I'm At My Wits End Here

sapphirescales

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So I bought a 2020 Mac Mini for a client of mine on Amazon. It was defective (no lights, no power), so I set up an exchange through Amazon. 2 days later, 2 Mac Mini's arrive on my doorstop. I'm puzzled, so I call up Amazon and they say that they have no record of the other Mac Mini being shipped to me but they'll provide me a return label. I just shrug and set up my client's new Mac Mini and ship the second one they sent out by mistake back.

Everything's fine but two days later I receive another Mac Mini from Amazon. At first I thought it was the same one I sent back and UPS made a mistake, but no, it's a new one. I call up Amazon and again they apologize and issue me another label. I ship it back.

Two days later I receive 2 more Mac Mini's. I'm like "WTF?" but I call Amazon again and they again say that they have no record of shipping the Mac Mini's but they issue me yet another return label.

The next day I receive no less than 18 Mac Mini's. EIGHTEEN!!! I call Amazon again and spend hours and hours on the phone trying to get to someone really high up so they can figure out what the heck is happening. They're as bewildered as I am. There's no record of a shipment in their system so they ask me for the serial numbers. I provide all 18 serial numbers and they say they'll call me the next day once they figure out what's going on.

The next day rolls around and I get 5 more Mac Mini's delivered to my doorstep. I don't even bother to open them. I know what they are (they're all shipped individually in these perfect square boxes). I get a call from the account executive or whatever they call themselves and they say that they are in fact their Mac Mini's but that there's no evidence that they were even shipped. They're just missing from the warehouse. She issues me more return labels and I ship them back the next day.

Then she calls and tells me that they have found the employee that was doing this and have taken care of it. I asked if they were doing it as a prank or something but she says that she can't talk about it. She assures me I won't receive any more.

Two days have passed and it's now today and I receive 2 more Mac Mini's. I gotta tell you, this is NOT worth the $50 in profit I made by selling the Mac Mini to my client. I called Amazon and the account exec I talked to is now "on vacation" so I can't even talk to her. They've issued me more return labels. The amount of stress worrying about whether I'm going to be charged for each one, hoping nobody steals them off my porch when I set them out for pickup, and then making sure the tracking says delivered is enough to turn me grey (they're over $1,000 apiece). I think I'm going to cancel my business credit card just in case they try to charge me for all these Mac Mini's. The limit is high enough for all of them to go through, and I can't imagine the stress of trying to deal with that.

Every time I open my door I'm filled with dread that more of them will be out there. If I open my door tomorrow and find another Mac Mini, I'm going to smash it with a baseball bat.
 
What could possibly go wrong with a little bit of automation in your supply chain?
The way the rep talked made me suspect that it was intentional on the part of the employee. Maybe a prank? Maybe they're disgruntled and sending out "free" stuff in order to hurt Amazon? Who knows? They wouldn't tell me. What they did tell me is that the computers were simply "missing" from inventory. I don't know how that could happen with all the automation they use. It had to be human intervention. I don't think I'm in any way "special" in this case. I bet this employee was sending out tons of expensive stuff to a bunch of random people. It would be a good way to get back at Amazon without actually profiting from it (which might make the criminal charges more severe if they had actually stolen the stuff for monetary gain - I dunno, I'm not a lawyer).

I've calmed down now. I was quite upset when I made my original post. I'm sure I won't get any more Mac Mini's in the mail but if I do I'll simply call Amazon again and return them. No baseball bat. I was 100% serious in my original post though. If I had opened my door and saw another one of these things I would've taken a baseball bat to it without hesitation.
 
I've had Amazon double-ship (not multi-mega-overship) little stuff and they just say keep it. Too bad it's not the case here - heh!
 
I got one more today. There is a silver lining in all this though. I called Amazon for the millionth time in order to get yet another return label and the guy felt sorry for me after hearing my sob story. He told me I could just keep it and assured me I wouldn't be getting any more. I asked for that in writing so he attached the serial number to an order for a new Mac Mini and zero'd it out so I didn't owe anything. So I guess this was all worth it in the end. These go for $1,200 on Apple's website and I got one for free! Maybe I'll keep buying from Amazon after all. I asked him if this happened often and he laughed and said no, this was a "extremely unusual" case. I personally own a Mac Mini 2012 i7 server with 16GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, but it only supports up to Mac OS Catalina. The next version of Mac OS (Big Sur) requires a 2014 Mac Mini or newer, so I guess this was fate.
 
@Porthos, it's out there with all the cable porn... like this:
c4557d270efa0236d288e4fa3272f9e5--cable-management-geek-stuff.jpg
 
I got one more today. There is a silver lining in all this though. I called Amazon for the millionth time in order to get yet another return label and the guy felt sorry for me after hearing my sob story. He told me I could just keep it and assured me I wouldn't be getting any more. I asked for that in writing so he attached the serial number to an order for a new Mac Mini and zero'd it out so I didn't owe anything. So I guess this was all worth it in the end. These go for $1,200 on Apple's website and I got one for free! Maybe I'll keep buying from Amazon after all. I asked him if this happened often and he laughed and said no, this was a "extremely unusual" case. I personally own a Mac Mini 2012 i7 server with 16GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, but it only supports up to Mac OS Catalina. The next version of Mac OS (Big Sur) requires a 2014 Mac Mini or newer, so I guess this was fate.

You were rewarded for your integrity! :D:D
 
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