Home >  Archive >  2010 >  March >  19

Previous / Next

Crutchfield shredded Amazon

By Dave Winer on Friday, March 19, 2010 at 4:44 PM.

I placed two electronics orders this week, one with Crutchfield and one with Amazon. 

The Crutchfield order was fraught with difficulty. They asked for some info that Amazon never asked for, and the credit card company gave them trouble. It looked like the order, a TV and soundbar-with-woofer, would be delayed. I said so on Twitter. Even though the TV was a very interesting and totally new product from Sony, and very reasonably priced. Further, Amazon was only taking pre-orders, Crutchfield had it in stock. 

At the same time the order I placed on Amazon went through with out a hitch. I praised them on Twitter, and said Crutchfield should try to be more like Amazon. 

Heh.  

The Crutchfield order, which was far more complex (a 46-inch TV) but not much more expensive than the Amazon one, is complete. And unusually, the Amazon order is lost in UPS hell. It's been "out for delivery" for almost 48 hours. After I paid for 1-day turnaround the best they can offer is they'll refund the $3.99 I paid (how generous of them, he said sarcastically) and say I should wait until the 22nd. Geez if I wanted it that slow I wouldn't have bought it from Amazon. 

Sometimes I wonder if they look at their records to see how much I spend with them. It's guys like me that keep them flying First Class instead of coach. Couldn't they arrange a Saturday delivery? Couldn't they call UPS and find out what they did with my delivery? 

BTW, I ordered the Fujitsu scanner I wrote up here. It was a total impulse buy. A product I'm paying to review. Nothing more aggravating than an impulse buy that turns into a support issue.