Scammer? Or Valued Customer?

I do a lot of shopping online now-a-days. It is usually for items that are not needed immediately and i shop online out of convenience. I can usually find them for the same price, or less, online. Sometimes there are shipping costs, sometimes not; and that is usually an offset for the sales tax that's not collected. The overall benefit is a net positive: Price + Convenience.

Of course, if you buy enough stuff you will run into problems.

Over the last 8 months i've ordered from Amazon 30 times. Of those thirty, i've had two get "lost in the mail". One to my home address, another to my work address. After 5 weeks, i contacted the respective sellers (one Amazon proper, one third-party Amazon merchant) and asked them to do something. The responses were quite different:

Thanks for writing to us at Amazon.com.

I am sorry that you have not received this order; it appears the
package may be lost. Please accept our sincere apologies for this
inconvenience.

I have placed a new order for the item. There will be no charge for this replacement. Here are the details of the new order:

...

As a representative of Amazon.com, I want to assure you that we
value our customers' trust above all else--it's the foundation on
which our company was built. Please know that we'll continue
working hard to ensure that you receive accurate service, and to
minimize the chances of anything like this occurring again.

Again, we are very sorry for this inconvenience. We appreciate your business and hope that we will see you again soon at Amazon.com.

Wow. I get the feeling they appreciate my business. Yeah, i know that's a canned response, but it's a good one.

Compared to the response from the third-party Amazon merchant:

Mr Robinson

Have located the rcpt. I am not trustful of the address you gave me for shipping. Please send me your home address, and I'll send the rcpt to that. I believe the root of the problem is in the University mailing system, or a thief along the way.

After 8 weeks of no package, i filed an Amazon A-Z Guarantee claim. I was very pleased with the prompt handling by Amazon; they issued the refund immediately.

The merchant got hung-up on blaming me for the failure of the USPS. What freaked him out most was the letter he mailed to my business address (containing a copy of the mailing receipt) was returned to sender with "no forwarding address" from the post office. While that was kinda weird, it doesn't phase me. Perhaps i have too little faith in the USPS, or he has too much. (I should relay my story about being contacted by the Justice Department after finding some of my mail in a scammers apartment on the other side of the country....another post, another day.) Either way, he started calling me a scammer and sending threatening emails.

If you give me negative feedback, I'm going to report you to Amazon as a suspicious buyer.

...

I'm not an easy man to deal with when I feel someone isn't playing fair.

Yeah, i laughed too. All i wanted was my $13 dollar item (now offered by several merchants) that i had purchased.

What's even more insane is that Amazon ate the loss. Yes, they let the merchant keep his money too. So, why, exactly is he upset? Still not sure.

The guy says he'll start using tracking for all shipments. I hope he understands that doesn't guarantee delivery either. The Amazon package had tracking. I had to actually go to the post office (another post, another day) to find out that the last scan showed "the label wasn't readable" and was going nowhere fast...neither my house, nor back to Amazon.

I didn't leave the guy any feedback. I was torn. The guy was not amenable to resolving the shipping issue. It was obvious that he was frustrated by USPS and i was the only one to take it out on; however, the merchant had all positive ratings, but not terribly many. A negative would likely impact his business. He says he learned a lesson about shipping with USPS. I hope he also learns how to treat his customers when things don't go smooth. The next customer may not be such a forgiving soul.