Amazon - An amazing reverse supply chain.

I have been a big fan of shopping at Amazon ever since I came to US. One major reason might be cos it was new for me since we don't have too many well established online shops in India.

The experience for me has been near flawless & kudos to them on this. But recently I got a product from them which wasn't meeting my expectations and so I decided to return it and get another one from them. Now this naturally got me worried cos I was imagining the long process ahead of me emailing the customer service about the issue. Anyways before doing that, I decided to go to the customer service section of the site to check out my options. And pleasantly surprised , was I.

The company seemed to have a very nicely put system in place to get things back for return/replacement. All I had to do was generate a request online,pack my stuff and courier it to them.And better, they promised me that they would bear all the cost of transporting the old and the new stuff. Impressed so far.
I went to bed thinking about the problems ahead in getting those courier charges reimbursed. (As Indians, we definitely know how all systems hate the word 'reimbursement').

Next morning I check my mails to get more surprises. The guys at amazon have already shipped my replacement ! And boy, I was still to put together the old product, let alone pack it. Impressed again.

And then after 2 hours another guy mails me from the customer service saying that they are sorry for the inconvenience caused to me because of this. Of all the other things, this one action of course sealed all my future online business with Amazon :) They sure know their basics. Impressed again.

Next mail follows in asking me to take a printout of a label with a bar code and paste it onto the box that I have packed up. Seems I have the option to either drop this box at the courier shop or they would pick it up from my home during their routine visit to the area. I decided on the former. Best thing...the label ensures that I don't have to pay a penny to the courier wala. Impressed , Ahoy.

Went to drop the stuff at the local courier office thinking on how I would explain the entire thing to the guy at the shop and get him on the same page. Most importantly about telling him how I have no plans to pay for the shipment :)
Got into the courier shop, the guy welcomes me , sees the Amazon label, gets the barcode scanned, asks if I need a receipt, gets me one and says 'you are all set !'
I definitely have to search for a better word than 'Impressed !' now.

And yes, I did get my replacement within a couple of days of raising the request.