Amazon's screwy policies

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

A couple weeks ago, I ordered a wine rack.  It arrived last night and someone dropped the box and it opened up.  UPS taped it back up.  So I opened the box, and at the retaped, broken box end several pieces had the notches (used to put it together) broken off.  The wine rack was offered through a third party seller, but I contacted Amazon and they passed my email off to the seller.

The seller was wonderfully responsive.  They'd get a new package out to me ASAP, don't bother sending the broken one back (which means we wind up with a second wine rack which holds fewer bottles), but could I send pictures?  So I hit reply, attached 3 photos of the broken box and the broken pieces and sent it back to the seller.  Someone at Amazon monitors emails, because they deleted the pictures from my email.  So I tried sending it again last night, then went to bed.

This morning, I got up to find that Amazon had deleted these pictures again, so the seller had sent me another email to send the pictures to, and could I send it to this other email address?  Amazon removed the email address from the email!  I sent them a message back and asked them to text the email address to my cell phone and I'd send them the pictures - and hopefully, Amazon will not remove my cell phone number from the email, since they are screening the emails anyway.

I'm not sure what they are trying to do.  I don't think it is unreasonable of the seller to want to see the damage that UPS did to the box.  This whole thing is absurd.

[saveinla]

It could just be a spam or some other filter on Amazon's process that could be deleting images and emails.  

We have that happen in our company as the threat of viruses are greater with images and other attachments. 

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Thanks, I didn't think of that.  

[dannylion]

They have your snail-mail address.  They may have to resort to that to send you the alternate email address.

Or, they could try the "theirname at emailprovider dot com" dodge.  That might baffle the filter, if that is what is causing the problem. 

Whatever the problem is, it sounds annoying. 

[Waffle]

Amazon might also be trying to reduce the likelihood of direct sales outside of Amazon.  There is potential for third party sellers and customers to get each other's direct contact info and make transactions outside of  Amazon.   That would mean no money for Amazon on the deal. 

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Aug 8, 2017 12:43:49 GMT -5 Waffle said:

Amazon might also be trying to reduce the likelihood of direct sales outside of Amazon.  There is potential for third party sellers and customers to get each other's direct contact info and make transactions outside of  Amazon.   That would mean no money for Amazon on the deal. 

I understand this, but Amazon provided the info to the company that a damaged product was delivered.  One would think that pictures showing damage is not an attempt to make transactions outside of Amazon.

I know the seller's company name, I'm sure it would be a no-brainer to contact them if I wanted to do outside transactions.

[Ryan]

I sell on amazon so I'm familiar with this. Amazon assigns each buy with a unique email @amazon and everything is forwarded through there. So you don't see the sellers email and they don't see yours. This is done for 2 reasons, 1) so sellers don't try to divert buyers to purchase things outside of amazon 2) so there is a record of all communication in case of a dispute. Honestly the seller should know better than to try and provide his email.

Amazon doesn't strip out pictures though, I get emails with pictures all the time.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Aug 8, 2017 13:05:27 GMT -5 Ryan said:

I sell on amazon so I'm familiar with this. Amazon assigns each buy with a unique email @amazon and everything is forwarded through there. So you don't see the sellers email and they don't see yours. This is done for 2 reasons, 1) so sellers don't try to divert buyers to purchase things outside of amazon 2) so there is a record of all communication in case of a dispute. Honestly the seller should know better than to try and provide his email.

Amazon doesn't strip out pictures though, I get emails with pictures all the time.

They have stripped out my pictures twice now, so it does happen.