Buy, Sell, Review, Rate and Discuss Products at Amazon.com
Written: Oct 15 '05 (Updated Oct 15 '05)
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For the last five years I have been shopping at Amazon.com with quick results in receiving my orders ahead of estimated arrival. In fact there was one order placed on a Friday that was received the very next day. My orders have been for books, toys, household related items, videos and musical CDs. I have taken part in many of the options available at Amazon.com.
Reviews - For a number of years I have been writing reviews on products with my ranking moving up steadily. I hope to make the top 1000 by early next year. When posting a review you need to state that you are over the age of 13, pick a title for the review and the number of stars the product deserves. The next screen gives you the option to save or edit the review before it is published on the site.
When you look at reviews in the topic you have written there are no rating buttons under your own review. Visitors and members have the option of rating yes or no that they found a review helpful. The average of the stars is shown at the product home page with the number of reviews listed. For popular items there will be more than one page of customer reviews. Reviewers have the option to use their real name with this listed underneath. You can add a website or pen-name with your name or within your profile. I have autismfamily listed with my real name.
When you go to your home page you will see the photo you have chosen, the number of your reviews and the amount of votes. It will be like 3209 rank, (206 reviews), 470 votes/594 total. This means that 124 rated my reviews as not helpful.
Friends and Favorites - you can choose to add other customers of Amazon.com to be friends or favorites. A favorite would be those that you enjoy reading and want to be notified when they write a new review. A friend is someone who has access to your wish list and can send you items. If they make you a friend in return you can view their list and order them a gift for their birthday. I have received items this way.
You can also email a friend (or anyone else) a page you are interested in on Amazon.com. There will be an email notifying you that someone has added you as a friend. This also gives you permission to view their “about you” page. It shows purchases, ratings and comments made by the Amazon friend.
You see a listing of your favorite people, pending invitations and here is where you would start a listmania or guide. This is known as community content.
Alerts - This is based on the items placed into your wish list. You will receive emails alerting you to new items that are now available. Recommendations are also listed at the home page upon arrival at Amazon.com. You can manage your alerts at the site and also through the links received in emails. These are also based on your ratings of items and purchases in the past.
Discussion Boards - this is where you post topics and chat with other amazon reviewers and customers. There are guidelines to adhere to before you can post on the discussion boards. There are threads for frequently asked questions and bug reports. The boards are divided into sections for general, products and reviewing. The time is listed on the left side with the number of postings and which member started the thread. Many discuss their rankings as reviewers. You have the option of changing the color and size of the font in your posting. You get to preview your posting and can attach a file to it as well. I have not posted on the discussion board in many months, but my postings are in my own name just as my reviews are.
Help - This is divided into several sections – privacy & security, returns & replacements, ordering, shipping & delivery, selling, services and vendor guides. Everything is here but a live-chat option or their phone number! While in the help section you can also check whether the page helped you or not and then get more options to fix the problem you are experiencing. You can follow the links for contact us about spoof emails to send them the headers through the form on the contact us page.
Certificates - many companies offer these as an award for filling out surveys. Customers can send them to friends as a gift. They are very easy to redeem and can be held over for future orders. They can be used in conjunction with other payment methods.
Associates - I joined this program at the end of June when I started as the Editor of Autism Spectrum Disorders at Bellaonline.com The pay is quarterly and dependent on the number of orders purchased by the visitors from your click-throughs. You can post links on a site and also in emails and newsletters for your visitors. If you have more than one website you just add that address to your account so you only need to manage one account. A month ago I took over the Insurance site at BellaOnline.com. I get the clicks and orders on one report when I sign into the Associates section. The password is the same one you already have as a customer of Amazon.com.
The reports show me that with 6 more orders my percentage will increase. The payment options for an associate are – certificate, check in the mail or deposit into your checking account. For a deposit into your account you need to add the banking information. A U.S. bank account is needed with a ten-dollar minimum before you will get paid for any quarter. The certificates are also a ten-dollar minimum earned sent to your primary email address. To get a check you will have to earn at least one hundred dollars in your associates account for the quarter with eight dollars being deducted for the processing fee.
You can have a secondary user for your Associates account. This person will be able to build links but not updating the account. You can change your method of payment at any time. I started with the checking account data and then decided I wanted certificates.
Wish List - This is available in either a normal view or compacted view. I have eleven pages with a total of 259 products on my wish list. The listing shows the date each item was added, the title, author if applicable, current price, new and used prices, link to the cart, how fast it will ship, whether it has been released (books). There is also a priority system that allows you to rate from 1-5 your items on the wish list. This would be beneficial if you are sending your wish list to friends for holiday ideas, etc. The listing is 1- must have, 2 – love to have, 3 – like to have, 4 – I’m thinking about it or 5 – Don’t buy this for me.
Customers can have more than one wish list. There is also an option to delete items from a wish list or to move them to another list. I have at times added an item to my wish list to find out that it had been there already. This will not show up a second time, but a notice saying it was already there. I wish there was an option to delete more than one item on a page of the wish list, but it goes quickly just the same.
For items that have not been released you do have the opportunity to pre-order the item from the home page of the product or through your wish list. While at the wish list page you can enter an email address to view other wish lists or send yours to someone with their email address at this page, or more than one person by using a comma between addresses.
There is a total of 32 product categories at Amazon.com. The wish list can be sorted for a certain category also. There is a shipping preference in the wish list section that will enable third-party sellers access to your address. I opted not to allow this so anyone who would send items to me through third-party sellers would have to enter my address manually.
