Looking back at our own experiences with the Xbox One launch and we can honestly say it wasn’t the perfect safe ride we’d have hoped for, and thanks to giant retailer Amazon, we’d almost given up hope on the supposed safety net of pre-ordering in advance and expecting a delivery on day one. Here’s our lost Xbox One Amazon story which we’d thought we’d share now to bring in the new year, to highlight that standing up for yourself can make a difference. Read on.

Our Lost Xbox One Amazon story

To begin, we pre-ordered our Xbox One Day One Edition with FIFA 14 rather late via Amazon, way back in September last year which meant we were due to receive the console a few days after the November 22nd launch date. We could live with that, as it just made the arrival all the more exciting. Our order had been dispatched according to the tracking info and was due to arrive on Monday 25th November , except something went horribly wrong.

At close of business on the Monday, it was evident we weren’t going to get our Xbox One and a sour taste was beginning to form and some resentment towards placing our trust in expecting our delivery to be timely.   A quick call to Amazon customer service revealed that our package had been successfully dispatched and was in transit with their courier company Hermes UK but had ended up in a distant sorting office that had no relation to our delivery address.

Slightly miffed, we enquired as to when it would be re-routed, and were informed this would happen quite promptly…except it didn’t.

Tuesday, the tracking info remained the same, and offered a similar sorry explanation that there was a delay. Another call to Amazon customer services revealed there was nothing they could do, other than wait for Hermes to track the package and send it. Due to having no stock Amazon couldn’t simply ship out another Day One Xbox One console, or any other Xbox One.

Come Wednesday, there was still no sign of our Xbox One, and another call to Amazon resulted in an insincere apology and offer of a refund of £429. This was utterly useless to us, knowing that it would be virtually impossible to procure another Xbox One Day One console anywhere.  Not accepting the refund we politely decided to escalate the issue further and requested speaking to one of the higher ups.

Our Amazon supervisor  (based in Ireland) was friendly, courteous and genuinely concerned for our plight and offered to chase up Hermes to see what exactly had gone wrong with the delivery. Naturally, our cynical minds assumed the worst that the console had been deliberately mislaid and was perhaps sitting somewhere on Ebay at an inflated price, or under an Xmas tree somewhere.

According to procedure, our rep suggested all we could do at this juncture was wait, as Hermes did several sweeps of the warehouse to find the missing package. After a few days, it was deemed likely the package had indeed been lost. Amazon could do nothing at all, except profusely apologize for an error out of their control. They could not replace the console from their next deliveries, depriving someone else of their pre-order, they could do nothing bar offer a full refund – which we accepted. However, with our blood reaching boiling point we were at a loose end and simply despondent towards online retailers at this stage, and then it happened. Like a shining light bulb above our heads an idea so brilliant came to the fore. An idea that  could only be deemed as pure genius. Not bending over backwards and becoming another statistic for lost parcels,we called our Amazon rep once more with a suggestion so outrageous, that it had to work given the unique circumstances we were in.

We suggested to Amazon, that we’d buy one of their inflated priced Xbox One Day One consoles  listed on their site via an independent seller – which were going for around £647 – using the refund money and some additional cash we had.  We then requested that Amazon should foot the bill for the difference. In this case just over £200. Before they agreed to this, and confident in our ability to fight our cause, we placed the order anyway whilst our rep waited for confirmation from higher ups that they would agree. It was a gamble which we felt was right to take considering there were no other options to get an Xbox One of any kind at this point.

Luckily, to sooth the pain, our PS4 was due to arrive on 29th and arrived promptly in the morning without issue, which took the sting out of the tail having to wait for confirmation that Amazon would play ball, and more importantly, that we’d actually have an Xbox One considering they were now sold out everywhere.

Come Monday the 2nd of December and a call from Amazon confirmed that they would credit our bank account with the extra £200 odd we’d paid for the inflated price Xbox One and was the most  our rep had ever seen. Normally, vouchers were given up to around £50, so we were considered “special” not lucky considering the circumstances.  Our Xbox One arrived that week with no issues at all and we were happy with the outcome but still saddened that somewhere, our original Xbox One console was potentially in the hands of a thief working for the courier company – not an isolated case it seems.

Moral of the story: Whatever goods you are purchasing online, always fight for your rights and take things higher and don’t be palmed off with a base response if you feel you’ve been unduly hit with the unlucky stick.