Interacting with Companies at the time of LLMs

Did you ever want to place something new in a space you live in, that turned everything upside down? We decided to replace a twenty year old TV with a newer model. It was a kind of a ripple effect! The whole space had to be redesigned. This is where having an architect wife really helps! You may see a snapshot from the design on top.

Despite an initial abundance of alternatives, it's astonishing how quickly your options can shrink when you start looking for something specific. So, the need was to have four shelves in the living room to host numerous artifacts that were initially on a single large shelve. Given my experience working with wood, it seemed trivial. But when the architect (i.e. the person for which vision is more important than reality! - I am jocking now!) requires a shelve four centimeter thick, the cost skyrockets and one starts looking for alternatives.

Thus the decision to order them from amazon.de. There was a promotion without shipping cost which made the choice ideal. This is the order odyssey! Below, you may see the order info.

Despite the fact that there was a tracking number, set B was ... lost when swiching carriers! So, I wrote to amazon that set B was not delivered, a nice polite guy asked sincere apologies and issued a refund for me, since it was impossible to track the package. He also suggested that I re-order the item with the fast delivery option and that amazon would pay the extra cost of fast delivery. Ok, I thought, we will not have our living room ready by Christmas but that's fair enough!

The second order was more expensive, because the supplier charged more and the shipping cost was substantial! Since the first time, after package dispatch the package was lost, I checked every four days its whereabouts. In between, amazon kept sending me emails asking me if my order ... met my expectations! Imagine my suprise when I got an email from Hrvatska Posta, which is in ... Croatia, that an attempt was made to deliver ... at my house and they did not find me!!! The previous package location was in Spilamberto, Modena, Italy! By the way, a handy website to locate packages sent by post, independently of carriers, is parcelsapp.com.

So, on the 13th of Jan, I replied to the previous email they've sent me explaining my frustration. Got an unsigned reply this time, equally polite, with sincere apologies and the reassurance that my package will arrive despite indications to the contrary! After 13 days it did (44 days after the 1st order)!

Finally I wrote to them, to the same email, asking them to refund me the difference of the delivery cost and got a reply ... in German (!), saying that my email was ... not delivered and that I should use their site to communicate! My patience started wearing thin but after navigating several web pages I submitted my request through (what I thought was) the correct place and got a confirmation web page saying they usually reply within six hours. They would send the reply to the email I have in my amazon.de account. Great!

Three days passed without reply! Needless to say I was ... a bit upset. I decided however to give it another try. Tried to use amazon chat and that option failed miserably: company LLM bots are infuriatinly useless! My local llama LLM however, suggested to (use a phone call or) chat with a customer representative, which I did: they refunded my entire 2nd order to keep me happy! A cousin of mine said "if there is any chance to get your money back, is through amazon!" and he was right!

Lessons learned

• Even with amazon, a customer representative is your best bet
• Electronic commerce may save you money but you pay for it in:
  • delays
  • frustration and
  • personal time