Repeated Amazon Problems

Has anyone else been having problems with Amazon lately?

I did a lot of my Christmas stuff online thanks to the Amazon Prime trial. Free next day delivery is a bonus in anyone’s eyes! Anyway, when I did some seriously last minute shopping 3 days before Christmas and tried to check out, Amazon had suddenly lost all but my mum’s address (an address I’ve not used as primary point of contact in nearly 3 years). I had to re-enter my address and card details before I could checkout.

On top of that, twice now I’ve been mysteriously unable to get in to my Amazon affiliates account. I barely use the thing, but it seems when I want to I can’t anyway. Generally, I have to e-mail support to have them reset my password, which normally takes 12-24 hours. This, despite the fact that the affiliates account is tied to my main Amazon account and I can log in to that just fine.

If that wasn’t bad enough, yesterday evening, I purchased two MP3s from their music store only to find I can’t download them. I didn’t want the additional crappy Amazon MP3 downloader on my computer, so I cancelled that download, only to find that there were no links to the individual files. The help section says:

To cancel Downloader installation when prompted, choose “Skip installation and continue.” Please also choose “Save” when prompted to download the .mp3 file by your Web browser and wait for the .mp3 file to download completely before buying another song.

…but there was no “Skip” button, and I wasn’t prompted to download any MP3 files! I contacted support and received a very prompt reply (at least I can be thankful for that) from a customer service chap who reset the MP3 links and gave me full instructions on how to download said files. Except, it didn’t work. The so-called prompt to download the .mp3s instead of the .amz Amazon downloader files failed to materialise, and instead I have two useless .amz (text files) still sat on my desktop.

How hard is it to give me two bloody MP3s?

17 comments so far

  1. Hev said:
    On 06 Jan at 7:09 pm

    Yeah, the MP3s usually always have to go through their stupid download program. I have never gotten them to work without it, no matter what the company or tech has said. I have tried other sites for MP3 & Amazon’s DL program is at least small. Or the smallest that I have seen & tried.

  2. Katy said:
    On 06 Jan at 7:28 pm

    I read some small (ish) print on that when they launched it… not that I can remember which, but either single tracks or whole albums have to go via the downloader. but the other can be through it or directly

    of course, it could be different now, I dunno :)

  3. Jem said:
    On 06 Jan at 7:30 pm

    Yeah, that’s the whole albums. I only want two songs though :(

  4. Sean said:
    On 06 Jan at 9:07 pm

    Torrents/Limewire ftw. :)

  5. Audrey said:
    On 06 Jan at 10:19 pm

    I’ve had Amazon lose my new address several times. This summer I bought a book and they sent it to my old address. I called to see if they could contact the shipping company since the book was still en route. The woman was quite friendly and said they could help me, and she input my new address into the system. Even since then my new address does not show up. I am always re-entering it. Highly annoying! Your other issues are no surprise either, but I’ve thankfully not experienced them.

  6. Anita said:
    On 07 Jan at 12:47 am

    @Sean: nonono, Free Youtube to MP3 Converter (google it)…ftw ;)

  7. Anita said:
    On 07 Jan at 12:47 am

    Well, if you’re into illegal music downloading. :D

  8. Chris Ritke said:
    On 07 Jan at 1:27 am

    I just bought some stuff and didn’t have any problems – but I am a little freaked about my AWS account – somehow the account ID is different from the one I’m using for S3 and EC2. I’m scared as heck to email them – something will probably get turned off or screwed up and I can’t afford a 24h turnaround.

  9. Robbie said:
    On 07 Jan at 5:42 am

    @Anita: I’m not personally into illegal music downloading, but I do like to sample stuff before I buy it. ;)

  10. Jem said:
    On 07 Jan at 8:29 am

    I would rather go without, than go illegal.

  11. Lou said:
    On 07 Jan at 10:21 am

    Amazon download program is fine though. I brought 2 albums through it. Can’t seem to get it any other way. I prefer play.com’s downloader it’s on your account and you can redownload anytime you want.

  12. Amber said:
    On 07 Jan at 1:02 pm

    The audacity of some of the people on the comments to this post just makes me laugh… After Jem has made such a big stance against misusing images (illegally) online, why the hell would she download illegal music!?

  13. Mumblies said:
    On 07 Jan at 3:29 pm

    Jem…do something illegal? HAHA!!! believe me folks, hell will freeze over faster than that. She’s so clean she squeaks when she walks…or is that just her new shoes? :)
    psst Jem, HBFMAL ;)

  14. Adrianne said:
    On 08 Jan at 7:26 am

    I’ve been an Amazon customer for as long as I can remember (probably like in the early 2000s) and I haven’t run in to problems like that (ie. losing saved addresses or not being able to download mp3s). I’m not sure about the Amazon Affiliates problem though since I don’t really use it at all.

    As far as d/ling mp3s via the Amazon downloader thing I haven’t come across that problem yet, but yeah, apparently when you begin downloading mp3s from Amazon you’ll have to use their downloader program with it.

  15. Val Garner said:
    On 08 Jan at 10:12 pm

    I haven’t noticed any Amazon problems recently and I’ve done quite a bit of activity with them recently. Sorry for your troubles.

  16. Mimi said:
    On 11 Jan at 9:06 pm

    Amazon fail. :P I had problems with them a longgg time ago (like, 7 years) and I have refused to use them ever since. It was basically just that they said they had something in stock and I ended up waiting much too long, e-mailed support and they then informed me that they did not have that item in stock and only then did they issue my refund.

  17. alan said:
    On 24 Apr at 1:37 pm

    i download from a lot of different sites – i have absolutely no problem with ANY of the except Amazon. Every single time i want to download an album or just a couple of tracks it fails to download and of course the links disappear. Then its the frustrating and stressfull emailing customer support and having them fail again to download. Eventually the kind customer support actually rings and talks one thro it all. The suport is great but the downloader system is really rubbish. I have had to re install the mp3 downloader 4 times because it has become corrupted or its not being recognised by amazon links also i’ve had to default to IE which i don’t use (its clumsy and slow) instead of firefox. etc etc