develwoutacause’s avatardevelwoutacause’s Twitter Archive—№ 413

                      1. In today's #TerribleUX, I bought my brother a Christmas gift on #Amazon and had it shipped directly to him. One part appeared to be faulty, so he wanted to get a replacement. The seller's contact information is not listed and instead I have to go through Amazon directly...
                    1. …in reply to @develwoutacause
                      That's good for privacy both for the seller and the buyer, so I'm cool with the idea, but this was a gift item, so my brother doesn't have it in his purchase history. This means all communications have to be proxied through me for no good reason whatsoever.
                  1. …in reply to @develwoutacause
                    I have to go through a bunch of multiple choice questions with the Amazon bot (I already know it's not your problem and you can't help me Amazon, just get out of my way here) but eventually I get to a text box where I can describe the problem to the seller.
                1. …in reply to @develwoutacause
                  This text box is **unusable** on my #Pixel4. Every time I press space or autocomplete, the entire page scrolls down and moves the entire box out of view. I had to type my entire message blind because of this! @amazon - This seriously needs fixing.
              1. …in reply to @develwoutacause
                After suffering through that, I finally sent the message and I quickly received an email followup from the seller asking for more information. Problem is, there's no link to reply to the seller, only a "Did this solve your problem?" prompt, so I'm not sure what to do here?
                An email notification with the seller's message (content blacked out for privacy). There is a "Did this solve your problem?" prompt, with a Yes/No answer, but no other buttons or possible actions.
            1. …in reply to @develwoutacause
              I tried answering "No", with the thought that my problem is not yet solved and I need to respond to the seller to address it. However, pressing that took me to this page which simply accepted my feedback. So now I've just accidentally dinged the seller's reputation with no undo!
              oh my god twitter doesn’t include alt text from images in their API
          1. …in reply to @develwoutacause
            Now that I feel like an asshole to a seller who thus far has been fairly reasonable to me, I still don't have way to reply. The only way I could think of was to go back to the Amazon customer service bot and suffer through the scrolling text box again...
        1. …in reply to @develwoutacause
          After paying for my sins, I finally sent the reply. Since this is an independent message, I just had to lead with "(This is following up with the issue from yesterday about X, I can't figure out to reply.)" and just hope the seller can figure out what I'm trying to do here.
      1. …in reply to @develwoutacause
        I haven't heard back yet from the seller, but I'm also not entirely sure I will. Amazon has a disclaimer that messages deemed fraudulent will not be sent and (I presume) will not notify the sender about the issue.
        A message from the Amazon bot with the notice:

When you submit this form, Amazon will replace your email address with one provided by Amazon in order to protect your identity, and forward the message on your behalf. Amazon will retain copies of all e-mails sent and received using this service, including the message you submit below, and may review these messages as necessary to resolve disputes. By using this service, you consent to this action.

Amazon uses filtering technology to protect buyers and sellers and to identify possible fraud. Messages that fail this filtering - even if they are not fraudulent - will not be transmitted. This form is for use by Amazon customers to ask product-related questions to Amazon store sellers. The use of this form to send unrelated messages to sellers is strictly prohibited. Find out more about Amazon's Privacy Notice and Conditions of Use.
    1. …in reply to @develwoutacause
      From Amazon's perspective I've sent a message to the seller, gave explicit feedback that they were unhelpful, and am now trying to send a separate, independent message to the same seller. I can only assume that set off some suspicious signals and I have no way of knowing for real
  1. …in reply to @develwoutacause
    So in this process: 1. I am in the middle of a support conversation I shouldn't be in at all. 2. The "contact seller" form is downright *painful* to use. 3. I still don't know how to *reply*. 4. I incorrectly downvoted the seller. 5. Amazon may not deliver my message at all. 🤷
    1. …in reply to @develwoutacause
      Update: Seller *did* receive the second message. 😌 I also looked through Amazon docs and found a help page which links to their messaging center and explicitly calls out a reply button, however no such button exists. It's just the email in an iframe with no additional buttons!
      A message from a seller viewed in Amazon's messaging service with identifying content blacked out. The message looks identical to the previous email, and is clearly loaded via an iframe as the width is too large for the device viewport and horizontal scrolling is required. The very bottom of the message is also slightly cut off for the same reason. No reply button is present.A message from a seller viewed in Amazon's messaging service with identifying content blacked out. The message looks identical to the previous email, and is clearly loaded via an iframe as the width is too large for the device viewport and horizontal scrolling is required. The very bottom of the message is also slightly cut off for the same reason. No reply button is present.