AMAZON.ES

[patricia]

What a pain in the neck it is to order a few things from Amazon! I have ordered five things and they are all coming on five different days. I nearly didnt get the printer this morning and some of the things are coming from the UK. I ordered Lik e lik (cat treats so my cat can have her medication) and one lot is coming from Spain - different flavour - and the other lot is coming from the UK and has actually cost more to send to me from the UK then the product So you need to be aware of that and unlike the UK Amazon you do not get free delivery if it is over a certain amount. (so a choice of tastes in future is out for my pusscat - it will have to be chicken and more chicken )

Anyway thankfully you can now track the package as it come along the road, thankfully otherwise I would be printerless now and it would have been returned to Amazon

[El Cid]

With Amazon Spain, you can pay an annual fee of €15 for their Premium service which gives free, next day, delivery on any item that is shipped by them, rather than by some other supplier, who may well be in the UK. I have ordered an item at 4pm and had delivery the next morning.

It is made perfectly clear what the postage will be on the non-Premium items so you have the chance to delete them and order something else.

I find the easiest way is to select the "Premium" filter in the left hand pane and then you will only be shown items that qualify for free shipping. Also, on every detailed item page it tells you exactly who is responsible for shipping the item. You need to look for items which clearly state "Vendido y enviado por Amazon" which means it is sold and shipped by Amazon. Sometimes it will say "Vendido por **** y gestionado por Amazon" which means sold by a third party, but shipped by Amazon" and that is also free.

Third party products will say " Este producto no disfruta de las ventajas de Amazon Premium " which means the usual rules do not apply, but it usually shows the shipping charge in the box with the price on the top right. Sometimes it is free and sometimes not. At the very worst, you will see the shipping prices before you checkout.

Because Amazon now supplies a huge number of items from all over Europe, it will inevitably get complicated, but if you understand the basic rules it should not be a problem.

Hope this helps.

Sid

[patricia]

That is very useful to know, because the postage this time around has been awful and I notice that the other pack of Lik e Lik is also coming from the UK and costing exactly the same which is 10 euros making it 20 euros in all for the two packs which are arriving at different times!

Well I could have purchased a whole lot when I was in the UK and bought them back which is more than annoying to know they are not actually sold in Spain.

Anyway thanks again for your helpful reply Sid

[TorreDelAguila]

Worth having a look at both .es and .co.uk when looking for something on Amazon.
Many UK vendors either won't dispatch to Spain*, or charge a crazy amount for carriage.
The same item can often be found on .es (and .fr and .de too) and coming from the same UK supplier, but at a sensible delivery charge.

If you do find an item on .co.uk, just block copy the item's title, and paste it into another Amazon site. Article titles are always the same across the various country sites.

* I cannot believe the number of UK outfits who are not willing to dispatch to an address beyond the UK coastline. This problem just doesn't arise with France or Germany. Maybe Brexit will concentrate their minds - or maybe not.

[BENIDORM]

Well hope that you are now sorted Patricia !

Torre,
With regard to UK suppliers not willing to dispatch out of UK, well I can understand their feelings if they use e-bay or paypal, the attitude to sellers from both is abysmal , they refund sellers for the simplest of reasons, many buyers scamming the sellers.
Unless the seller is prepared to send everything by signed for post they have no cover and if the seller has to charge the buyer the excessive dispatch cost it is often more than the cost of the goods.When I buy from ebay etc., I always contact the seller and ask if they will send by regular post, so much cheaper and I've found that many will..if asked nicely !
Regards,
Gordon

[patricia]

I do check the UK sites although I have never checked the German sites so that is worth knowing about. Although I do google all products so I presume it would come up it it were sold in Germany. But good advice

I usually do put any item I want want into the UK Amazon first and then look for it in Amazon.es, but I got caught out with the Lik e lik, but in any case I have to have it because my other cat now has kidney disease (stage 2) and has to have medication and she only has dry food normally and will not eat wet food so it has to be in a treat. It is manufactured by Posh Pets and I did try to order direct from them because they do a liver one which is a great favourite but because of the price of packaging I declined, but I may as well now and get it all sent together instead of two week apart!

[Gasman]

Our great frustration with Amazon is that even for small packages eg printer ink they seem now to send EVERYTHING via courier service. We are in the campo and although our little urbanization is on the map, in GoogleMaps, totally visible, none of the messenger services seem to be able to find it, let alone our little camino .... Formerly little packets would come by post, direct to our friendly Correos office in town for collection - out in the campo they do not deliver.
Now we have to keep the phone with us at all times, hope they will phone before delivery, so we can arrange a meeting point (Seur famously do not phone but return all packets to their depot 40 km away), and can wait in and around the area for days for the actual delivery date.
Tracking the parcel does not help much - at best you can see when it has gone out for delivery, not when the local chap intends to deliver! We just had a parcel from the UK (NOT Amazon) which set off on 10th, sat in various Hubs, UK and International, 5 in all, until 22nd and though marked Out for Delivery on 22nd did not arrive until 23rd 5.00 pm. And the best of all was that each update of its whereabouts gave no indication as to where it was geographically, and each up date averaged 24 hours AFTER the move!!! Not a lot of use! This was Hermes ... avoid them!

