Amazon refused to deliver my parcel, all the while jacking the price up of what I ordered and not price-matching me (Australian ordering HDDs from the U.S.)
So about a month ago I ordered 3x12 Terabyte Hard Drives off of Amazon AU to be shipped from the U.S. for about $500 a unit. I paid the fees, paid the import tax, and was happily waiting for my items. All the while, Amazon is jacking up the price of the exact drives I ordered, and all other drives are going up as well.
Well it comes to about a week before my drives are meant to arrive, and apparently the drives are held up by customs - I think nothing of it, because a few days after that it reports that the drives are travelling around Australia on their way to me. Fast forward to 2 days before my order is supposed to arrive, and "A problem occurred" is highlighted on my order, and a message on the order displays "there was a problem processing your order, if you haven't received anything by 20th may please contact us"
So I wait until the day (today), and I connect with the customer service teams on the way home from work because I know for a fact no one had attempted to deliver anything resembling hard drives all day.
I get connected to someone, ask where the hell my drives were and why they couldn't deliver them given that my 400+ other amazon Prime orders (including international orders) could be delivered with 0 issues and they just offer me a refund (original price, not price matched to what they are now). I tell him that's unacceptable and they connect me to their logistics team to discuss where my drives are. Flat out Logistics gives me 0 reason as to why the drives are "undeliverable" and offers the same refund. I tell them again "Unacceptable, I need equal or greater drives - I bought them at that price and now it just seems like you're price gouging me"
Logistics connects me to someone one Iota up called Parag. Parag is a godsend, he mentions that he sympathises with me and is working tooth and goddamn nail to get me equivalent or greater drives. I tell him I need them by the end of the week, 3 or 4 drives, 12TB or greater and RED for a NAS. He's searching and searching and after about 10 minutes the chat cuts out and disappears. Clear big company fashion - no logs that it ever happened accessible to me, no record of it ever happening for evidence, just gone.
I try to reconnect with support again, different person at step one, offers refund (not price matched), escalates me to logistics, again a refund that's not price matched, I cry "Going to cancel all my subscriptions (Prime, Crunchyroll, Max) and file a complaint with the ACCC (Australia's consumer watchdog, they're ruthless) and I get escalated up the chain to leadership, cry ACCC again, tell them I need replacements, get escalated to management and they're stern with the same position. Refund at original price, no price matching, no replacement, no reason for why they couldn't deliver the drives in the first place. It takes me about 5 mentions of ACCC until the management person mentions "Oh, because you mentioned ACCC I have to escalate this to the executive team, and they'll contact me within 24 hours"
Great.
So because I don't actually believe I have to rotate in a circle and shout ACCC until the lawyers suddenly appear, I ask for any reference that they've escalated it. An internal reference number to a claim, who I should be expecting an email from, what they might do, etc. All I get is an internal email from them with a response to a Customer support email I already had saying "Thank you so much for your time, we've escalated it to concern team, we're unable to process price match refund and replacement for your order, they will contact you within 24 hours"
In any case, I've sent a claim to the ACCC, 12tb Hard Drives have shot up to like $799 almost everywhere. From my perspective it looks like Amazon doesn't want to take the loss because I managed to get the drives at a good price before prices went super crazy and I'm just being bullied by a multi-trillion dollar company
Wondering what my rights are here, all the while Amazon support have told me i can repurchase the products after they issue my refund - but that's a more expensive price and i'd have to get them reimported to Australia. Should i try going to QCAT? the drives were a scooch over $1,500