Your account - you can view the last five years individually for all orders through Amazon.com. Here is where you can delete all the old payment methods stored in your account that were used. A few times over the years the ex-husband paid for items I ordered for the kids. I have been able to delete those from my account, yet his address is still listed and I cannot find a way to permanently delete it!
At your account you can apply a gift certificate to your account, change your password, billing and mailing addresses, cancel items and print invoices. These options can be done on recent orders. Here is the spot to track orders and find your stuff, leave seller feedback, view gift card balance and trivia balance through Amazon.com. When you choose one of these options you will be brought to the sign in page to re-enter your password. I have received my password quickly each time it has slipped my mind. There will be an email notifying you that a password change has occurred.
Gift Certificates - they can be sent in an email, through the postal mail and in an e-card. They initially expire within eighteen months from the date of issuance, but there is a six-month grace period for unused portions. They are not to be redeemed for Amazon auctions and not all third party sellers can utilize them, like Eddie Bauer, Nordstrom’s and The Bombay Company. They are not transferable and cannot be used to buy gift cards. Gift certificates are available from $5.00 to $5,000.
Shopping Cart - They keep items here for a long time! I just found two books that I had placed there back on October 18, 2004 and they are sitting in my shopping cart. There are buttons to delete them or to move to cart. Basically they are saved items – to buy later, as the site states. In fact my last order was in April of 2005 and these items were not included in that order.
It does state that items remain in your shopping cart for ninety days, yet these are almost one year old. There is also a listing of items that those who purchased these same items bought in addition.
Ordering - An order summary will show the items, shipping and handling, any promotions applied, super saver discount, estimated shipping date, payment method, shipping address, shipping options and billing address. At this page you can make changes before clicking on to submit the order. It is mentioned that if you choose free super saver shipping it will take an additional 3-5 days to ship.
You will receive an email confirmation of your order. This will include links to change your order and track it. The total of the order is listed, your billing and shipping information, a shipping estimate and a delivery estimate. My last order was with free shipping and this showed a range of dates for shipping to be April 13-15 with the delivery estimate at April 18-26th. This email confirmation was received on April 5th. I was quite surprised to see the long wait on this order and gave it a few days before proceeding further.
I chose the shipping preference of grouping my items into as few shipments as possible. There was also a link to a deal if I signed up for an Amazon card. This email stated my order would arrive in one shipment. On April 11th I received an email reply to my email complaint of the same date about the long delivery time and lack of phone number present on the site.
The response follows – “Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.com. I am sorry for the inconvenience caused to you due to the delay in shipping your order and I do understand your frustration in this matter. I have researched your order, and can confirm that we still expect to ship your order by the date listed in Your Account. The estimated date of shipment was calculated at the time you placed your order and is based on the availability of the items in your order, the proximity of inventory to the delivery address you provided and the shipping method you chose. In an effort to compensate any inconvenience caused to you, I have upgraded your shipment to Two Day Domestic method at no additional charge. I have completely waived your shipping charges to 0.00.”
Then there was a breakdown showing two shipments for my order that initially was to be one shipment. There were full details on how to use my account at Amazon.com and two links to click on whether this information was helpful or not – yes or no. On the 12th I received two emails stating my order had shipping and I received my boxes on the 14th via UPS and was thankful for the quick assistance I received from my email.
I do not think I will use the free shipping option in the future. When I redeem my gift certificates from the associates program I will do a few small orders for the holidays.
Returns - you can send back gifts and purchases as long as they are in unopened or original condition within thirty days for a full refund. There are restrictions and a section at the site for specific details.
The boxes are always appropriate in size for the product and not filled with wasteful packing material. Overall my experiences have been positive when shopping at Amazon.com. The site is user friendly and very community oriented. The pages are not too busy, the reviews and lists are helpful to make decisions. My application for an associate was approved the same day I applied. The reports are easy to comprehend with tips to build links and promote products. I like seeing how many clicked on the links in my articles and what has been purchased through my site.
Shipping- I have received most of my orders through UPS, but sometimes it comes via the postal mail system. The free super saver takes 5-9 business days, the standard shipping is 3-7 days, the two days shipping is two business days with the one-day option taking one business day.
Overnight is $3.99 per item. There is a single flat fee for each shipment, plus a small fee for additional items. Amazon prime is $79 per year, which is free two-day shipping on all your orders. Orders over $25 will get you the free shipping option.
There are options to inform Amazon.com of items you would like to see for sale at the site. You also get to see your recent viewing history. This consists of the previous few searches that you performed and several items you viewed. The last column has the recommendation of a product from customers who purchased the same item you were viewing. This is also an option when you have placed an item into your wish list. There are a few columns showing what other customers bought and then what is popular at the site at the moment.
There is a Baby Registry and Wedding Registry that I have not utilized. There are purchase circles for major cities. I am listed as being interested in the Los Angeles one. There are charities and non-profits listed for Purchase Circles as well. You will be notified via email when an item is available. There is a standard server and a secure server when using Amazon.com. 1-click ordering is not something I ever looked into before, but just now I went there and was able to delete the ex-husband’s address, finally this is completed! When deleting addresses there is a second step to confirm before it gets deleted.
The payment options are all major credit cards and debit cards and gift certificates. I am not sure if you can pay through the mail like other online merchants. They do not accept paypal. The Amazon.com motto is “Earth’s Biggest Selection”
The address for Amazon is - Amazon.com, 1200 12th Ave. S., Suite 1200, Seattle, WA 98144-2734.
Recommended:
Yes
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Books
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bonniesayers
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Location: Los Angeles, CA
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