Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsIf Amazon Renewed sends you the wrong phone, tough luck!
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2024
tl;dr version: Buy from the Amazon Renewed store at your own risk. If Amazon sends you the wrong phone by mistake, expect at least two hours with support to get it resolved.
It sucks to have to write a negative review about a bad experience with Amazon, but this is the world we live in. Quick summary: I purchased this iPhone 14 Pro Max from the Amazon Renewed store. What I received was this yellow iPhone XR as shown in the photo. A whole lot of suckiness; however, it assuredly gets worse.
I reached out to Amazon's customer service because I figured it was as simple as them saying, "Oh, whoops! We messed up! We'll send you a replacement and you can send us the wrong one back. Here's a li'l credit for your trouble because we biffed it!" Sike!
The first rep told me he couldn't replace it because it was a third party item - which was wrong, as I bought it from Amazon directly as part of their Renewed store. The rep told me to just buy another one, send the old one back, and then they'll refund me for the purchase of the flubbed-up phone. To be clear: I had to pay, up front, another $900 for a replacement phone and wait until I returned the old phone to get a refund. To make things even stankier, the iPhone 14 Pro Max went up $84 since my purchase. When I mentioned that to the rep, he gave me one of these ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I escalated up the chain to a supervisor, who parroted the first guy's response. Again, they want me to pay up front for a replacement phone plus an extra $84 for the new purchase price. The supervisor had a little more pull, so I negotiated for a credit for the price difference. This was after around an hour in their chat.
Here's another thing that Amazon shrugged about: I have to be home to hand deliver the return to a UPS driver. I can't drop it off somewhere, or print my own label and take it to UPS, or put it in a UPS drop-off container. As someone who works during the day, I'm not able to be home to do this. "Oh, they'll just leave a label at your door if you're not there," the supervisor says. To recap: I cannot print my own label, but a UPS driver will come to my house and leave one for me if I'm not there to give him the package.
To recap:
- I purchased an iPhone 14 Max Pro from Amazon and received the wrong phone.
- Amazon would not send me a replacement, rather they asked me to re-purchase the phone at a higher price.
- I had to negotiate with a supervisor in order to get a credit for the cost of the phone.
- I cannot print the replacement label for the wrong phone and take it somewhere, but rather a UPS driver has to come to my house and physically take the package from me. Only then will I get a refund for the wrong phone.
This was an exciting purchase turned sour. It was enough to give a normal person anxiety and to make an anxious person spiral out of control. Buy at your own risk, or not at all.
