Ive had this happen a few times. It goes something like this:

• i buy product and initiate return
• i ship item with return label
• as soon as return label is scanned then amazon will release the funds back to me
• if for some reason they don't get that package then they say they didn't get the item back and take the funds back. When this has happened to me it has been 6+ months later
• when i asked amazon about it they just tell me they didn't get it back. I tell them i have the shipping confirmation receipt and that this is someone else's problem and not mine.
• there's a lot of back and forth and eventually they act like they're doing me a favor by giving me my money back

I think the problem was one of the drop off locations we used was stealing products, or just straight up losing them. But it is insane to me that amazon comes back 6 months later. The only thing worse than buying a broken dildo on amazon is returning the broken dildo and still getting charged for it. Getting fucked by the broken dildo twice and not in the ways i had hoped!

Love how it takes them 3-5 business days to return the money they stole from you.

We had to remove our credit card from our account because Amazon kept charging us for Prime and I would have to call them to get it cancelled and refunded (and wait 3-5 business days to get our money back).
We were very careful when checking out that we didn't have anything checked saying "sign me up for Prime", even had it happen on a day where we did not place an order (and therefore weren't on the site) for at least a week on either side of us "signing up for Prime." Once we took the card off the account it stopped happening, so it wasn't anything we were activating.

It's annoying to have to re-enter our card information if we want to order something, but less annoying than having to call them every month to cancel Prime again. And anything that increases the barrier to using Amazon is probably a good thing anyway.

Amazon is dead. All the products are cheap, questionably-manufactured crap.

You were lucky enough to find the chatbot. I had this happen when I could not find any way at all to reach someone about this problem. Ended up eating the charge f*** Amazon

At this point, you can no longer trust Amazon to process returns properly. I've had three expensive items stuck on Awaiting Return, despite tracking showing it's been returned, and chat automatically processes the refund once I reach out. Frustrating ...

I buy directly from the manufacturer and have for years. Most of my stuff comes gift wrapped with coupons and tracking numbers and reward points; sometimes I can even get clearance items or sales that make it on par with Amazon prices, especially these days Amazon isn't very cheap. If I need cheap bullshit, there's always Dollar Tree.

I do. I just find this tired. I thought that was pretty clear.

I had an ISP try to bill me for an unreturned modem five years ago.

I kept the receipt because I expected them to be so incompetent. Good luck.

Amazon gave me a partial refund for something that arrived with defects and then I requested a full refund because it turns out it was way more broken than I initially thought in exchange for sending it back but I never sent it back and they just approved the full refund.

There is nobody in charge at Amazon costumer support

In this case, "it looks like we received it" sounds like typical AI choosing a response that sounds right with no attention to its meaning.

It's not surprising here on Lemmy, but on pretty much every other site I've ever mentioned issues I've had with Amazon, the replies would be filled with people claiming it is the best customer service, that they've never had any issues with Amazon at all, and that it must be something I did to cause the problem.

Personally I stopped using Amazon on a regular basis almost a decade ago after it was clear that the company I first started using back in the mid 2000s was irrevocably changed for the worse.

I bought an electric start generator that stalled out after 20 minutes consistently, This unit can run all the essentials in my house whenever needed. I called and told the rep it runs great but all of a sudden it dies for no apparent reason.

He gave me full credit for it and told me to keep it or donate it.

I figured out the next day that is was my basement dehumidifier trying to turn on and the generator could not handle it.

It was fine the entire time. It runs on propane or gas and has a clone of a Yamaha engine and is made by WEN.