On Saturday, I ordered a bunch of philosophy texts from Amazon, two of which I needed urgently enough that I paid for two day shipping. I was aware, of course, that two day shipping means two days from the ship date, not the order date (especially if the order date is on a weekend), but I figured it was a safe bet that I’d get them by tomorrow, since that would be five intervening days, three of them business days, and since everything in the order was in stock and ready to ship according to the site.

Today, I got mail telling me that some of my items - my entire order, as it turned out - had been delayed and the new expected delivery date had become 1 March. One of the books I needed to read for a lecture on Thursday, and the other I bought as part of research for a paper that’s due this coming Tuesday - neither of which is feasible if I don’t get my books till the first. I was pissed off, of course, but what bothered me more was that I’d shelled out over fifteen dollars for two day shipping - yet wouldn’t be receiving my order for over a week and a half.

So I figured what the hell, I’ll just call them and get a refund on my two day shipping and go buy the urgent books somewhere locally. It turns out, though, that it’s no easy task to speak to a human - there is no customer service phone number posted on Amazon’s site except on the “Thank you” page you see immediately after placing an order (it’s not in the confirmation email you get later, nor in any subsequent emails). I’m not the only person who’s had this problem, of course, and that brings us to The Amazon.com Customer Service Page, a non-Amazon site that collects relevant contact information for customer service. I called the number listed there (800 201 7575) and, after arguing with the representative for half an hour, managed to get them to admit it was their error and give me a refund on my shipping charges.

That still doesn’t solve the problem of my not having my books for another week, or of Amazon not having any customer service phone numbers on their site. I don’t know why customer service has to be so universally awful - I’m reminded of my Home Depot disaster from this past summer. It seems like some companies go out of their way to make dealing with them as expensive, tiresome, and frustrating a process as they possibly can - but to what end?