When encountering problems with a delivery, it might be more effective to reach out to the top brass, as one Amazon customer found when they decided to contact Jeff Bezos following various failed attempts to resolve their delivery issue.
Amazon Logistics handled an incredible 6.3 billion delivery orders in the US last year, as per Capital One Shopping.
With the sheer volume of packages being dispatched nationwide, it’s inevitable that some customers will face issues that regular service representatives cannot fix.
This scenario played out for a customer in the UK, as shared on the Reddit thread LegalAdviceUK.
This individual detailed how they purchased a ‘high-value item’ from Amazon, costing them a substantial £1,099.97 ($1,478).
For an item of that value, ensuring it doesn’t get lost is crucial, and Amazon employs a system called one-time passwords (OTP) to prevent such occurrences.
An OTP is a six-digit code sent to a registered phone number or email and is meant to be provided to delivery personnel to verify that high-value packages reach their intended recipients.
However, this Reddit user reported that after providing their password to the delivery person, the expensive item never arrived, replaced by items of much lower value.
Upon further inquiry, they found that Amazon had marked the expensive parcel as delivered, using the one-time password.
The frustrated customer reached out to Jeff Bezos through his public email address after customer service interactions failed to yield results.
To their astonishment, they received a response—though not directly from Bezos, but from Keisha, a member of the ‘executive customer relations’ team.
Keisha replied on behalf of Bezos, assuring them that he had ‘received [their] correspondence’.
“Please be assured that from an Amazon perspective, it is completely unacceptable for a driver to act in this manner,” Keisha wrote.
“This individual driver failed to meet the high service standard we set for our customers.”
Following the initial email, the customer received a phone call from Keisha to further discuss the issue.
Eventually, the customer received a full refund for the missing item and was granted a £100 ($134) Amazon gift card as a goodwill gesture.
Keisha also mentioned plans to address training with call center staff to prevent future occurrences.
Interestingly, this wasn’t the first instance of someone contacting Bezos directly and receiving a reaction.
Back in 2020, Tara Jones, an Amazon warehouse worker in Oklahoma, emailed Bezos after being underpaid by $90 post-medical leave.
She wrote: “I’m behind on bills, all because the pay team messed up. I’m crying as I write this email.”
This email inadvertently triggered a major internal investigation, affecting 179 Amazon warehouses, according to the New York Times.
Amazon representative Kelly Nantel informed The Independent: “We’re disappointed when any of our employees experience an issue with their leave.
“The New York Times article suggested these issues are widespread and ongoing. They are not.
“We went back and audited the period in question to make sure employees received their pay, and to our knowledge, there are no outstanding issues.
“The controls we’ve implemented over the last 18 months have resulted in less than 1 per cent of people experiencing an issue while being on paid leave.”
So, sometimes it truly is advantageous to take your concerns directly to the top—especially when the person at the top happens to be among the wealthiest individuals in the world.