[patricia]

Well now with Seur it is different and I was able to track the package even as the van was coming along the road when it got to its 5th delivery to go! I was ready with phone in hand and to go outside. They did ring and I answered but as they did not ring my door bell I went down quickly, thankfully because he was in the car park and driving off but I caught him in time otherwise I would not have got the printer, it would have been returned.

I am afraid I gave him a flea in his ear. Seur are dreadful. Useless company.

[El Cid]

It must be your local Seur. We get an email the day before delivery, giving us the option to change the delivery day and on the day we get another email telling us what time it will be delivered to the nearest hour.

We live in the campo, but only 5 minutes from the petrol station, we always meet couriers there 5 minutes after they phone us - which they always do. Just to make sure they can't say they did not have our number, I embed both numbers in our address so it will always appear on the label. We have used most of them, Seur, ASM, DHL, UPS, Correo, MRW etc and never had a problem with any of them and they all phone us.

We must just be lucky as I know that many of you have loads of problems.

Sid

[patricia]

I have that but they have not taken the slightest bit of notice of any amendments or changes of delivery day or time at all.

[Lyric]

We will have the same man as Patricia as our Buzon is in Torrox Costa and like you Sid, get the e-mails. They (he) has never failed. When we had a different bloke in August he couldn't find the Buzon and rang, then waited the 12 minutes for me to get down to the coast.
Using a box we have no problem with any of them.

[patricia]

But he told me he was new to the job and wasnt even going to look for my block, he was actually driving out of the car park without even looking up the steps to where I am.

Twice I have had items returned with "address unknown" written on it. I think they are quite useless.

I even spoke to him on the mobile but he still went to drive off without delivering the item.

[Lyric]

Don't you get e-mails P ?

[patricia]

Yes I get emails and I tracked the package and saw the van driving along the front, it tracks it and you can follow van and just as well I could because I got ready when it said he had 5 more deliveries to go before he came to my address. As I said he was about to leave without delivering the package even though I had just spoken to him on the mobile phone and he was in the car park!

If you log in with Seur you can track the stages but that hasn't helped. Two items were returned so that meant they came here had a quick look couldn't find the address and went off and it was returned to the depot and I filled in their form about another date to deliver but they took not the slightest bit of notice and returned the items to Amazon. Seur are rubbish.

[El Cid]

If they are that bad, complain to Amazon and they will probably change to another local courier. We get Amazon deliveries from about 4 different couriers.

It's usually just one idiot in the van that causes the problems. If they were all that bad they would have gone out of business years ago.
Sid

[patricia]

I do not know how to complain to Amazon to be honest. I wish I could. I got my money back for the items that were returned but it was a "bally" nuisance and inconvenient to say the least.

Well yes I agree an idiot but this chap was new he told me that when I asked why he was driving off with my printer still on board and having phoned me as well and I had to run after the van and ring the blasted man on the mobile to get him back, but that is the third time or would have been and so that makes three idiots.

[patricia]

Well I have just looked at the delivery notice, which details the progress of the packet and the driver has put me down as "out for deliver" even though I had spoken to him and he had not even rang my door bell. The next is "delivered" but only because I chased after him. Not good. Another packet arriving today.

[TorreDelAguila]

Hi Patricia,

Complaining to Amazon is definitely the thing to do if you suffer repeated problems with their contracted couriers. If they receive no such complaints, nothing will change.

Amazon keep their direct contact details well hidden, and I've failed to find them anywhere on their main site.

Google it, though, and you can find...
http://customerservicecontactnumber.co.uk/amazon-uk/
which contains a bit of a deluge of numbers.

I've also successfully used
+44 208 636 9451
+44 208 636 9401
- both London numbers.
Also billed is 0800 496 1081.

Once an email correspondence has been initiated with them, I've found it very easy to reply to one of their customer service emails - but just don't expect to ever converse with the same person twice. The correspondence is routed around using the ref no built into the email address, and will be picked up by whoever's desk it lands on. Despite this, I've found good continuity, and effective resolution of problems, such as duplicate or late or non-appearing deliveries.

The last of these - non-appearing deliveries - may well be the simplest way of dealing with courier laziness. By simply flagging up 'non delivery' in the Where's My Stuff area, they'll send another...and another... Then, perhaps, they'll start asking questions.

[patricia]

The problem with that is that my orders have been through Amazon Spain and not through Amazon uk, so I was looking for a link to complain to them. Still I will give it a whirl. Oh yes it is definitely courier laziness. He did not even look up the steps to where my block is. Just came into the car park below looked at the block there and didnt see the number of my block and so started to drive off.

[peteroldracer]

The whole delivery saga is compounded by people who let them get away with not delivering to your house. If everyone said that they have paid (one way or another, nothing being free) for a delivery to their house they would stop dropping stuff off at the local petrol station, bar or brothel, and we would all benefit. If the more fluent amongst us took this up it would really help. Who knows, it might mean Amazon paying a little more to the van men, however that is between the vendor and their service agreements.