalty. Thanks again, Amazon, for making a really difficult holiday season that we had last year just a little less stressful.