I’ve had a hankering for some good old noir, so I ordered one of Dashiell Hammett’s Library of America books, the one with all his novels (I read the other one awhile ago).

Since I’ve signed up for Amazon Prime, I just assumed my order have free 2-day shipping, but once I got the invoice, I saw I’d been charged $9.48 (!) for 2-day shipping.

So, thanks to Martin Tobias’s link to another site, I found Amazon’s 1-800 number: 1-800-201-7575. And sure as shit, in less than 5 minutes, I had the shipping charges removed.

I can’t tell you the last time phone-shenanigans like this took me less than 5 minutes. Usually, you have to wait on hold forever, dial in a bunch of crap, and then finally get to a person who you explain your weird, non-computer solvable problem to. (The problem always involved the need for judgment to correct process or program error — “Should I remove the shipping chargers from this customer’s order?”). And then you might have to talk to another person all over again.

Granted, if Amazon made their 800 number more public, it might have taken longer because everyone — not just people who know to search Google for it — would be calling it. In that sense, in a very selfish way, I’m glad they keep it semi-private.

The positive experience I had with Amazon is the kind of thing people like Seth Godin are always yelling at companies about. I’m already a “premium” Amazon customer (I paid for Amazon Prime and order most everything from them, including lots of Christmas gifts), and I feel even more jazzed about them now that my problem was so easily taken care off.

Makes me wanna go order more books right now just to thank them ;>